Usmanov moved into the football arena in August 2007 by acquiring a 14.58-percent stake in the English football team Arsenal. He and his business partner Farhad Moshiri bought the stake in the club owned by former Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein for £75 million. David Dein was appointed as head of their investment vehicle, Red and White Holdings, which became the largest shareholder in the club outside of members of the board of directors.
On 28 September 2007, it was announced that Red and White Holdings had increased its shareholding to 23 percent, making it the second largest shareholder in the club behind Danny Fiszman on 24 percent. On 15 February 2008, he increased it further to over 24 percent, giving him a stake just short of Arsenal non-executive director and major shareholder Danny Fiszman's 24.11 percent. However, there was speculation that Usmanov might already be the club's largest shareholder at 24.2 percent, which he later increased to 25 percent on 16 February 2009.
On 17 September 2007, Usmanov paid more than £20 million for an art collection owned by the late Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, days before it was to be auctioned by Sotheby's in London. He gave all the artwork to the Russian state, where it is housed in the Konstantinovsky Palace near St. Petersburg. Later that same month he purchased the rights to a large collection of Soviet cartoons, which for fifteen years had been owned by Russian-born actor Oleg Vidov, who emigrated to the United States in 1985. After the deal, valued at $5–10 million, Usmanov donated the cartoon collection to a newly formed Russian children's television channel.
On 2 September 2007, Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan referred to Alisher Usmanov's criminal conviction, claiming that Usmanov "was in no sense a political prisoner, but a gangster and racketeer who rightly did six years in jail" and his pardon was the work of Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov on the instructions of Uzbekistani power broker and alleged drug trafficker Gafur Rakhimov. The article was subsequently removed by Murray's web host, allegedly under pressure from Usmanov's legal team, London's Schillings law firm. However, what followed was that Schillings contacted independent blogs and websites warning them to remove any references to Murray's allegations, and any reproduction of the blog posting. UK Indymedia reported that they were one of the sites that had been issued with a take down notice on 10 September 2007 and again on 21 September. On 20 September 2007, Bloggerheads.com, the weblog of Tim Ireland, was taken down for reproducing Murray's article, incidentally causing the loss of other blogs belonging to the MP Boris Johnson and councillor Bob Piper – none of which themselves had reproduced the article.