I wasn’t going to write about this. I didn’t want to. I still don’t. But circumstances, specifically a genuine statement from Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, have kind of forced my hand here here and now I feel like this needs to be addressed on one of the most prominent Spurs blogs on the internet.
So, fine. You win. Let’s talk about Brooklyn Earick.
Last night the Sun reported that a consortium of investors had made a “stunning” offer to purchase Tottenham Hotspur for a total package worth a reported £4.5b. Even that figure is a little suspicious — the bid for the club itself was (and I use the past tense here deliberately, we’ll get to that) £3.3b, with an additional £1.2b allocated for “the player budget.” There is also, as part of the bid, a £25om stadium sponsorship deal, with the sponsor not listed, and all of which is put together in a plan Earick calls “Tottenham 3.0.”
The consortium is led by Brooklyn Earick, whom the Sun calls a “tech entrepeneur,” but his background is uhhhhhh a fair bit more colorful than that. Earick, born in Ohio, is a “former DJ” who then spent some time as an intern at NASA in the small spacecraft division. Notably, I’m not able to find any suggestions that Earick’s time at NASA ever went beyond the internship, but he used that experience to shift into tech, where he was involved in the development of apps “Phoodie,” a social media app for foodies, and “Littlstar,” a streaming app now called “rad.”, which near as I can tell is a YouTube clone that has a premium service which you can subscribe to by purchasing an NFT with Etherium. He reportedly made his money in tech investments, notably NFTs, and founded Redacted RnD, a tech, entertainment, and sports media company which describes itself as “a thought leader in blockchain innovation and digital assets,” and Algorith Capital, an investment fund.
You really, really need to check out his Instagram. If “tech bro” had a pictorial definition, it would be this guy’s social media.
The Sun report has a quote from someone, unknown, inside Earick’s orbit who had this to say about the Spurs bid:
“Brooklyn and his team think everything is in place at Tottenham already. Spurs has a world class stadium and training ground, the infrastructure is all in place. But with the investment they are ready to make, it will be the final step to turn the club into winners on the pitch as well.”
Now look, someone could probably put out a decent argument that Earick’s bid for Tottenham Hotspur was genuine and earnest, and that, like Todd Boehly’s consortium at Chelsea, he could bring a fresh and transformative approach to leadership, effectively taking Spurs into its next successful era.
I just wouldn’t believe you. Here’s why.
For starters, consortium or no consortium, there is precisely zero evidence that the Earick bid is backed by enough actual capital to make a purchase bid even remotely feasible. Especially notable is that Earick is the only consortium member worth noting by the Sun in their report, though it makes an offhand nod towards unnamed “NBA and NFL investors,” a phrase that can literally mean anything. Earick’s actual net worth is, to put it both mildly and generously, difficult to pin down, but there doesn’t appear to be anything actually there. I’m sure he’s rich. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence he’s “buy-Tottenham-Hotspur-rich.”
And Earick also has priors — in March, Earick was apparently close to purchasing a Maserati MSG-owned Formula E team, only for the entire thing to collapse like a house of cards at the last minute despite Earick being described as “Maserati MSG Chairman and CEO” in the days leading up to the deal’s completion. The reasons for the deal’s collapse is delightfully vague.
The transaction is believed to have been dependent on certain criteria being met by the proposed new owner this month.
However, these obligations are believed to have not been met, meaning that the deal has not gone through. A consequent extrication from the takeover plan is now being executed.
The Race understands that part of Earick’s plan was to introduce some celebrity music industry personalities to the team.
It is also notable that Earick’s ACTUAL (proposed) bid of £3.3b is precisely the amount of money that Spurs were said to be soliciting this past summer when they were looking for minority investment (Spurs valued £3.3b as 10% of total club shares), and that Earick’s consortium interest comes immediately after the club made it crystal clear that it was not for sale. So the proposed bid is not only designed to be rejected, but also not even close to the amount needed to actually purchase a controlling stake in the club.
All of this brings me to a couple of pretty obvious conclusions: This is not a serious person, and this is not a serious bid.
The good news is that Tottenham Hotspur agrees with me. The club have made the extraordinary step of making a public statement categorically rejecting the interest from Earick’s consortium one day after this news broke, even though they never actually submitted a bid – only registered interest.
“The Board of Tottenham Hotspur Limited is aware of recent media speculation and confirms that its majority shareholder, ENIC Sports & Developments Holdings Ltd, has received, and unequivocally rejected, an informal expression of interest in relation to a proposal to acquire the entire issued, and to be issued, share capital of the Club from a consortium led by Mr Brooklyn Earick.
”The Board of the Club and ENIC reconfirm that Tottenham Hotspur is not for sale and ENIC is not looking to sell its stake in the Club.”
Moreover, the Lewis Family went one step further, making a direct statement about the Earick interest, and it’s delicious.
“This unsolicited and unnecessary interest does nothing to change the family’s resolve and commitment to do whatever it takes to drive success on the pitch. The club is not for sale.”
These are extraordinary statements, as Spurs are rejecting an obviously risible bid without actually any due diligence, because apparently none is needed. That said, Earick has managed to get the ninth richest football club in the world to mention him by name in a press release rejecting an unserious offer to purchase the club, and in certain corners of business that’s really all you need to call… whatever it is Earick just did a “win.”
I don’t know what kind of a person Brooklyn Earick is. I don’t know him, I don’t especially want to know him, but I certainly know his TYPE, and my opinion of that type isn’t very high. I think it’s pretty clear that Earick did not make a serious offer to purchase Tottenham Hotspur, did not expect his interest to be welcomed or his (future) bid accepted, and that he wouldn’t have had the first idea of how to actually run a football club if by some miracle he did actually end up succeeding. Nothing in his background or publicly available history makes me think that this is the kind of person who would not a) suddenly run out of money because reasons, and/or b) lose total interest in the club as soon as the next shiny object came into his field of view.
What I can surmise, however, is that this approach will do a lot to raise his public profile, which is I would hazard the entire point of the enterprise. As a football club bid, Earick’s approach is garbage. It’s not even worth talking about, and I’ve just spent 1300 words writing about why that’s the case. As a name-recognition PR stunt, however, it’s pretty impressive. Put it another way, I wouldn’t trust this guy to run Fyre Fest, much less the 9th richest club in world football, but I bet he’s going to parlay this into any number of future investment possibilities involving dumb rich people who will recognize his name as “the guy who tried to buy Tottenham.”
Tottenham Hotspur will be sold, eventually. Nobody knows when that will actually happen. The Lewis Family Trust is speaking of their ownership in terms of generations, not in terms of years, so it’s quite possible that sale may not be for a very, very long time. But the world of finance moves quickly, and who knows what will happen in the future; these kinds of stories will never fully go away and we can look forward to seeing them pop up again and again in the future.
But I think I can safely put this particular story to bed — Brooklyn Earick is not going to be the next majority owner of Tottenham Hotspur, and never was. That’s just fine with me.