For Tottenham Hotspur, finding ways to keep growing revenues to keep pace with the other five members of the so-called ‘big six’ has been an ongoing challenge.
The move from White Hart Lane to the world-class Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2019 was transformational to the club’s revenue streams once the impact of the pandemic and empty stadiums was navigated.
Matchday revenues grew from £45m for the last season at White Hart Lane in 2016/17, to £106m for the most recent set of accounts for 2023/24. For the previous campaign, with additional home games, a high watermark of £118m was seen. Commercial revenue also grew significantly, rising from £76m in 2017 to £255m for 2024, an increase of 236 per cent over the seven years.
Much of that growth was seen from moving into their 62,850-seater home. The club, then under the stewardship of former executive chairman Daniel Levy, struck major contracts with the NFL to host two regular season games per year, as well as leveraging the location and transport links for the venue to deliver major music artists for concerts, such as multiple nights performed across two tours by Beyonce, as well as showpiece sporting events away from football.
Through the entire journey from White Hart Lane to their new home, Tottenham have had a consistent and prominent front-of-shirt partner in global insurance giant AIA, who first partnered with the club for the start of the 2014/15 season when they took over from computer firm HP.
This past week it was announced that AIA, while packaged as the firm ‘extending’ their deal as a partner of the football club, would actually be exiting as the club’s main front-of-shirt partner from the end of the 2026/27 season, instead downgrading the level of the deal, which had been worth around £40m per season, to become the club’s official training kit partner. AIA will continue to have visibility around the stadium via LED advertising boards.
For Spurs, the work has already started with regards to what comes next, with sources telling GIVEMESPORT that the club’s commercial team have already started receiving expressions of interest and sounding out multiple potential interested parties across a variety of sectors to ensure that they have a rounded view of what they can reasonably expect to receive for the next deal, which will undoubtedly be a club-record sum for the most valuable piece of sponsorship inventory that the football club has away from stadium naming rights, something which has been an unresolved issue for Tottenham for the past six years.
Having had plenty of interest from big business when it came to the naming rights, Levy opted against entering into an agreement, and with some good reason. No brand had been willing to match what Spurs had wanted for the rights, and given that these deals are often struck on a long-term basis of 10 years or more, by using the American market as an example, there wasn’t the appetite to be tied for something long-term if the valuation hadn’t been met.
The first set of naming rights for new stadiums are the most important. It is where familiarisation starts and where fans become connected with the brand and the name, something that can often last beyond the deal itself.
Levy also saw value in the stadium being known as Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, especially given that it had international exposure via the NFL games being played at the arena. The view was that in having the name above the door for concerts and other non-football events, it gave the club significant brand exposure.
But what might this have to do with the front-of-shirt naming rights for Spurs from 2027, and how might it allow them to maximise the opportunity that they have to further close the revenue gap that exists between themselves and the likes of Liverpool and Manchester City?
Spurs Have Chance to Reshape Commercial Landscape
The departure of AIA presents Tottenham with a rare strategic opportunity to reshape their commercial landscape from 2027 onwards. For prospective partners, the club can offer a powerful dual proposition: alignment across both the front-of-shirt sponsorship and stadium naming rights.
This convergence unlocks exceptional brand visibility and long-term value, allowing sponsors to embed themselves into the very identity of the club. It’s a model that has delivered outsized impact for Etihad Airways at Manchester City and Spotify at FC Barcelona - where unified deals have elevated brand presence far beyond traditional sponsorship. Spurs now stand poised to offer something similarly transformative.
Manchester City’s deal with Etihad Airways is reportedly worth up to £1bn over its full term, with annual values estimated around £60m to £65m. Barcelona’s Spotify partnership, signed in 2022, includes shirt sponsorship for both the men’s and women’s teams, training kit, and stadium naming rights, and is valued at €280m over four years—roughly €70m per season.
The Barca deal was struck during a period of economic turmoil for the club coming out of the pandemic, one that meant the leverage that they should have had just wasn’t there. The value was also impacted by the fact that Barca didn’t have strong data on their own fans, something that is now extraordinarily valuable to would-be partners, especially those selling a subscription service like Spotify do.
For Tottenham, conservative benchmarking would suggest £45m to £50m per year based on the value of the last AIA deal, which was last extended back in 2019, the same year the north Londoners moved into their current home.
According to industry publication ‘The Sponsor’, who assessed fair market value of front-of-shirt deals earlier this year, Spurs’ deal was undervalued to the tune of £9.1m, meaning that they felt it could have been closer to the £50m mark, which is where Liverpool’s deal with Standard Chartered sat after their 2022 renewal. According to the same analysis, only Tottenham and Liverpool had deals that were undervalued for 2025, with the rest overvalued, in the case of Manchester United by as much as £9m.
Given what has been achieved in the market by Manchester United and Liverpool over the last five years, there is a likelihood that even just a front-of-shirt deal could be worth £60m to £70m and achieved if the right partner was found for the long-term, and that could rise still if stadium rights were also part of the package.
Spurs’ London location, world-class stadium, and growing international profile offer strong leverage going to market, but they will also need to improve from a competitive aspect, with major brands wanting to have Champions League exposure on a regular basis.