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Arsenal takes out £120m Bank of England loan

Arsenal has become the second English Premier League football club to take out a loan through the Bank of England’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF), as it continues to deal with the global pandemic’s impact on its finances.

Arsenal said it has met the criteria set by the Bank of England for the CCFF and will take out a short-term £120m (€133.2m/$163m) loan through this facility to partially assist in managing the impact of the revenue losses attributable to the pandemic. The loan will be repayable in May 2021.

Arsenal said: “The CCFF is designed to provide short-term finance at commercial rates during the pandemic to companies that have strong investment ratings and which make significant contributions to the British economy. 

“The CCFF is in addition to the loan provided by our owners Kroenke, Sports & Entertainment that enabled us to refinance the debt on Emirates Stadium in August last year.”

In March 2020, Arsenal reported losses after taxation of £27.1m for the 2018-19 financial year, the club’s first overall loss since 2002. Matchday revenue was said to have accounted for around £96m of total revenue of £394.7m for the year ended May 31, 2019.

Arsenal was one of the few Premier League clubs to be recently allowed to have fans back in the stadium, albeit at a cap of 2,000 and on a short-term basis before the fresh COVID-19 restrictions took hold.

In June, London rival Tottenham Hotspur secured a £175m loan from the Bank of England after conceding that COVID-19 may lead to it registering a revenue loss of more than £200m for the period ending June 2021.

In November, Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy forecast that the club is facing more than £150m in potential lost revenue if its stadium remains closed to fans. Tottenham reported annual losses of £63.9m and Levy admitted that the pandemic “could not have come at a worse time” for the club, which moved into its new stadium in April 2019.

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