English Premier League soccer team Arsenal has signed a shirt-sponsorship deal with Rwanda.
Visit Rwanda
Long-serving manager Arsene Wenger left the club this month and was replaced on Wednesday by Spaniard Unai Emery, former coach of Paris Saint-Germain. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is an Arsenal fan and had criticized Wenger for the team’s lack of success in the past decade.
While Arsenal is one of Europe’s most decorated teams, with 13 top-flight league titles in England, it hasn’t won one since 2004.
Arsenal, which didn’t announce financial details of the deal with the Rwanda Development Board, said in a statement that its shirt is viewed 35 million times a day globally. Emirates, the world’s biggest long-haul airline, pays $40 million a season to be its main shirt sponsor in a deal that expires next year, according to U.K. newspaper the Mirror.
Rwanda had 1.3 million visitors in 2017 and 94,000 tourists visited the three national parks of Nyungwe, Akagera and Volcanoes. Tourism has generated 90,000 jobs and is Rwanda’s largest foreign exchange earner. Gorillas are among the main attractions, with tourists often paying $1,500 each for a license to see the endangered animals.
Source Bloomberg
