ARSENAL have been on a rollercoaster ride for some years now, but off the pitch it has been a steady rise for Vinai Venkatesham who became the chief executive in August 2020.
The elevation was natural as he had a key role of newly created managing director in the club’s tripartite management model – part of its efforts to manage the transition following the departure of two giants in 2018, manager of 22 years, Arsène Wenger and its chief executive Ivan Gazidis.
With the club trying to find a new lease of life under its current manager Mikel Arteta, who took charge in December 2019, the Gunners reverted to the operational model of the Wenger-era, with Venkatesham filling the boots of Gazidis. “We have no doubt that Vinai is the right person to take the club forward,” Stan and Josh Kroenke, owners of the club, said at the time of his promotion.
“He has shown outstanding leadership during the current crisis and is held in high regard internally and externally.”
Venkatesham had a tough first year in the new role, though, with the European Super League debacle and the club failing to qualify for Europe for the first time since 1995, as they finished the 2020/21 season in eighth place.
In April 2021, Arsenal were announced as a founding club of the breakaway European competition The Super League, but they withdrew from the competition two days later, alongside every other English club, after a severe backlash from supporters, players and rival clubs. Venkatesham has since led the attempts to build bridges with the other 14 Premier League clubs, confirming to a fans’ forum that he telephoned all of them to apologise for the decision.
As chief executive, he has taken a firm stand against online hate towards players, warning that the issue is more widespread than previously known. Arsenal have launched a #StopOnlineAbuse campaign and joined other clubs and organisations in a social media boycott in May 2021.
“We really cannot underestimate the impact that social media abuse can have on an individual. We need to come together to solve this because this is a moment in time. If we don’t make positive progress I really, really worry about the path we are heading on,” he has said.
As the club endures what its life president Ken Friar — who has been at Arsenal for 70 years — termed the toughest period they have ever had in their 135-year history, Venkatesham has the onerous task of returning the club to the pinnacle of the game. While he knows this will not happen overnight, he is confident that they have “many of the critical ingredients” to do so and “many positives to build on”.
“Like many people that work at this football club, I spend pretty much every waking minute thinking about how we can improve and how we can achieve our goals and objectives going forward,” he told the club after taking up the new position.
Being an internal hire – Venkatesham has been at Arsenal since 2010 – he has had an inside view of what troubles the club, and knows exactly what is expected of him. And, he has a proven record for out-of-the-box thinking that the club clearly needs.
He began his career at accounting giant Arthur Andersen, but the collapse of the firm in 2002 following the Enron scandal would cost him the job. After a brief stint as an oil trader, he would be again on familiar terrain at Deloitte. Spotting an opening for a commercial manager for the upcoming 2012 London Olympics would, however, become a turning point.
“I wasn’t necessarily looking to leave Deloitte,” Venkatesham told the GG2 Power List earlier, “but I thought, this is the world’s biggest sporting event, happening in my home city: the definition of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
The task ahead was risky, with a target of £2 billion to raise from sponsors, but he decided to take up the gauntlet: “I was young enough – I didn’t have kids, didn’t have a mortgage – I was able to be drawn into this exciting challenge.”
By 2010, when his office was closed after securing the target, he had already found a niche for himself. He says, “I went from having no experience of working in sport to having done some of the world’s biggest sponsorship, hospitality, ticketing and licensing deals.”
Since joining Arsenal, Venkatesham has worked his way up the career ladder, from head of global partnership to the role of chief commercial officer, which he began in August 2014. He has played a significant role in expanding Arsenal’s range of sponsors and is credited with playing a leading role in negotiations for the club’s new kit deal, which has seen them switching from Puma to Adidas.
Though Venkatesham considers himself as a private person, he is fully aware of the ‘weight of responsibility’ that comes with the role, and also acknowledges that he would be a role model for many because of his ethnicity – son of a doctor who came to England on his own from Hyderabad in south India in the early 1970s.
Settled in Twickenham, the family ran a medical practice in Chiswick, which is now manned by his elder sister, also a doctor. Venkatesham, who will turn 41 in April, read economics and management at Oxford. He lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and three children.