LONDON: Dubai’s Emirates airline and Arsenal have announced the biggest-ever sponsorship deal in the football club’s history, extending the airline’s shirt-naming rights by five years.
The deal secures Arsenal’s longest-running shirt partnership, which started in 2006.
Sources told Arab News the arrangement is worth £200 million ($280 million) and that it starts in 2019. The deal covers all the club’s shirts for all of its teams.
“Emirates is a great partner for Arsenal — a world-class brand with a truly global reach. The airline plays a significant role in our ambitions to extend our influence and following around the world,” Arsenal Chief Executive Ivan Gazidis told media in a statement.
The arrangement between Arsenal and Emirates Airline is an ideal fit, Nick Walford of sponsorship consultancy firm Redmandarin told Arab News.
“London is a key destination for Emirates and Arsenal is their long-term London sponsorship platform, so a continuation of the deal makes commercial sense,” he said.
“If they had not renewed this deal, how would this have been perceived in their competition with Etihad?”
Sponsorship deals of this magnitude are common at the top end of the English Premier League, with Manchester United raking in $74 million a year from its arrangement with Chevrolet, according to The Telegraph, and Manchester City reaping $28 million a year from Etihad Airways as part of a wider £400 million ($560 million) shirt and stadium-naming rights package.
The boss of Emirates confirmed the airline’s commitment to Arsenal: “As a business, we are hugely committed to supporting sports all over the world and our relationship with Arsenal is no different. Our partnership with Arsenal Football Club is a great combination of two truly global brands and we’re very pleased to have extended this relationship for five more years,” Emirates President Sir Tim Clark said in a statement.
As part of the extended deal, Arsenal will fly on Emirates jets on pre-season tours. Emirates in turn will retain marketing rights to develop campaigns and initiatives around the world.
Arsenal’s north London home will continue to be known as Emirates Stadium up until 2028, as part of an extension agreed with Emirates in 2012.
Arsenal signs its ‘largest sponsorship deal ever’ with Dubai’s Emirates
Arsenal signs its ‘largest sponsorship deal ever’ with Dubai’s Emirates
Paris exhibition marks 200 years of Le Figaro and the enduring power of the press
- The exhibition celebrated the bicentennial of Le Figaro, offering visitors a rare opportunity to step inside the newspaper’s vast historical archive
PARIS: One of France’s most influential newspapers marked a major milestone this month with a landmark exhibition beneath the soaring glass nave of the Grand Palais, tracing two centuries of journalism, literature and political debate.
Titled 1826–2026: 200 years of freedom, the exhibition celebrated the bicentennial of Le Figaro, offering visitors a rare opportunity to step inside the newspaper’s vast historical archive. Held over three days in mid-January, the free exhibition drew large crowds eager to explore how the title has both chronicled and shaped modern French history.
More than 300 original items were displayed, including historic front pages, photographs, illustrations and handwritten manuscripts. Together, they charted Le Figaro’s evolution from a 19th-century satirical publication into a leading national daily, reflecting eras of revolution, war, cultural change and technological disruption.
The exhibition unfolded across a series of thematic spaces, guiding visitors through defining moments in the paper’s past — from its literary golden age to its role in political debate and its transition into the digital era. Particular attention was paid to the newspaper’s long association with prominent writers and intellectuals, underscoring the close relationship between journalism and cultural life in France.
Beyond the displays, the program extended into live journalism. Public editorial meetings, panel discussions and film screenings invited audiences to engage directly with editors, writers and media figures, turning the exhibition into a forum for debate about the future of the press and freedom of expression.
Hosted at the Grand Palais, the setting itself reinforced the exhibition’s ambition: to place journalism firmly within the country’s cultural heritage. While the exhibition has now concluded, the bicentennial celebrations continue through special publications and broadcasts, reaffirming Le Figaro’s place in France’s public life — and the enduring relevance of a free and questioning press in an age of rapid change.
