The Political Economy of Football V2

If Tottenham Hotspur are relegated, they will be the wealthiest club to suffer this fate in the Premier League. As a supporter of a Championship club, the chance to visit the iconic Tottenham Hotspur stadium is mouth-watering.     I may be victim of a ‘too big to go down’ fallacy, but I still can’t believe that it will happen.   There is surely enough quality in the squad. Discussing the situation with Spurs fans who are friends, they have agreed with me that it has been as much a problem of structure as agency. What do I mean by that?   First, I think that Spurs have fallen foul of the modern belief that everything is down to the manager and keep changing him is the answer to any problems.    I would add that there is an agency dimension as I do not think that Spurs have chosen well. Second, the stadium is outstanding (a relative who was one of the contractors is full of praise).   It will deliver enhanced revenue streams well into the future....

As they appoint yet another new coach, Tottenham Hotspur’s 2024-25 accounts detail a worst-ever pre-tax loss and a growing need for cash, even amid record revenues. Spurs’ deficit tumbled to £120.6 million ($160 m), a near-£100 m worsening on a season earlier, though the club’s income statement is subject to several quirks not applicable to other Premier League sides. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (THS) generated a huge £57.6m ($76 m) paper depreciation charge, an accounting concept that writes down the value of fixed assets over a deemed lifespan. At the end of June 2025, the club held just £20.4 m ($26.9 m) in liquid cash, a 10-year low and a reduction of nearly £180 m ($237.8 m) in the last two years. That is just a snapshot in time, and there is reason to doubt the efficacy of holding huge amounts of cash without utilising them, but there are wider signals that Spurs are less self-sustaining than they have been at any other time under ENIC’s quarter-century of ownership, even as th...

I have a number of friends who are Spurs fans and I have been telling them for some time, think about structure not agency.   Modern football is obsessed with the manager or coach as if he actually controls the players on the pitch. Tottenham Hotspur have a splendid stadium (a relative who was a contractor is full of praise) but they seem to have forgotten that this is a means to the key objective of success on the pitch. Spurs, as one senior figure recently publicly admitted, are a football club who haven’t focused enough on the football. They’re a name, a brand, a venue, an events company. But not primarily a football team. It’s not Igor Tudor’s fault. You don’t blame the erroneously hired admin manager when the FTSE 100 company goes bankrupt. Spurs are just not a serious enough football club. Well, they’re a serious football club when it comes to aesthetics. Their stunning stadium is one of the finest in Europe, their state-of-the-art training ground is the same, th...

The Daily Mirror was far from complementary about the defeat Tottenham Hotspur suffered at the Cottage on Sunday,    Journos had fun with 'Tottenham Rotspur', 'St. Totteingham Day' and 'Spurs stinker'. Interim coach Igor Tufor tore into his players and said they lacked quality in attack, in taking scoring chances, in the midfield and at the back. I am not a betting man, but if I was I would put money on Spurs staying up and Forest going down.  However, I also think that there are deeper structural problems at Spurs that can't be solved by changing the manager or bringing in some new players in the summer. Tottenham’s commercial success — turbocharged by the likes of Beyoncé, P!nk, Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury in the past — is certainly nothing to be sniffed at. In fact the club’s commercial revenue alone would give them a hefty safety net, given it stood at £276.9million in their latest accounts, which is nearly four times the total revenue of even the rich...

Tottenham Hotspur have frozen their season-ticket prices for next season following consultation with fan groups.   In other words, the cost falls In real terms (Arsenal have increased their prces close to the rate of inflation). The decision is the result of discussions with the club’s Fan Advisory Board and the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust, which began late last year. Spurs did not raise season the price of season or match tickets for the current 2025-26 campaign, but began removing the concession for new senior season ticket holders (for those aged 65 and above) — a decision which resulted in criticism from some fan groups. The club increased season-ticket prices by six per cent for the 2024-25 season, leaving the most affordable adult season ticket at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium priced at £856. Senior supporters who purchased a season ticket for the current campaign did not receive a concession, while existing season ticket holders who become eligible for a...

The New York Times has been looking at what would happen should Tottenham Hotspur be relegated.  I should preface this report by saying: ·       The forthcoming lunar mission will confirm that the moon is indeed made of cheese ·         The Pope will confess that he is not a Catholic ·         Bears will reveal they prefer using a Portaloo to the woods I don’t think Spurs will be relegated, but what would be the implications if the unlikely happened? They are the ninth-wealthiest team in the world game, according to Deloitte, with revenue of €672.6million in 2024-25 — around €88m more than the next-richest, London rivals Chelsea. After reaching the upcoming round of 16 in the Champions League despite their domestic struggles, that number is in line to increase this season. No club in the 34-year Premier League era have recorded more than £200million in single-season revenue and gone down. While their ...

The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust has accused the club of selectively editing the minutes of their February meeting before publication, claiming that references to fan concerns — including “the risk of relegation” and discussion of the club’s “lack of ambition” — were left out. The trust has a memorandum of understanding with the club stating that they should meet twice a year. The latest meeting took place on February 3, eight days before the dismissal of the head coach Thomas Frank, at which four trust board members met with four club representatives, including the chief executive Vinai Venkatesham. The trust has claimed that there were “a number of specific points raised during the meeting which the club did not agree to include in the final published version”. The agreed minutes were published on Monday. In a statement accompanying the publication of the minutes on its website, the trust said: “As a democratic supporters’ organisation elected to represent fans’...

The Financial Times has the last word on the challenges facing Spurs: 'Spurs rank ninth in Deloitte’s list of the world’s richest clubs, with revenues of €673mn, short of Manchester United but ahead of Chelsea. The club’s net transfer spend over five years is about €666mn, according to Transfermarkt, below Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea but higher than Liverpool. The futuristic Tottenham Hotspur Stadium — which could be mistaken for a space ship that has inexplicably landed in N17 — is the second largest club ground in England. But the cavernous bowl served only to amplify the boos that rang out on Tuesday, as defeat to Newcastle United brought Frank’s tenure to an end. Croatian Igor Tudor has reportedly agreed to take over as interim boss until the end of the season. There is one key metric where Tottenham lag behind: wages. Staff costs of £222mn in the 2023-24 season, the latest figures available, were by far the lowest of England’s “Big Six” clubs, and lower than Aston V...

  A few extracts from an article in The Times today by James Gheerbant follow.   As at most football clubs, if things go wrong, its agency not structure and agency means the manager.   However, arguably Spurs face deeper problems than the person in charge.   The new stadium is splendid, but Arsenal took years to recover from the Emirates move and West Ham have never been happy at the London Stadium.   Wenger reckoned that Arsenal lost their soul when they moved. T he new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was supposed to be the final piece of the project to take Spurs from middling London outfit to global super-club, and in financial terms, it has certainly pulled its weight. Tottenham now have the ninth-highest revenue of any club in the world, ahead of Borussia Dortmund, Atletico Madrid and every Italian team. By a system of trays and motors, rails and pulleys, the football pitch can be retracted, enabling the stadium’s lucrative conversion into an ...

Ange Postecoglou has accused Tottenham Hotspur of thinking they are “one of the big boys” but never acting like an ambitious club during his two years in charge.   Postecoglou, 60, said Tottenham are the “antithesis” of their “to dare is to do” club motto, citing a lack of ambition in the transfer market. S purs won the Europa League under Postecoglou but finished 17th in the Premier League last season, losing 22 matches, their most defeats in a league campaign since 1934-35.   Speaking on the  Stick to Football  podcast, Postecoglou said: “Tottenham as a club were saying  ‘we’re one of the big boys’ and the reality is I don’t think they are, in terms of my experience over the last two years. When Arsenal need players, they’ll spend £100million on Declan Rice. I don’t see Tottenham doing that ever.” “When you walk into Tottenham, what you see everywhere is ‘to dare is to do’. It’s everywhere. And yet their actions are almost the antithesis of that, right?” ...

In the least surprising news of the day, Tottenham Hotspur have sacked head coach Thomas Frank.  Spurs are working through a few contingency plans as they look to replace Frank, who leaves the club 16th in the Premier League. Tottenham have won none of their last eight league games and just two from their last 17. They are five points above the relegation zone. Poor performances and results in the Premier League meant the controlling Lewis family seemingly had no other choice but to part ways with the Dane, who has left Tottenham in a genuine relegation battle with 12 games of the season remaining. Nevertheless, I do think there are far deeper structural problems at Spurs than the manager. Frank is well regarded and should find another role.

January has been a difficult month for Tottenham Hotspur, to put it mildly. The Premier League results have been disastrous, with Spurs taking just three points from five games, none against top sides. The defining sound has been booing.   That negativity has corroded Frank’s standing at Spurs over time. What no one knows today is the impact of Wednesday’s triumph on Sunday’s mood. If the last few weeks have taught us anything, it is that the club’s boardroom executives control the head coach’s future, and they have been consistently supportive of Frank since his appointment in June. The hierarchy will soon face more pressure from fans than they have at any point since Daniel Levy’s dismissal in September. That was the Year Zero moment, the sudden rupture when the Lewis family took back control of the club. The old way of doing things, built around Levy, was out. In came a new modern corporate structure. At the heart of it was CEO Vinai Venkatesham, who had arrived ...

It's not often that the editorial in the Financial Times is about football, but their editorial today is well worth reproducing. For all that they say, for fans the manager remains of central and possibly exaggerated importance,   Look at the jeopardy facing Thomas Frank after today's home defeat to West Ham and the boos of fans.  Or consider the article in today's Times in which a Crystal Palace fan effectively blames the board for losing their 'best ever' manager. The Pink 'Un states: 'Since New Year, three of the world’s most famous football clubs — Chelsea, Manchester United and Real Madrid — have sacked their head coach. This is normal for the industry: the average tenure of head coaches across Europe is now about 1.2 years, with most serving less than a season. The sackings illustrate football’s dysfunctionality. They also highlight the passing of football’s “big man” era. If clubs, fans and coaches themselves can adjust to this shift, that may be no b...

The attempt by The Athletic to rank Premier League clubs by the current happiness of their fans can only be intended as a bit of a laugh, although the rankings of Sunderland first, Arsenal second and Chelsea are a temporary third seems reasonable enough. And who are bottom?  Yes, it's the ever demanding and never satisfied fans of Tottenham Hotspur. The Athletic says: 'Whether it’s team-mates arguing at full time, team-mates ignoring the manager, the manager slating the fans, the fans booing the players or the players ignoring the fans, it’s not exactly sunshine, lollipops and rainbows at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium right now. Three home wins in 21 league matches will do that to you. As will charging some of the most expensive prices in the country to watch it.  It really is a shiny stadium, though.' A couple of my friends are Spurs fans and they do their best to keep their spirits up, but there is a great contrast with the mood I remember in the early 1960s.

The replacement of PSR by SCR by the Premier League from 2026/27 may seem to be a highly technical matter: indeed it is.   It needs someone with the forensic skills of the Swiss Ramble to unravel what it all means for the competition and individual clubs.   I recommend subscribing to his Substack page to get the full analysis by the Zurich-based football finance guru.  Even so, I had difficulty in getting my head round some of the complexities, but here are some highlights. First and foremost, PSR and SCR differ in what they measure. PSR evaluates a club’s overall profit by including all revenues and costs, while SCR focuses specifically on on-pitch spending. Under PSR, clubs were assessed based on their financial performance over a rolling 3-year period, whereas the SCR sets clear spending limits for each season Compliance is monitored in-season as well as at the end of the season, allowing for earlier intervention if a club is breaching the rules. This s...

Spurs’ state-of-the-art stadium is the envy of the Premier League and has been widely considered one of the best venues in Europe since it opened in April 2019 — after a three-year build — at a cost of £1.2billion ($1.6bn). The Emirates, now nearly 20 years old, remains a spectacular ground in its own right, and one of the best in England, but it has aged quickly over the past six years due to the competition it faces from the blue-and-white part of north London. Whether it is hosting the biggest music artists, annual NFL matches, boxing events or housing the F1 Drive — an electric go-karting track — under the South Stand, Spurs’ stadium is light years ahead of Arsenal’s home. As part of their agreement with Islington Council, Arsenal can host six non-football events attended by more than 10,000 people per calendar year. Only three of these are allowed to be music concerts. Spurs, on the other hand, can host up to 30 non-football events. That is an increase on the 16 Haringey C...

  The authoritative Swiss Ramble looks at the gap between the ‘Big Six’ and other top flight clubs. They invariably have the financial muscle to ensure that results such as Unitrd and Spurs last season are the exception, rather than the rule, while other less fortunate clubs cannot afford a bad season or two, as shown by Leicester City’s decline since surprisingly winning the league. If we define success as qualifying for Europe, an achievement that has the added benefit of enhancing revenue streams, there is no debate around the success of the Big Six. In the last 15 years, there have been only two occasions when less than five members of the Big Six failed to qualify for European competitions. Indeed, in more than half of those seasons, all six clubs successfully negotiated this hurdle. Moreover, they almost always qualified for the lucrative Champions League. Out of the 63 slots available since 2010/11, all but four of them have gone to the Big Six, the only exceptions b...

Tottenham Hotspur’s owners have pledged to keep pumping money into the club to “deliver success” after announcing a £100million cash injection on Thursday. In a statement, the club said the £100m capital, which was provided by the Lewis family through ENIC, would “further strengthen the club’s financial position and equip the club’s leadership team with additional resources”. The funding is the biggest known cash injection from ENIC since its takeover of Spurs in 2001, although it released £150m worth of capital in May 2022 — with the club only taking up £97.5m. A source close to the Lewis family insisted future funding would be provided following talks with the club’s leadership, telling  The Athletic : “This is initial additional funding. As the club’s management decides what’s needed to deliver success, more money will be available. The Lewis family is committed to backing the club to be successful.” Since Levy’s surprise exit, the family has rejected three approaches fr...

Tottenham Hotspur have announced that they have received and “unequivocally rejected” an expression of interest from a consortium led by Brooklyn Earick. Earick, an American former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was reported to be planning a £4.5billion bid for Tottenham, per The Sun. A source close to the Lewis family described it as “unsolicited and unnecessary interest”. While Tottenham have not received a bid from Earick and his consortium, they confirmed to the London Stock Exchange on Friday morning that they had rejected Earick’s interest, while reiterating that they are not for sale. The consortium is now required under the City Code to either announce a firm intention to make an offer for the company, or announce that it will not, by October 24. The statement says that the Tottenham board is “aware of recent media speculation” and that its majority shareholder ENIC “has received, and unequivocally rejected, an informal expression of interest” in buying the club from Earic...

The nine English clubs involved in European competition — Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Liverpool, Manchester City, Newcastle United, Nottingham Forest and Tottenham Hotspur — must each abide by a different set of financial strictures to their remaining 11 domestic peers this season. Some fans see these rules as a mechanism to protect existing top clubs from challengers.   Financial penalties can be treated as a cost of business by wealthy clubs.   Only points deductions or exclusion from a competition would really hit them. UEFA’s football earnings rule limits clubs to €60million (£51.9m at today’s rate) in losses over a three-year period, albeit that limit can be upped by €10m per year (to a maximum total of €90m across a given assessment period) if clubs meet each of four conditions UEFA deem representative of good financial health. They are: positive equity; a quick ratio — current assets, less stock, divided by current liabilities — of one or above; a...