SPURS FACING £150M LOSS
SPURS chairman Daniel Levy fears the club’s revenue could fall by £150million if fans cannot return to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this season.
The club released their financial figures for the year ending June 30 and recorded an overall loss of £63.9m, a stark contrast to the £68.6m profit in 2019.
Spurs also saw their revenues fall by £58.3m — from £460.7m to £402.4m — a figure Levy fears could almost treble. However, this was partly due to a shorter Champions League campaign and the season extending beyond June 30, which pushed some money-making opportunities into the next financial year. Only a fraction of Covid’s financial impact has been revealed in Spurs’ latest results as football’s suspension only impacted the final three and a half months of the last financial year. They borrowed £175m from the Bank of England to soften the blow of their anticipated losses and Levy said: ‘Our estimate of the potential loss of revenue for the current financial year, should the stadium remain closed to fans, is in excess of £150m.
‘Clearly this would be an irrecoverable loss of income.’
Having just built their £1.2billion home, Levy said the pandemic ‘could not have come at a worse time’. He added: ‘The 2020-21 season has so far seen no fans at games and this is compounded by a loss of third-party events such as American football games, concerts, the closure of stores and visitor attractions.’ Encouragingly for Spurs, though, their results also show the earning potential of their new 62,000-seater, state-of-the-art stadium.
Despite only hosting 14 of their 19 home games with a crowd, Spurs’ matchday revenue rose £17.7m to £81.9m, while commercial revenues connected to their ground climbed £26.3m to £161.5m. Understandably, Spurs have played a key role in the push for fans to be allowed back into stadiums and they will have been boosted by yesterday’s tentative move by the British Government to reintroduce limited crowds.
Levy has been part of the Premier League’s advisory group working with Britain’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on the subject.
Spurs have been trialling groundbreaking technology at their training ground that can produce instant Covid-19 test results. They have also been among the clubs to host private, socially-distanced screenings of matches in their corporate areas. Levy said: ‘We have spent the past months preparing our stadium, testing our digital ticketing process and registering ID validation for fans.
‘Premier League clubs are entirely capable, similar to the experience in several other countries, of responsibly delivering outdoor events with social distancing, exemplary hygiene standards and testing capabilities, operating in some of the most technologically advanced venues in the world.’