ENIC...

[shelfboy68]

It’s taken a long time, but the penny has dropped, the curtain has been pulled back enough

Levy/ENIC are just a smarter, better financed version of Mike Ashley at Newcastle. Ashley knew, like a good property, his Newcastle investment would grow every year in value as long as they held their premier league spot. Every year the eventual buy out from some consortium would keep jumping in value. Only spend enough on the football side to keep that market position.

Levy/ENIC is about spending enough to be top 6. Like Ashley they are waiting for the big money buy out. Sure they have invested in stadium and infrastructure, so they can say to the buyer look, here’s a structure that can house a winning team, here is a structure that could help you do a lot of sportswashing - we ain’t never going to spend on the football side to do that - but imagine what you could do with it.

I think we might see some increased spending on transfers from ENIC if they perceive the football side is declining into mid table. But no one should kid themselves when that happens that they would spend with the objective of winning anything.

the hilarious thing, not so funny for us, is that ENIC’s man Levy is woefully naive on how to run the football side of things

Absolutely spot on mate all about asset building if the club wins something then so be it.

 

[Metalhead]

No doubt - but the point is he still would have had input. He hasn't suddenly handed the reins over

I agree. It's more a case, I would imagine that rather than being involved with directly choosing, it's more a case that providing that the person concerned fitted within the agreed parameters, he was given the ok to go ahead.

 

[glacierSpurs]

Will be praying very often and hard now for a billionaire to appear and buy the club soon.

Meanwhile I will be so supportive of whatever THST says.

 

[yankspurs]

Will be praying very often and hard now for a billionaire to appear and buy the club soon.

Meanwhile I will be so supportive of whatever THST says.

Lewis is a billionaire too. We need a billionaire with Musk or Bezos money that would invest.

 

[wrd]

Got an email from the club saying; your view matters.

The first real questions were what sponsors do I know we have and then asking me to tick a list on what sponsors I think we still have.

Priorities.

Edit; first 14 questions.

Edit the entire questionnaire.

When they asked me to leave comment, I told them I thought they'd be asking why I haven't renewed my membership but no once again they are tone deaf to the current climate of the fans and want to know my feelings on branding despite the fact they're in freefall in terms of their brand image at the moment.

 

[SandroClegane]

Got an email from the club saying; your view matters.

The first real questions were what sponsors do I know we have and then asking me to tick a list on what sponsors I think we still have.

Priorities.

Edit; first 10 questions.

Every company that works with partners in the world does this. It's not Spurs specific. I've gotten these from numerous teams whose sporting events I've attended. People look at Spurs in a very myopic way on this site when ENIC runs pretty similar to most.

 

[topper]

Lewis is a billionaire too. We need a billionaire with Musk or Bezos money that would invest.

He's a billionaire several times over; he simply chooses not to spend it on Spurs unfortunately. I thought he finally 'got it' when it came to supporting the club as he appeared somewhat emotional at the opening game for the new stadium. I expect now that he was in tears after Levy finally 'fessed up to the true cost of the build!

 

[wrd]

Every company that works with partners in the world does this. It's not Spurs specific. I've gotten these from numerous teams whose sporting events I've attended. People look at Spurs in a very myopic way on this site when ENIC runs pretty similar to most.

It's called optics mate, I know you work in this field as every other one of your posts reminds us of that so you have a perception of this sort of thing which is bias towards a focus on that but as simply a consumer of this project I don't and the club should know when they should and shouldn't be sending out questionnaires of this nature.

 

[Bluto Blutarsky]

Got an email from the club saying; your view matters.

The first real questions were what sponsors do I know we have and then asking me to tick a list on what sponsors I think we still have.

Priorities.

Edit; first 14 questions.

I think most of us have gotten that email.

Its actually important to show that you associate certain brands with the club - so that when they are out selling new sponsorships, or stadium naming rights, they can point to the percentage of people who associate the club with a specific brand.


I got it a couple of weeks ago, and assumed it was to help with the naming rights.

 

[SandroClegane]

It's called optics mate, I know you work in this field as every other one of your posts reminds us of that so you have a perception of this sort of thing which is bias towards a focus on that but as simply a consumer of this project I don't and the club should know when they should and shouldn't be sending out questionnaires of this nature.

It's a scheduled email. Why shouldn't the club be sending this out in the offseason? Because SkyItalia reported we were talking to Paulo Fonseca the club should cancel all email communications?

 

[wrd]

I think most of us have gotten that email.

Its actually important to show that you associate certain brands with the club - so that when they are out selling new sponsorships, or stadium naming rights, they can point to the percentage of people who associate the club with a specific brand.


I got it a couple of weeks ago, and assumed it was to help with the naming rights.

Ah I got a reminder today as I ignored it, chose to answer it today.

It's a scheduled email. Why shouldn't the club be sending this out in the offseason? Because SkyItalia reported we were talking to Paulo Fonseca the club should cancel all email communications?

The club is going from one PR disaster to another in recent months, this isn't simply about 1 manager being appointed, I haven't even commented on that since that arose. The PR situation they've produced for themselves in recent months is a situation where their intentions of what matters is being questioned, the club have shown a huge disinterest in asking for the fans opinion on things which we actually care about but choose to send emails regarding branding.

You talk about it being in the "off-season" it's completely irrelevant, they could send it when the season has begun and the fans are actually more involved with the club watching and attending games.

 

[SandroClegane]

Ah I got a reminder today as I ignored it, chose to answer it today.



The club is going from one PR disaster to another in recent months, this isn't simply about 1 manager being appointed, I haven't even commented on that since that arose. The PR situation they've produced for themselves in recent months is a situation where their intentions of what matters is being questioned, the club have shown a huge disinterest in asking for the fans opinion on things which we actually care about but choose to send emails regarding branding.

You talk about it being in the "off-season" it's completely irrelevant, they could send it when the season has begun and the fans are actually more involved with the club watching and attending games.

So if the club did this during the season, after a few losses, would that also not be a good time?

Not to mention, the "PR situation" you're referring to are from ITK (which will always have some sort of bias based on who that person is) and leaks to the Italian press (massively unreliable) and are outside of the club's control.

It's fine to be unhappy with the wild goose chase for manager. But the amount of "ITK" I've seen that is completely wrong about my organization makes me definitely take everything with a grain of salt. And I especially take twitter/press bollocks with an enormous grain of salt because usually they're dead wrong. Very hard for me to believe that there's no money to spend.

 

[wrd]

So if the club did this during the season, after a few losses, would that also not be a good time?

Not to mention, the "PR situation" you're referring to are from ITK (which will always have some sort of bias based on who that person is) and leaks to the Italian press (massively unreliable) and are outside of the club's control.

It's fine to be unhappy with the wild goose chase for manager. But the amount of "ITK" I've seen that is completely wrong about my organization makes me definitely take everything with a grain of salt. And I especially take twitter/press bollocks with an enormous grain of salt because usually they're dead wrong. Very hard for me to believe that there's no money to spend.

The Superleague was an ITK situation was it, sacking Jose before a cup final was ITK was it? releasing a statement saying we learnt from our mistakes and we were going to get back to our traditions only to then go chasing Conte was only from ITK was it? The club saying they were going to put fans first in a statement followed by charging fans the most expensive returning tickets from the pandemic and then putting them in the heavens so not to move their big old branding signs on the lower tiers was ITK was it?

Bad results happen from time to time. The sequence of events that you've decided to ignore have happened in a 2 months period, so yeah I'd say there's a big difference in terms of the optics in terms of what their priorities are certainly hit differently depending on timing.

That's two posts now where you've just decided to make up my position, firstly with your Fonseca comment and now this ITK comment, to say I'm sucked in by the ITK is laughable, I haven't commented on it in 2 weeks. If you wanna debate with me then debate the points I'm making instead of just trying to force my argument into a place that makes it easier for you.

 

[SandroClegane]

The Superleague was an ITK situation was it, sacking Jose before a cup final was ITK was it? releasing a statement saying we learnt from our mistakes and we were going to get back to our traditions only to then go chasing Conte was only from ITK was it? The club saying they were going to put fans first in a statement followed by charging fans the most expensive returning tickets from the pandemic and then putting them in the heavens so not to move their big old branding signs on the lower tiers was ITK was it?

Bad results happen from time to time. The sequence of events that you've decided to ignore have happened in a 2 months period, so yeah I'd say there's a big difference in terms of the optics in terms of what their priorities are certainly hit differently depending on timing.

That's two posts now where you've just decided to make up my position, firstly with your Fonseca comment and now this ITK comment, to say I'm sucked in by the ITK is laughable, I haven't commented on it in 2 weeks. If you wanna debate with me then debate the points I'm making instead of just trying to force my argument into a place that makes it easier for you.

The Super League situation was literally a "join or get forever left behind by the other 5 English clubs situation. IMO Levy's hands were tied and if Leicester/Everton got the invite over us, it would've been negative PR as well.

Conte's another situation where if we didn't chase him, our fans would say "NO AMBITION" even if he didn't fit the project. And despite all the press and ITK it doesn't seem like it was ever remotely close to happening from the start.

Charging $60 for tickets to a brand new stadium when you have limited attendance and are probably losing money from hosting the game anyways isn't bad PR. I'll agree with you about prioritizing sponsorship there. The club definitely thought they could get away with it since it was only one match and it definitely looked bad.

Sorry if you think I'm putting words in your mouth. Not saying you do, but I think people have a very Spurs-myopic world view about the game and the "business" of the sport and don't consider a lot of what happens with other leagues and other teams.

 

[wrd]

The Super League situation was literally a "join or get forever left behind by the other 5 English clubs situation. IMO Levy's hands were tied and if Leicester/Everton got the invite over us, it would've been negative PR as well.

Conte's another situation where if we didn't chase him, our fans would say "NO AMBITION" even if he didn't fit the project. And despite all the press and ITK it doesn't seem like it was ever remotely close to happening from the start.

Charging $60 for tickets to a brand new stadium when you have limited attendance and are probably losing money from hosting the game anyways isn't bad PR. I'll agree with you about prioritizing sponsorship there. The club definitely thought they could get away with it since it was only one match and it definitely looked bad.

Sorry if you think I'm putting words in your mouth. Not saying you do, but I think people have a very Spurs-myopic world view about the game and the "business" of the sport and don't consider a lot of what happens with other leagues and other teams.

I don't agree with that Levy hands were tied, I know that's a view held by many, I personally don't think it was. Again if they were not completely tone deaf or perhaps did some due diligence on the situation with their consumers, their employees then they would have known how bad the situation was going to look and could have scored some huge PR points for staying true to the game. The way they approached it on a business level was a farce, they essentially got the bank to give each club 350 million on the promise they'd be able to make that back with revenue, they had no semblance of a plan as shown by how quickly it fell apart.

I appreciate what you're saying, as I say, your career will lead you to have a different view to me and I understand that but I'm telling you as a consumer of this product because that's how they see me; a consumer, the optics are terrible on this. They need to get the house in order and then we can start thinking about how I feel about brands related to Spurs. My view as a consumer is that none of the companies benefit from being associated with Spurs at the moment. If that puts off stadium sponsors then the club need to have a look at their decision making in recent months for why being associated with Spurs is not as valuable to a brand as it was merely a couple of years ago.

 

[SandroClegane]

I don't agree with that Levy hands were tied, I know that's a view held by many, I personally don't think it was. Again if they were not completely tone deaf or perhaps did some due diligence on the situation with their consumers, their employees then they would have known how bad the situation was going to look and could have scored some huge PR points for staying true to the game. The way they approached it on a business level was a farce, they essentially got the bank to give each club 350 million on the promise they'd be able to make that back with revenue, they had no semblance of a plan as shown by how quickly it fell apart.

I appreciate what you're saying, as I say, your career will lead you to have a different view to me and I understand that but I'm telling you as a consumer of this product because that's how they see me; a consumer, the optics are terrible on this. They need to get the house in order and then we can start thinking about how I feel about brands related to Spurs. My view as a consumer is that none of the companies benefit from being associated with Spurs at the moment. If that puts off stadium sponsors then the club need to have a look at their decision making in recent months for why being associated with Spurs is not as valuable to a brand as it was merely a couple of years ago.

I think if you're a sponsor right now you're looking at multiple things, and it's not super league and the manager search. The most important thing is going to be results on the pitch and player marketability. Not making Champions League/Europa League is a massive hit for sure. In my opinion that's probably the biggest. How far can their brand reach? If Kane leaves, that's another massive hit.

To be honest, even a toxic stadium atmosphere wouldn't do much there. To be honest I could see Europa Conference League games with 10-15k attendance but they're still getting eyeballs around the world.

But no sponsor is going to look at the Super League fiasco or that our manager search has taken 50+ days and we almost got Conte but got Fonseca and pull their support.

Working in the industry and seeing "behind the curtain" has taken some of my original passions as a fan because I see the bad and ugly side of supporter unrest. I saw this exact toxicity with my club a year ago. We fired the manager, there was "no ambition". Then we brought in a guy who got us playing good football, and a bunch players that weren't the biggest names but fought for the team and now the atmosphere around the club has changed greatly.

If there's no player clear out and we go into next season with the same squad then yes, I'll be furious. But I think having a manager with vision who was somewhat of a hot commodity two years ago, and shifting the deadwood will make a difference. And if supporters give Fonseca a chance (admittedly I've watched maybe 30 mins of Roma play) rather than using him as a stick to beat Levy, maybe he'll surprise us?

 

[SecretLemonadeDrinker]

Well, its COVID -- but that is true for everyone. What makes it hurt more for us - is the actual stadium cost, plus the actual revenue loss, including non-football events. And the uncertainty going forward.

I think we also have a cashflow issue, hence the original BOE loan, and subsequent refinancing.

Brought this over from the New Manager thread.....

As I said, the cost of the stadium debt is c. £16m per annum. That isn't what is seriously limiting our capacity to spend on players. It's a comparatively minor cost in the grand scheme of things.

It's clear that the biggest concern is the revenue loss courtesy of COVID. But that affects every other club too. You could say that, because of our stadium's revenue generating potential, we are missing out on more than any other club. But since the stadium is in its infancy (we haven't played a full season with fans there yet), we had barely begun to reap the rewards anyway. We weren't dependent on it.

Meanwhile, we are better off than any other club with regard to player wages - by some distance the biggest cost for any professional club - because we have a far lower wages to revenue ratio than any other club.

Furthermore, as you mention, we also have the £250m from the recent private placement to ward off cashflow concerns. Very few other clubs will be able to arrange a facility of such magnitude, or even close.

So, while we are understandably struggling, I don't buy into the notion that we are struggling more than other clubs. At most, there will be three or four other clubs (you can guess which) that are in a better place, financially, than us currently.

 

[Drink!Drink!]

The Super League situation was literally a "join or get forever left behind by the other 5 English clubs situation. IMO Levy's hands were tied and if Leicester/Everton got the invite over us, it would've been negative PR as well.

But it wasn't. Informed journalists, protagonists in the breakaway as sources, sayin Levy was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the superleague and was encouraging the others to go for it

Even with the gaps in our knowledge about who said what to whom, when......really naive I think to believe Levy was some kind of passive bystander. he was knee deep in the plot to kill football. Forget everything else, this alone means Levy should resign or be sacked

(EDIT: Actually, if anyone has any quotes or evidence to say that at any point Levy argued against the superleague, told the others it was a bad idea, a morally wrong idea, please do share some links. It would be helpful. As I say, I don't believe anything like that exists, because the opposite was true)

 

[sausage]

But it wasn't. Informed journalists, protagonists in the breakaway as sources, sayin Levy was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the superleague and was encouraging the others to go for it

Even with the gaps in our knowledge about who said what to whom, when......really naive I think to believe Levy was some kind of passive bystander. he was knee deep in the plot to kill football. Forget everything else, this alone means Levy should resign or be sacked

(EDIT: Actually, if anyone has any quotes or evidence to say that at any point Levy argued against the superleague, told the others it was a bad idea, a morally wrong idea, please do share some links. It would be helpful. As I say, I don't believe anything like that exists, because the opposite was true)

Do you have any to support the opposite was true? Or is that just a deflection of it?

I say this on the basis of remembering the narrative being that it was the US owners of Liverpool/Utd/Arsenal pushing for it

 

[Drink!Drink!]

Do you have any to support the opposite was true? Or is that just a deflection of it?

I say this on the basis of remembering the narrative being that it was the US owners of Liverpool/Utd/Arsenal pushing for it

Well for starters, the Brighton chairman was quoted on the record as saying Levy told him
“Daniel says this all grew from a feeling that Uefa simply doesn’t listen to us as a League....He believes the big clubs deserve more respect and more money.”

I think the lack of any apology, and being the last English club to announce they were leaving the plot, the last to make a statement, logically suggests Levy was no last-minute participant, and when the non-apology eventually came, it included the same sentiment reported by the Brighton chairman: “We felt it was important that our club participated in the development of a possible new structure".

At no point did Levy/ENIC state or brief anyone that they had been given a take it or leave it offer. Again logically, think can deduce that was because it wasn't a take it or leave it offer. Levy/ENIC were in on the plot.

I am sure other owners in the dirty dozen were also very keen. We will never have a league table of who was the biggest supporter of the plot. But there is no evidence to suggest Levy wasn't a proactive supporter of the plot. It wasn't, as portrayed by some, a surprise "take it or leave it" last minute phone call, that really is a distortion of what happened I would suggest. And needs to be challenged when it continually resurfaces on here.

(I thought I recalled one of the other chairmen, possibly, one of the Spanish ones during the storm saying something to the effect that hey, it wasn't just our idea, that Daniel Levy was calling me saying go for it, but with a quick google I can't find that quote in the gazillion pages returned, so, will accept that as unevidenced)