Skip to main content

The saga of Spurs owners

Alan Sugar acquired Tottenham Hotspur in 1991.  He was born in a council house in east London, left school at 16 and sold car aerials out of a van. He called that business Amstrad, as in Alan Michael Sugar Trading. By the mid-1980s, Amstrad was listed on the London Stock Exchange and Sugar had moved on to a full range of consumer electronics. In 1991, he beat media baron and infamous fraudster Robert Maxwell in a takeover battle for Spurs.

Sugar’s time in charge is best remembered for his rows with managers, flashy signings and observation that money goes through clubs like prune juice, “in one end and out the other”. But he was instrumental in making sure Sky Sports got the media rights to the “new” league, which was handy as Amstrad made satellite dishes.

In 2001, he sold a chunk of Spurs to British investment firm ENIC  with the rest of his shares going in the same direction six years later.

They were the first club to test their worth on the stock market, are also still owned by English investors but their ownership structure is complicated.

British investment firm ENIC owns almost 87 per cent, with the rest shared between 30,000 fans, most of whom will have had the shares in their families for decades.

ENIC’s stake is split 70/30 between the family trust of Joe Lewis, another self-made man from east London, and his protege Daniel Levy. Lewis — 87 and worth more than £5billion, according to The Sunday Times — used to own the stake himself but a combination of his age and recent legal difficulties appear to have persuaded him and his family to conduct some sensible estate management. Meanwhile, Lewis’ children seem to have come to the same conclusion as so many other club chairmen’s children: maybe it is time to do something else with the family fortune.

Whether the 62-year-old Levy, one of the best-paid executives in football, feels the same is a topic of much debate in merger and acquisition circles. Rothschild is testing the market on ENIC’s behalf, so we shall see, but even Levy knows Spurs need a leg up if they are to retain their invites to the big events – and stop being ‘Spursy’ to the irritation of their fans.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Gold standard ground boosts Tottenham's income

The gold standard in European football grounds is the Tottenham Hotspur stadium in north London, a £1bn construction project completed in 2019. Its impact on the club’s finances has become increasingly clear as the effects of the pandemic have faded. Previously, the average fan would spend less than £2 inside the ground on a typical match day, but now that figure is about £16, thanks to new facilities including the longest bar in Europe and an on-site microbrewery. Capacity has gone up from 36,000 at the club’s previous home of White Hart Lane to 62,000.  The new stadium — built on land adjacent to White Hart Lane — has opened the door to a broad range of other events that have helped to push commercial income up from €117mn in 2018 to €215mn in 2022. Last year, Tottenham hosted US singer Beyoncé for five nights on her global Renaissance tour, two NFL matches, as well as rugby games and heavyweight boxing bouts.  Money brought in from football has gone up too. Match day ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spurs to sell minority stake

Tottenham Hotspur is in talks to sell a minority stake in a deal that could value it at up to £3.75 billion and pave the way for Joe Lewis and his family to sever ties with the Premier League football club. Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy is seeking an investment that values the club at between £3.5 billion and £3.75 billion, including debt. While the terms of any deal have not been finalised, City sources expect Spurs to sell about 10 per cent. The club is being advised by bankers from Rothschild on the sale. Tottenham wants to raise fresh capital for new player signings and to help fund the development of an academy for its women’s team, as well as a 30-storey hotel next to its north London stadium. The financier Amanda Staveley, who brokered the deal for Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to take over Newcastle United, is understood to be among the parties to have expressed an interest in Tottenham. Staveley’s fund, PCP Capital Partners, has raised about £500 million to ...
Post a Comment
Read more