Tottenham fiscal year financials show Spurs with fourth largest revenue in Premier League

Tottenham Hotspur have announced their largest ever revenue, bringing in £460.7m total during the 2019 fiscal year in a financial disclosure report released today. This represents a substantial £80m increase over revenue from 2018.

The club’s revenue is the fourth largest in the Premier League, behind only Manchester United (£627m), Manchester City (£535m), and Liverpool (£533m). Their revenue is slightly above those of Chelsea (£447m) and Arsenal (£396m) and well above the rest of the Premier League.

These figures require a little bit of context — while they do represent matches in the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, 14 of the 19 home games in this fiscal year were held at Wembley Stadium, meaning the full financial impact of Spurs’ new ground won’t be seen until the 2020 fiscal year. Spurs reported a slight downtick of matchday revenue compared to 2018 (£34.3 vs. £42.6), and slight upticks in sponsorship/hospitality and merchandise revenue.

But the biggest change was due to the run to the Champions League Final in June, which resulted in a prize winnings bump of £108.4m (vs. £62.2m in 2018). That is a huge amount of money and if Spurs do not end up qualifying for Champions League this season (whenever the season finishes) they will unquestionably take a revenue hit next year by missing out.

Naturally, the biggest expense was the new stadium, and the club still maintains a substantial debt of £637m, all of which, the club states, has been turned into long-term bonds with an average maturation date of 23 years.

The end result is that profits are more or less flat from the previous year:

Profit from operations, excluding football trading and before depreciation was £172.7m (2018: £162.5m). Profit for the year after all charges including interest and tax was £68.6m (2018: £113.0m).

It feels a little gauche to speak about the financial state of a football club at a time like this. Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy even admits it in a short statement at the end of the financial release, and says in no uncertain terms that football should be the least of everyone’s concerns right now, but that this release is required by law.

“We are painfully aware that it seems wholly inappropriate to be giving any attention to the prior year’s financial results at a time when so many individuals and businesses face worrying and difficult times. We are however legally required to announce these by 31 March 2020.

“We are all facing uncertain times both at work and in our personal lives. I have spent nearly 20 years growing this Club and there have been many hurdles along the way – none of this magnitude – the COVID-19 pandemic is the most serious of them all.”

I’m hardly a financial genius, and others can speak more eloquently about it than I, but based on these numbers it does appear that Spurs ended the fiscal year in a very healthy financial position overall. There are still a number of big questions coming, not only factoring in the impact of Mauricio Pochettino’s firing, Jose Mourinho’s hiring, the team’s overall performance in competitions, and the lingering economic impact of the coronavirus ahead.

However, these sure do look like very good financial numbers.