I surveyed 656 Arsenal fans around the world to ask what their preferred ownership model is for the club. Actually I asked quite a few thousand, but only 656 could be bothered to read all the options and vote. No matter. I am happy it is a representative sample, because I kept an eye on the percentages once the number of responses passed about 250, and they really didn’t change very much.
All the figures are in the graphics below, but in summary neither current owner Kroenke nor would-be owner Usmanov are actually very popular. In an ideal world – which was the scenario I asked about – only 2.3% chose the current position (Kroenke as majority owner) as first choice, with 6.4% preferring Kroenke to own 100% of the club.
For Usmanov, 13.4% were seduced enough by the Uzbek’s promises, and no doubt the performance of other clubs recently under billionaire owners, and would like him as sole owner, while a further 3.5% would be most happy with a reversal of the real world situation: Usmanov with a majority and Kroenke as the other major shareholder.
However, these numbers pale next to the 56.4% who would most like to see fans with a majority of shares, split fairly evenly between the Barcelona model of 100% fan ownership and the Bundesliga model of fans with a minimum of 50% plus one share. In a way I find this quite heartening, even if unlikely to occur.
You can study all the figures below. I forced every respondent to answer all questions, or I think I’d have got a few thousand votes in the ‘Would you sack Wenger now? poll. That and Where are you from? were rather easier to answer than the ownership question. But for all questions the percentage after a couple of hundred votes stayed level, in the Wenger case very close to 10%. I’m fairly confident this gives an accurate reflection of fan attitudes to the manager. About 10% want him out now, but I’m sure there are others who would be happy to get rid of him at the end of the season.
Feel free to do your own analysis of the figures and draw conclusions! Comments welcome.
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angryofislington 
Sample size is big enough to give a representative set of answers, but to an extent, its also limited because you’re only representing the people who ‘want’ to fill out such a questionnaire, and also those that are drawn one way or another to your site. Still, it’s probably not too far off. Good work!
It’s limited to those who want to bother responding, but not those who read this blog – see other comment.
I know for a fact that hundreds looked at the questions and changed their minds about answering, so I have weeded out lazy people for a start!
Not the lazy people, but the people who read the survey and realised the questions were far too simplistic to be able to give an answer that had any chance of being interpreted properly. And your survey is certainly limited to the anoraks that inhabit such pages (myself included, and Twitter included), and there is no certainty that it is representative of the Arsenal supporter base as a whole. And while you’re probably right that you’re not as stupid as that person thought, my bet is that you’re not as clever you think you are.
Finally, if you include questions asking if the people responding to the survey would like to own the club, it’s no great surprise to find that they would. However, that isn’t going to happen, and it would have been much more interesting to exclude such remote outcomes and see what people really think about the more likely possibilities.
I disagree with virtually everything you’ve said, but I’m prepared to give you a chance: if you’re so smart then rewrite the options to be “less simplistic” and let’s see what you come up with.
I guess you haven’t managed to come up with some less simplistic but equally pertinent questions then? Probably too busy marking those IQ test papers or finishing off that atomic fusion reactor that you stopped working on to complete the perpetual motion machine. You know the one, it’s over there in the corner behind that stack of Nobel prize certificates.
I saw you were flaunting it around 😉 That’ll certainly help, but it’ll still be skewed because there could well be a variance in their followers / readers that look at the link and decide whether to fill it in based on the type(optimistic/pessimistic) of follower they are. But, yeah, short of putting a gun to 1000 randomly selected peoples heads it’s hard to get a completely accurate result. I was one of the lazy ones.
You surveyed the readers of your blog, how representative this is of the Arsenal supporters is anyone’s guess.
That’s the whole point of having a large sample size, you hopefully gain a large enough spread of demographics and backgrounds. Obviously there has to be a few similarities (all support arsenal, all can use a computer, all read his blog) otherwise its not controlled enough to make a conclusion from the data.
I hate when I have to waste my time explaining everything in minute detail.
I did not only sample readers of my blog. I got Arsenal fans on twitter who have thousands of followers to RT to all their followers. I deliberately targeted some whose views don’t always coincide with mine in order to get as wide a spread as possible. Responses from the blog were no more than 20% of the total. I know this from when I blogged it, when I tweeted it and when others tweeted it, compared with the spikes in responses. I also deliberately included the Wenger question solely to see how the answers for that varied over time.
I am probably not as stupid as you think.
Can’t understand John’s comment, what were you supposed to do, stand outside the Emirates with a clipboard?
I think the majority of the “Wenger out now” folk are recent fans who have only experienced the success he brought and now can’t accept less. I’ve been there since the 60’s and have seen far worse teams and Managers, and believe that Wenger is still the best we’ve had and could have.
What a Utopian dream though, the people who love the club and pour their hard earned cash into it, owning the majority of it!! Can’t wait for the day!
You’ll be waiting a long long time Bridges unfortunately.
We can hope. Stranger things happen. Who’d have bet on Rangers in the 3rd Division?
How will it happen while there is someone in charge that paid a huge amount of money for the club, wants to make a profit, and, isn’t a fan?
Surely we need someone who is a fan with loads and loads of money to make an offer that can’t be refused, and, then offer shares to other fans for more money than was paid per share?
I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I do know this: there is only one thing I can’t predict: the future.
Fans owning the club happened until 1910. It then went bust and was rescued by a two wealthy businessmen.
Judging by the vast majority of comments on blogs that I’ve read, I’d give the club no more than 5 years under ownership of the fans. That is if they had the balls to stump up their cash in the first place.
I tend to agree.
I think if a football club was run by a fan most clubs would go the way of Rangers because most fans don’t have the business nouse, and, time needed to run their own business let alone a football club.
It would be brilliant if we could have the best of all worlds, but, everything has its flaws. The flaw in the way Man City et al are run is the amount of debt they have got. Arsenal is one of the few clubs that wouldn’t be royally if the people that pump the money in walk away for one reason or another. I’m sure I can count on one hand how many world clubs that are successful and have manageable debt. It won’t be long before Arsenal are like that, and, that my friends is the best of both worlds.
I think we are run better now than any fan of Arsenal football club could run Arsenal football club.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting we randomly pick someone and tell them to get on with it! There are ways of fans running things, as Barcelona and Bayern Munich prove quite successfully.
Really good blog & poll Phil and thanks for doing it. In this day and age of Arsenal fans flooding the net with ill-informed and ill-considered opinions, it’s great to see effort at properly quantifying people’s views. The results are a fascinating snapshot and anyone with half a brain cell will know that they aren’t necessarily going to reflect what the millions of Arsenal fans around the globe really think. I think the main thing you can deduce from the results though is that there is a broad spectrum of views as to the current Board’s position/performance; such is life. Life’s full of uncertainty, variables and grey areas. If only all fans could accept that life isn’t all black and white.
Predictably the German and Spanish fan controlled ownership model won by a mile. The problem is that option is gone. Its Usmanov v Kroenke. Usmanov is the preferred option.
Nothing is gone. The future is yet to be written. Did you predict Rangers would be in the Scottish Third Division?
Interesting results and a fair representation of the current internet savvy fans following Arsenal websites across the world. I am not surprised to see that the vast majority of fans support Wenger….they are intelligent enough to know a good thing when they see it. The fact that they are disinclined to support any private ownership scheme but would seriously consider a fan shares option with majority ownership accruing to Gooners is a clear indication that our current fan-base is in dire need of exercising some control over the running of the Club they love. Personally, as long as that control did not extend to actual match lineups, transfers in and out and things normally under the aegis of Wenger’s domain, then why not?
Phil, I’m struggling to find a reply from Mr. Mario Pentangeli to your very kind offer. Have I missed it?
He’s obviously busy. I’ve left him another reply.
I may have been slightly sarcastic.