Arsenal set to lose chief commercial officer to Aston Villa
|Arsenal’s chief commercial officer Tom Fox is close to becoming the new chief executive of Aston Villa.
The American is highly thought of at Emirates Stadium after being an integral dealmaker in setting up the £170million kit deal with Puma last year.
Fox, who has been at Arsenal since 2009, previously held top-level roles at multi-million dollar companies including Pepsi and Nike.
“When I arrived at the club five years ago, we set out a plan to try to grow the commercial revenues of the club, and we’re incredibly pleased with where we are”, Fox told BleacherReport in a recent interview.
“In fact, we’re ahead of where we thought we’d be when we created that plan. From what we understand, our shirt sponsorship deal with Emirates is the second biggest in the game’s history. The kit deal with Puma we announced in January is the largest ever done in the game. So we’re ahead of schedule.”
Fox had huge influence in negotiating deals with Citroën and Indesit while he helped build further partnerships with African and Asian markets.
Aston Villa owner Randy Lerner was at Aston Villa’s Bodyoor Heath training ground on Tuesday where he held advanced talks over a move which will see him become chief executive of the Midlands club, according to the Telegraph.
A decision on who will replace Fox at Arsenal is likely to be imminent and Gooner Talk understands that current Sales and Marketing Director Vinai Venkatesham remains a prime candidate for the job.
On the surface this seems like a very astute appointment by Villa. Whether it signals a takeover for Birmingham’s major club is anyone’s guess. There is so much undeveloped potential at Villa and the opportunity to work on and develop this is clearly too good for Fox to turn down