There is renewed optimism at Tottenham Hotspur this summer after the appointment of Thomas Frank as head coach and a campaign in the UEFA Champions League to look forward to.
For a club that finished one place above the relegation zone in the Premier League last season with a staggering bad record of 22 defeats, the Europa League triumph may not have been enough to save Ange Postecoglou’s job, but it was enough to salvage this coming season, with Spurs now able to provide Frank with greater financial flexibility in the transfer market thanks to access to Champions League revenues that will be at least £50m but potentially double that.
There is a significant amount of work to be done to reshape the Spurs squad, and Frank will have his own ideas around the kinds of player needed for him to implement the game plan he wants. That requires funds.
The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, opened in 2019, has long been trumpeted as the club’s greatest asset, and is because it absolutely is. The club’s decision to press on with a £1.2bn build while others pondered has meant they completed it pre-pandemic and at a cheaper cost of borrowing. They are ahead of many of their rivals in terms of what they now have, and ‘sweating the asset’, to use a business parlance, is very much part of the plan.
On Monday night, music superstar Beyonce finished the last of a six-night run at Spurs’ stadium, bringing her Cowboy Carter Tour to sell-out crowds. It is the second time that she has performed a series of tour dates at the stadium, and there is a reason for that.
“It’s a really competitive market,” said Donna-Marie Cullen, former executive director at Spurs, speaking at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in London last year, where football.london was present .
“Venues tend to have their own sweet spot. So, Wembley, if you are Taylor Swift you know that you will sell out two nights, so you’ll probably do Wembley. Beyonce probably could’ve done that but she preferred to do five nights, she preferred the more intimate setting that our stadium gives.
“In fact, that turned out to be the highest-grossing concert ever for any female artist. She made £42.5m for five nights at the stadium.
“Beyonce was a bit of a tipping point, actually.
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“The stadium operates a bit of a sweet spot in the market in terms of the size and how you can construct it for concerts, so we do boxing, we do concerts, rugby, NFL, visitor attractions, conferences, and events and we are about to start building a hotel.”
Given what the five-night run in 2023 delivered, Beyonce likely pocketed some £50m plus from the six nights at the stadium this time around.
For Spurs, though, it will have also been a lucrative affair, potentially worth between £15m and £20m for the club when all is said and done.
Out of calendar events are lucrative for clubs who own their stadiums. The process is that promoters will pay an agreed flat fee for use of the stadium to host artists, with the club to be entitled to some of the sale of merchandise, hospitality suites and food and beverage sales.
Spurs earn around £750,000 to £800,000 per matchday from food and beverage, and with six nights of paying customers buying food and drink, and a slice of some merchandise sales, it is a lucrative summer business for Spurs. The total is a rolling figure for each night and calculated at the end of each evening’s performance.
For Spurs, another successful stint for one of the world’s biggest music artists, and others to perform this summer such as Kendrick Lamar, should be instructive as to how the stadium will continue to grow, and how valuable it will be to the club in being able to continue to generate revenue and cash flow during the summer period which, in turn, aids how much they can put to work on the pitch.
There is a gig economy, and Spurs, with a near 63,000 capacity stadium in one of the world’s most famous cities with good, pre-existing transport links and the ability to host 30 non-football events per calendar year, are so far ahead of the Premier League pack that it’s hard to see that gap closed any time in the next decade, even if Manchester United’s 100,000 seater stadium vision comes to reality.
Artists are understood to like the intimacy that Spurs provides despite the size of the arena, not an easy balance to strike, and that means that they are on the hitlist of most major artists when it comes to planning tours.
For Frank, more Beyonce means more money for new additions, and with Champions League money forthcoming this season, there is likely to be a far more bullish approach to the market.
