What the pundits & media are saying about us

[DanielCHillier]

Except that he hasn't and we aren't. It's just hubris to suggest so. Being a "big club" does not result from a couple of Champions League campaigns, nor even if we win the Premiership once or twice. It has to do with having a huge worldwide fanbase, a 60k+ stadium, a global "brand" [hate that word] and a history of dominance measured in decades. It also has to do with financial muscle and international marketing tie-ins.

We are in the throes of dealing with the first requisite for becoming a "big club " in the modern sense, which is to develop a big-club-sized stadium. We are also pursuing key global promotional partnerships, e.g., with the NFL, to increase our brand recognition. If we can manage to win a Premiership title or two and to compete in the CL on an every-other-year basis, as opposed to occasionally, then this will attract of millions of fans in other countries and will further increase our profile and our financial clout.

But it will take another decade to achieve, even with a fair wind and on-pitch success. Even if we achieve it, we will not be able to reach the level of Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, because they have too big a head start.

Barking out that "we are a big club" doesn't cut it; it doesn't convince anyone outside the Spurs echo chamber.

I'd say the 4 you mention are in a separate class of "super-clubs".

 

[widmerpool]

But that's against the rules and if it's true so blatant I'd have thought a journalist would have exposed it by now.

Looked at the rules out of interest.


Relevant bits are here:

Examples of related party transactions that require a licensee to demonstrate the estimated fair value of the transaction include:
•Sale of sponsorship rights by a club to a related party;
•Sale of corporate hospitality tickets, and/or use of an executive box, by a
club to a related party; and
•Any transaction with a related party whereby goods or services are
provided to a club.

And here:

Fair value is the amount for which an asset could be exchanged, or a liability settled, between knowledgeable willing parties in an arm’s length transaction. An arrangement or a transaction is deemed to be ‘not transacted on an arm’s length basis’ if it has been entered into on terms more favourable to either party to the arrangement than would have been obtained if there had been no related party relationship.



So yes, you're absolutely right. But hospitality packages are sold against a flexible rate card, with an enormous number of unquantifiable variables, from meeting legendary players to the quality of food and drink. All you'd need is a super-platinum package available, with appropriate collateral and pricing, theoretically open to anyone but in practice only used by Roman. And then the question of "favourability" shouldn't arise.

And I don't see why a journalist would get close to it: after all, the collateral for matchday hospitality is bespoke at the higher end, and the gate receipts aren't broken out to that level of detail.

 

[DogsOfWar]

What about Chelsea's loan of David Luiz to PSG for a ridiculously inflated fee and then bought back for a ridiculously inflated fee, thus making the net quite low. Clearly they were gaming something be it the tax system, laundering, FFP or something else.

I don't know how they hold the investigative journos off...

Apparently they make almost as much on gate receipts as Arsenal despite average ticket prices and attendance being much lower and Arsenal having far more corporate sponsors and boxes and whatnot. How's that possible?

The last Deloitte list has Arsenal's matchday income as £100 million and Chelsea's as £70 million which sounds about right:

http://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/page.../articles/deloitte-football-money-league.html

City's match day income is only just higher than ours which demonstrates just how important the commercial revenue is (especially to them).
PSG's commercial revenue is around 66% of it's income, considerably more than any other side, which is particularly suspicious.
The trouble is the businessmen running these clubs are considerably more intelligent than the respective FA's so FFP is pretty much pointless.

 

[DogsOfWar]

Except that he hasn't and we aren't. It's just hubris to suggest so. Being a "big club" does not result from a couple of Champions League campaigns, nor even if we win the Premiership once or twice. It has to do with having a huge worldwide fanbase, a 60k+ stadium, a global "brand" [hate that word] and a history of dominance measured in decades. It also has to do with financial muscle and international marketing tie-ins.

We are in the throes of dealing with the first requisite for becoming a "big club " in the modern sense, which is to develop a big-club-sized stadium. We are also pursuing key global promotional partnerships, e.g., with the NFL, to increase our brand recognition. If we can manage to win a Premiership title or two and to compete in the CL on an every-other-year basis, as opposed to occasionally, then this will attract of millions of fans in other countries and will further increase our profile and our financial clout.

But it will take another decade to achieve, even with a fair wind and on-pitch success. Even if we achieve it, we will not be able to reach the level of Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, because they have too big a head start.

Barking out that "we are a big club" doesn't cut it; it doesn't convince anyone outside the Spurs echo chamber.

The other problem with football is 'brand loyalty'.

Most fans, once they have settled on a club, support it for life and pass it on to their kids. As a result all those kids who supported Liverpool in the 70's and 80's still do and their fanbase won't really diminish despite a couple of less successful decades.

Any other business, where one 'product' improved drastically over another, would see a huge swing in market share but as football isn't like that our only real opportunities are new markets (as you say the States) or wait 20 years for the new generation of young supporters to accumulate.

 

[spud]

Just been through three pages largely concerned with club revenues and only a couple of relevant entries. Any chance you can spam somewhere else? Thanks.

 

[guiltyparty]

How many NFL games was it to start with?

Do we get all the revenue on those game days or does the NFL get a %?

Still it should give us a few more quid with those sold out games...

Two a season. And don't know

 

[adamsky]

How many NFL games was it to start with?

Do we get all the revenue on those game days or does the NFL get a %?

Still it should give us a few more quid with those sold out games...

It isn't necessarily the actual ticket revenue we get from the NFL games that is important but rather the global exposure it gives the club and the stadium specifically. I imagine the naming rights sponsor will be of far more interest to some very big companies due to those games, even more so were we to get a fully fledged franchise.
It will also have an effect on all sponsorship in the stadium.

 

[am_yisrael_chai]

The last Deloitte list has Arsenal's matchday income as £100 million and Chelsea's as £70 million which sounds about right:

http://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/page.../articles/deloitte-football-money-league.html

City's match day income is only just higher than ours which demonstrates just how important the commercial revenue is (especially to them).
PSG's commercial revenue is around 66% of it's income, considerably more than any other side, which is particularly suspicious.
The trouble is the businessmen running these clubs are considerably more intelligent than the respective FA's so FFP is pretty much pointless.

They aren't clever they are just bent. Both Abu Dhabi and Qatar have enough entities that they can funnel cash through that don't count as related parties e.g. I doubt Eithad counts as related to Sheikh Mansour but as a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family you can bet he drives their sponsorship of City.

 

[npearl4spurs]

Sorry I thought I was walking into the thread about pundits wanking themselves over us. I'll see myself out

 

[Luka Van der Bale]

The whole 'big club' argument is a bit moot. Just depends on your own personal definition. For me, I find the idea that just because a club isn't amongst the elite of United, Bayern, Real and Barca, that club can't be considered 'big' (a pretty unsuperlative word in most other contexts) a bit silly. We have the 11th or 12th highest revenues of any football club in the world. That's enough to define us as big club for me.

 

[StartingPrice]

"We talk about Pep, Jose and Klopp but Pochettino for me is an absolutely brilliant coach, there is no doubt," Neville said on Sky Sports.

"The job he has done at two clubs in the Premier League has been wonderful and he deserves, not being disrespectful to Tottenham, the biggest jobs in the world. He's giving the best dress rehearsals you could possibly wish for."

He may be being generally complimentary about us ATM, but that is mostly about how highly he rates Poch. Being disrespectful is exactly what he is being, whether he realises it or not.

Like United, we are one of the traditional Big Five. Until Fergie won a few trophies we had approx the same number of top level trophies as United. They had more league titles, we had more FA Cups, which were given much higher status back in the day. They had won the European Cup, but we had won three major European trophies, including two UEFA Cups in a period when it was often considered harder to win the UEFA Cup than the European Cup. It's not about exact comparison. It's not about 7 points for a league title, six for an FA Cup win, right let's see who has the most points. It's about having a general parity, being able hold our heads up - and at that time we had approximately the same number of trophies as United and ArseAnal.

Liverpool had just had an epoch of domination, and, at the time, their trophy haul dwarfed United's. Basically, what the likes of Gary Neville are saying is the same as if folk had constantly moaned at United signing Fergie as Liverpool was a much bigger job. Why didn't Fergie mug United off and wait for the Liverpool job...it was much bigger, after all. Fergie should have won a trophy or two at United and then fecked off to Anfield...it was a much bigger job. Would they have liked that? Or would they have thought it was being disrespectful to one of the Big Five who were trying really hard to alter the balance of power?

Just to make the comparison even more apt, Fergie nearly signed for us (his missus didn't want to move sarf), we led the field financially (I believe) at the start of the nineties, hell, even the marketing guru who revolutionized that field at OT was a Spurs fan working at the Lane (who El Tel was stupid enough to get rid of him for one of his Scribe's West cronies). United under Fergie could very easily have been us. If it had been and United where the ones who were trying to catch up now, would United fans and ex players be happy if we kept on mugging them off with this nonsense about how much bigger our club and job is? Or would they think that taking another one of the former Big Five back to a place where they were genuine competitors was a pretty bluddy massive job in itself, actually?

 

[StartingPrice]

Except that he hasn't and we aren't. It's just hubris to suggest so. Being a "big club" does not result from a couple of Champions League campaigns, nor even if we win the Premiership once or twice. It has to do with having a huge worldwide fanbase, a 60k+ stadium, a global "brand" [hate that word] and a history of dominance measured in decades. It also has to do with financial muscle and international marketing tie-ins.

We are in the throes of dealing with the first requisite for becoming a "big club " in the modern sense, which is to develop a big-club-sized stadium. We are also pursuing key global promotional partnerships, e.g., with the NFL, to increase our brand recognition. If we can manage to win a Premiership title or two and to compete in the CL on an every-other-year basis, as opposed to occasionally, then this will attract of millions of fans in other countries and will further increase our profile and our financial clout.

But it will take another decade to achieve, even with a fair wind and on-pitch success. Even if we achieve it, we will not be able to reach the level of Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, because they have too big a head start.

As others have said, it is a bit of a moot point. As said above, we were pretty much level with United when Fergie took them over, and it really could have been us, even down to finances and the same marketing guru, (yeah, I know someone will pop along and say we would still have found a way to feck it up ).

The point is, we are one of the former Big Five trying to make ourselves genuinely competitive again. That is exactly what Fergie took on at United. Would he have been getting a bigger job if he had waited for the Anfield seat to continue their epoch of dominance? Or Highbury, as ArseAnal had been far more recently successful than United? Everton? Or Forest, even...they, too, had been far more successful than United over the last fifteen years? Or was taking on an underachieving fallen giant member of the Big Five to try to make them a successful and, hopefully, dominant, force a bigger job? If you believe that it is the latter, then it is basically what Poch is taking on with us - and therefore he is taking on a Massive job. Arguably more of a massive job than just going to OT to try to keep them winning things immediately by spending lots of money because they would rather that than the building through youth over time that actually gave them success in the first place.

Barking out that "we are a big club" doesn't cut it; it doesn't convince anyone outside the Spurs echo chamber.

Funnily enough, at a time when United were not seen as a patch on Liverpool, Everton, ArseAnal and Us, in terms of being a recently successful club (Forest had probably supplanted them in that regard as part of a real Big Five), the instant Fergie took over at United he repeated incessantly in every interview he gave United are the biggest club in the World. He would fit it in even when it wasn't really remotely close to the topic of conversation. He did it because he wanted to, because he wanted folk to start looking at United in that way, he wanted that buzz about United, intimidation, even. Pretty soon teams weren't rocking up at OT thinking United were a bit of a soft touch. A club where one manager after another had went in with to huge expectations because of their former status, only to watch their job end in a welter of inept performances and humiliating defeats. Sound familiar? Teams started rocking up at OT thinking it was the home of one of the biggest clubs in the World and they would have to be at their very best to get away without a drubbing. Fergie did that with the team on the pitch, and the development of the youth, but even before they were successful he also did it by generating an atmosphere of intimidation which came from many sources, one of which was in creating a zeit geist that United were a Goliath of a club.

You say that barking out that we are a big club doesn't cut it, doesn't convince anyone. But Poch is doing it, frequently, in his interviews. I would imagine he is doing it for a reason and that that reason is likely similar to the reason Fergie repeated that United were the biggest club in the World, whenever and wherever he got the opportunity. Might even be one of the snippets of advice he got from Fergie at Out-For-Lunch-Together-Gate

 

[Lo Amo Speroni]

But that's against the rules and if it's true so blatant I'd have thought a journalist would have exposed it by now.

If I was a journalist I would think twice about exposing Abramovich. Think he might know some tasty people, if you know what I mean

 

[StartingPrice]

Once we have the new stadium there is absolutely no reason our revenues should be below the goons.

In time. May take a while for non-receipt related revenue streams to creep up. And while we may hopefully not have quite the debt burden that the Goons had, we have to envisage a certain amount to repay.

Our hope is that unlike the Goons we keep our young team together and continue adding to it mostly via the yoot set-up, and that that will allow us to continue being competitive.

 

[StartingPrice]

Bit of a shame we've got the international break for all the media and pundits to suddenly start wanking themselves off over us because of the result on Sunday, it was nice to be under the radar.

However we've got a ridiculously tough October/November period coming up when no doubt it'll be impossible for us to maintain positive results in every single game - so get ready for the media to suddenly turn on us and accuse us of "bottling the title before Christmas" etc - which may actually work to our advantage as everyone writes us off again.

We had three games in five days (think we played the Goons at the end of it), and then, shortly after, 3 games in six days (think it was Spammers/Europa/Chelsea), last season. We handled them pretty well, I thought. Hopefully our deeper squad will come through it even better.

So I'm kinda hoping they won't have anything to turn on us about

 

[DogsOfWar]

I think Neville has got it wrong talking about Poch taking on a big job as management is different from playing.

A manager wants complete control to instill their ideas on a club, to create their own culture. At a Barca or Real it is very hard to do this as the manager has to adapt to the club's culture instead.

Poch has the opportunity to create 'his' club here at Spurs and I think he would be a fool to walk away.
He knows the blueprint for the next few years with the stadium, the academy, and increased commercial opportunities so must know he can fulfill his ambitions with us.
I think he's intelligent enough to put the prospect of being a Shankly/Fergie/Wenger above the lure of a job at a big club where he will be just another manager.

 

[thinktank]

"We talk about Pep, Jose and Klopp but Pochettino for me is an absolutely brilliant coach, there is no doubt," Neville said on Sky Sports.

"The job he has done at two clubs in the Premier League has been wonderful and he deserves, not being disrespectful to Tottenham, the biggest jobs in the world. He's giving the best dress rehearsals you could possibly wish for."

He's going to make being spurs manager the biggest job in the world.

 

[chinaman]

He's going to make being spurs manager the biggest job in the world.

And also the hardest act for anyone anywhere to follow.

 

[spud]

Just to make the comparison even more apt, Fergie nearly signed for us (his missus didn't want to move sarf), we led the field financially (I believe) at the start of the nineties, hell, even the marketing guru who revolutionized that field at OT was a Spurs fan working at the Lane (who El Tel was stupid enough to get rid of him for one of his Scribe's West cronies). United under Fergie could very easily have been us.

Almost right. Our marketing was ahead of the field due to one man (Edward Freedman, if I recall correctly). He was promised a bonus (either by Venables or the previous ownership) based upon the commercial department's balance sheet and Sugar didn't pay it. So he pissed off to Manchester and made them into the game's commercial giant instead.

 

[sloth]

Looked at the rules out of interest.


Relevant bits are here:

Examples of related party transactions that require a licensee to demonstrate the estimated fair value of the transaction include:
•Sale of sponsorship rights by a club to a related party;
•Sale of corporate hospitality tickets, and/or use of an executive box, by a
club to a related party; and
•Any transaction with a related party whereby goods or services are
provided to a club.

And here:

Fair value is the amount for which an asset could be exchanged, or a liability settled, between knowledgeable willing parties in an arm’s length transaction. An arrangement or a transaction is deemed to be ‘not transacted on an arm’s length basis’ if it has been entered into on terms more favourable to either party to the arrangement than would have been obtained if there had been no related party relationship.



So yes, you're absolutely right. But hospitality packages are sold against a flexible rate card, with an enormous number of unquantifiable variables, from meeting legendary players to the quality of food and drink. All you'd need is a super-platinum package available, with appropriate collateral and pricing, theoretically open to anyone but in practice only used by Roman. And then the question of "favourability" shouldn't arise.

And I don't see why a journalist would get close to it: after all, the collateral for matchday hospitality is bespoke at the higher end, and the gate receipts aren't broken out to that level of detail.

Well the first thing woulf be to identify the odd amount Chelsea earn. The next would be to ask Chelsea to clarify, the third would ve to ask the FA in respect of FFP to comment, the fourth would be to publish, including unanswered questions, the fifth would be to see what happens next.

A simple respectable story which sheds light on an apparent anomaly.