The controversial ‘39th game’ idea put forward by Premier League chief Richard Scudamore last year, was designed to give opportunities to every Premier League team to enhance its visibility in foreign territories. The scheme attracted much criticism when it came to light last October, but Kinnear is cautiously positive about the idea. “Our board was initially very supportive of it,” he says, “and that’s on public record, but I don’t think the announcement of it was handled particularly well and sort of killed it before it got proper airing or proper debate. What I would say is, clearly, a team’s presence in a territory makes a fundamental difference to how you can develop supporter and sponsor relationships in that country. And whether that comes from a friendly or competitive match is less important. But I think that’s the key and it’s not a phenomenon unique to the Premier League: that is what the NFL have seen, the NBA have seen, and I think everybody’s recognising that you’re imposing a limit on your growth unless your team has some level of presence.”

As director of UK marketing, Kinnear is something of a factotum at the club. His remit is incredibly wide-ranging. As he explains: “The thing I love about this job is the diversity of football as a business – I will go from one meeting talking about how we are going to recruit six year olds as Arsenal fans to another meeting about how we’re going to leverage the naming rights with Emirates further, which is a multi-million pound deal, to selling more UK£150,000 boxes, to what’s our concert strategy going to be next year and what acts can we secure [Arsenal have a licence to put on three concerts per year at Emirates stadium].

"So the breadth of revenue streams and of brand building itself… because our audience is so diverse, you know, there’s a corporate Arsenal brand, there’s an Arsenal brand for Junior Gunners [Arsenal’s youth supporter club], there’s a membership brand, there’s a brand for Highbury Square [the site of Arsenal’s previous stadium upon which the club has built and is selling luxury flats], and so we’re managing a portfolio of diverse offerings to different target audiences. Culturally, the really big advantage here, and I think it’s what Arsenal excels at, is that we make decisions fantastically quickly. It’s a really flat organisation and there’s no politics. The board give people a lot of autonomy.”

One area that Kinnear has been focussing on in recent months is the Emirates Cup. The pre-season tournament at Arsenal’s home ground has now been held for three successive years and has become an opportunity for Arsenal to close the pre-season revenue gap on their touring rivals. The two-day tournament, which is always a near sell out, makes some US$6 million for the club, while providing the team with varied, first-class opposition. Kinnear has been working closely with specialist soccer marketing agency Kentaro to ensure the success of the tournament, and explains that the concept came about as a method of monetising pre-season but has now proved so successful that it is being emulated, to varying success, across the world. “Arsenal’s got a great reputation for being operationally fairly slick,” Kinnear explains.

“So when these teams come over, from the moment they arrive they are greeted by an Arsenal representative, they’re looked after in hotels, they’re escorted to the press conference, our media people are dealing with them, their directors are looked after in fantastic facilities, their corporate guests are looked after and that has been one of the competitive advantages of why teams want to come – Real Madrid were desperate to come back this year but it didn’t work in their schedule. In terms of tournament for them, they love London, they love the stadium and they love the quality of football that’s played.”

From Kinnear’s point of view, one of the key benefits of the Emirates Cup is the opportunity it provides him and his team to build relationships with potential new partners. The tournament falls outside the contracts of Arsenal’s regular season sponsors. “In terms of developing the Arsenal business, it’s a good way to introduce brands and potential partners to the business in what is a relatively low-cost format rather than them signing a multi-year deal.” This year’s Emirates Cup was backed by the likes of online gaming company Bet-at-Home and Thomson travel agency. Moving forward, those opportunities to develop new relationships may prove crucial.

Arsenal's two major sponsorship deals, with Nike and Emirates airline, were both signed some time ago and only bring in about US$33 million a year. As a point of comparison, title winners Manchester United generated some US$60.8 million last year from their two key deals with Nike and AIG. Asked recently about the comparative lack of revenue that the club’s two standout deals yield, Gazidis’ response was telling: “I think there’s no question that the partnerships with Nike and Emirates were fundamental for the construction of the stadium and those are strong, long-term relationships. It's always easy to second guess deals but they give us, as a club, stability and effectively a guaranteed return.”

The UK£100 million, 15-year deal that Emirates signed with the club in 2004 is increasingly looking like good business for the airline – especially given the success of Arsenal’s move to the new Emirates stadium.

Since joining the club in 2004, much of Kinnear’s considerable energy has been spent on the process of relocating from the club’s old stadium, Highbury, down the road to the Emirates. The UK£430 million project saw the club transform an industrial estate just yards away from the 38,000-capacity stadium it had called home since 1913. The project included the relocation of the multifarious businesses housed at the new site, the construction of the stadium itself, and the redevelopment of Highbury into a complex of luxury flats.

Off the field, the recession hit Arsenal at a critical point in the stadium project. The club had expected to recoup some UK£350 million; UK£270 million from the sale of the luxury flats at the Highbury redevelopment site and a further UK£80 million from the regeneration of nearby Queensland Road. Although the club is now saddled with a debt of some UK£400 million, largely made up of mortgage repayments for the stadium, the Emirates provided an immediate financial boost.