Arsenal, Financial Times: english football seeks Asian payday |
LONDON - English football seeks Asian payday. When Arsenal walk on to the field at Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno stadium on Sunday to play the Indonesian national team, it will be a lifetime highlight for Rawindraditya, who like many Indonesians uses just one name. The president of Arsenal’s Indonesian supporters’ association has been lobbying the top flight English club for years to visit this football-crazy nation of 240m people.
“I kept telling them: you have a lot of supporters in Indonesia. Why don’t you come here?” says the 32-year-old. “We’ve already sold 15,000 tickets just to Arsenal fans and I’m so excited.”
But the tour to Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam is more significant for the club and football’s new breed of business-focused executives than for the fans.
financial times london
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