Skip to main content

Stake could be sold in Spurs

Daniel Levy has confirmed he is open to selling a stake in Tottenham Hotspur.  The Tottenham chairman is believed to value the club at about £4 billion and would consider selling up to 25 per cent. At the start of the year he met Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the president of Paris Saint-Germain and chairman of Qatar Sports Investments, and Spurs was subject to interest from the private equity fund MSP Sports Capital, among other interests in recent years.

Levy and his family own a 29.88 per cent stake in Enic, the investment company which owns 86.58 per cent of Tottenham. The remaining 13 per cent is owned by 30,000 small shareholders. 

Heavy financial investment in Newcastle United and Chelsea in recent years has increased the competition that Tottenham face. Spurs posted a net debt of £626 million in the latest company accounts, in part due to the building of a stadium that cost £1 billion. Interest on the debt was £22.2 million in 2021-22, an outlay which will have risen with increases in interest rates over the past year.

When the stadium was being built, Tottenham envisaged that some of the repayments would be paid for by a naming-rights deal in addition to income from hosting rugby matches, NFL games, boxing and music concerts, and a planned karting track underneath the stadium.

Now Levy has suggested that finding a stadium sponsor is not crucial, a year on from talks with Google and previously Uber, FedEx and Amazon. “If we get the right naming-rights partner — and when I say that, I mean somebody who pays the right money in the right sector — then we are willing to consider doing it,” Levy said. “But we’re not as tied to doing it now as perhaps we would have been when we first looked at building the stadium.”

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Threat of financial calamity removed from Baggies

West Bromwich Albion had effectively been in decline ever since the club was sold to a Chinese consortium in August 2016, paying a figure north of £200m to buy former owner Jeremy Peace’s stake. Controlling shareholder Guochuan Lai’s ownership was fairly disastrous for the club, but his unloved tenure finally came to an end after Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel and his father Dr Kiran Patel, acquired an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the parent company of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. This change in ownership was urgently required, due to the numerous financial problems facing West Brom, including growing high-interest debt and serious cash flow concerns, following years of no investment from the former owner. Indeed, West Brom’s auditors had already rung the alarm bell in the 2021/22 accounts when they cast doubt on the club’s ability to continue as a going concern without making player s...
1 comment
Read more