Tottenham are struggling for survival in the Premier League.
Tottenham are a club that have spent years under Daniel Levy’s tutelage to position themselves as one of the most financially operated clubs in the English top tier and Europe. It was quite something that the former club chairman strived for while he was still in charge of proceedings at N17.
But the latest figures that the club have published since Levy left feel less like progress and more like a sign of warning that something behind the scenes has not quite aligned just yet.
While Tottenham have seen their revenue climb yet again to another high, that is only half the story.
Borson questions Tottenham finances
That £565m revenue looks strong; it shows how the club have again managed to improve their matchday income. But when you start scratching a bit, you find out that the club is operating at a £95m pre-tax loss with a wage bill sitting at £256 million.
But while all of that is okay, there has been quite a rise in the ledger of “other expenses”, which has gone up to a massive £202 million. It is a number that was described as “extraordinary” by finance expert Stefan Borson.
And this is where the real concern starts for Tottenham. Now that number does not quite add up. Let me clarify, it is not only about the amount of money involved but also about lack of clarity around it.
Speaking exclusively to Football Insider, Borson said:
“The concerning thing is the size of the cost base outside of football now,” said Borson.
“There’s a £202m charge for other expenses, which is extraordinary. It’s very hard to understand. It’s gone up massively versus last year. It’s up from £159m to £202m.
“They’ve got a huge number of non-football events, and they do spend a lot of money generally on developing the stadium and all that sort of stuff. But it shouldn’t all be in operating expenses.”
“It’s very strange that it’s so big.
“It does mean that a lot of the revenue that’s coming in at the top for all of these non-football events is just going straight out in cost and, therefore, is not actually generating huge amounts of profit.
“In which case you’re kind of like, ‘Well, what’s the point?’, so there are some concerns about the financial performance of the club.”
Where is the money going?
While you’d expect that to pertain to something like operational costs that are tied to the stadium and non-footballing events that happen at the stadium and a bit of infrastructure. But those are the things that only attain expenses to some degree; all are expected to some degree.
This is a stadium made in a state-of-the-art manner to host NFL games, the biggest concerts in the country and other large-scale events. All of that is designed to create a revenue stream that no rival club can simply match. And in terms of top-line income, that is happening (as we see in the revenue figure).
But then (as Borson also notes), if that incoming cash flow is being swallowed by operational costs, then the question becomes unavoidable. What is the actual profit?