Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis given bonus of almost £1m despite club losing £50m by missing out on Champions League football

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Missing out on Champions League football this season has cost Arsenal around £50million yet the club’s chief executive Ivan Gazidis has still been awarded a near £1m bonus.

Arsenal’s financial report for 2016-17 shows Gazidis receiving a package of £2.618m, including a whopping £919,000 bonus, that consolidated his position in the top three best-paid club administrators in the Premier League.

His salary is similar to the previous year’s, although Arsenal have suffered the serious setback of not playing in Europe’s premier club competition for the first time in 20 years and no major commercial deals were signed by the club.

Ivan Gazidis has been given a bonus of £919,000 despite Arsenal's disappointing season

The chief executive might have to answer some difficult questions at the club's AGM 

An Arsenal spokesman said: ‘All wage costs including bonuses are decided by the board.’

That is unlikely to satisfy Arsenal shareholders, who are sure to ask questions at the forthcoming AGM about Gazidis being paid so much.

With England cricketers under the spotlight for their drinking escapades, it just so happens that the ECB’s most productive recent sponsorship stream has been the booze industry with five official supply deals done for beer, lager, cider, wine and champagne.

Not all England cricketers spend their leisure time on the sauce in Bristol nightclubs. 

In stark contrast, record run-scorer and former captain Alastair Cook has been shooting grouse in North Yorkshire with ECB president Giles Clarke. 

Multimillionaire Clarke has bought shooting rights for a grouse moor near Richmond and invited a party of friends, including Cook, for a day’s shooting including putting them up at a local hotel. No brawls at 2.35am were reported.

Alastair Cook spent some time shooting grouse with ECB president Giles Clarke 

It is beyond belief that the beleaguered cycling boss Sir Dave Brailsford could take part in a session at the Leaders Week sports business summit and not have to answer a single question about the drugs scandals that have so tarnished the sport. 

Some of the scandals concern unresolved issues involving Brailsford’s Team Sky. However the interviewer was Billy Beane — of Moneyball fame and now involved with Barnsley. 

Baseball executive Beane was too intent to sing his own and Brailsford’s ‘marginal gains’ praises to ask a single relevant question.

Sir Dave Brailsford managed to avoid being asked any tough questions at a business summit

Amazon primed to bid

The Premier League are in gridlock over how their overseas TV rights cash should be distributed following a club vote being adjourned at Wednesday's meeting.

But there would have been a collective rubbing of hands if all those in the PL meeting had been at the Leaders Week conference at Stamford Bridge and heard advertising and media mogul Sir Martin Sorrell forecast a bonanza future for major sports rights suppliers.

Sorrell reckons that the Big Seven global digital players — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Chinese giants Alibaba and Tencent — will all be competing for sports content, pushing the value of Premier League TV rights around the globe even higher.

And of the seven, Sorrell reckons Amazon, who are trying to expand their Amazon Prime subscription streaming service in the UK, are the most likely bidders in the forthcoming Premier League tender.

Sir Martin Sorrell is predicting that major digital players will push for sports content 

It has not been unusual for England footballers to drill the ball at the media pack on purpose during training. 

But to his great credit, Michael Keane made a point of coming into the press room after training to apologise to a photographer whose camera was accidentally hit by a stray medicine ball thrown by Keane.

Michael Keane (centre) apologised to a photographer whose camera was hit 

Kate Tinsley, the new FA independent director, is CEO of the Buildbase Group, who are title sponsors of the FA Vase, thus casting some doubt on how independent she can be. 

Her appointment was approved by Sport England but she will have to recuse herself from sponsorship discussions.