Tottenham Hotspur has been the club where everything changes but its owners. For all that managers and players come and go, ENIC has held power for almost a quarter of a century. No Premier League owner has lasted longer.
The front-facing leader had always been Daniel Levy but his sudden removal as the club’s chairman last Thursday has invited instability and expressions of interest from would-be buyers.
The Lewis family, majority shareholders of ENIC, maintain they have no wish to sell but the noise around a fresh start has rarely been louder. The Athletic looks at the key questions.
Who owns Tottenham and how are they structured?
The very same people who have held a controlling stake for over two decades. ENIC Sports Inc own 86.91 per cent of the share capital in Tottenham, with the remainder held by minority investors that typically have their own long-standing ties with the club.
ENIC, meanwhile, has its own shareholder divide. The majority had always been held by Joe Lewis, the London-born billionaire, but a conviction for insider trading in 2023 saw that stake passed on to a discretionary trust set up in the family’s name. Lewis, in theory, would no longer have been able to pass the Premier League’s owners and directors’ test owing to that disqualifying condition.
That change ensures the Lewis family trust now owns 70.12 per cent of ENIC — and with it a controlling stake in Tottenham — while the remaining 29.88 per cent belongs to Levy, a long-standing ally of Lewis and chairman of the club. That, in turn, equates to Levy still holding roughly a 26 per cent stake in Spurs.
ENIC might once have been known as the English National Investment Company but to Tottenham supporters it has long been shorthand for Lewis and Levy. Until last week.
Is the club definitely up for sale?
Take them at their word and it’s a hard, “unequivocal” no. For now, at least.
A statement, published at 11:50pm on Sunday night, made the current stance clear after receiving and rejecting two recent “preliminary expressions of interest” in the club.
Those came from PCP International Finance Limited, fronted by former Newcastle United shareholder Amanda Staveley, and a consortium of investors led by Dr Roger Kennedy and Wing-Fai Ng through Firehawk Holdings Limited. Only the latter group, though, was disclosed on Monday as an “offeror” by the Takeover Panel, who govern the UK Takeover Code that Spurs’ ownership adheres to.
Staveley and Tottenham have often been linked before this. She attended the NFL game between the Chicago Bears and the Jacksonville Jaguars at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in October last year and has been on the hunt for her next challenge since departing Newcastle.
The not-for-sale message was repeated by chief executive Vinai Venkatesham in an interview through club channels yesterday. “The Lewis family are really clear, they see their involvement in Tottenham Hotspur being long-term and they see their involvement continuing through the generations,” he added. “We made a statement very late last night and I hope the statement was unambiguously clear that Tottenham Hotspur is not for sale.”
The complicating factor here is The Athletic understands the shares most likely to be sold are not those of Spurs, but ENIC. The Bahamas-based company is subject to none of the takeover-related strictures Spurs are in the UK; if ENIC shares are sold, that’s rather different from ENIC selling its stake in the club.
In that sense, Spurs’ recent declaration to the market that they aren’t for sale is true — but ENIC could be sold to a new party without contradicting that, while still bringing the club under the ultimate control of someone new.
It’s not an exact science but plenty of experts have given the sums a go. Football Benchmark, run under the umbrella of accounting firm KPMG, estimated Tottenham’s enterprise value to be £3.17billion ($4.3bn) in their most recent annual report, narrowly behind Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal.
The same analysis from Football Benchmark had Spurs down as showing the biggest financial growth of any club during a nine-year period, with their value ballooning by 357 per cent since 2016.
Forbes also run the numbers each year and valued Spurs at £2.6bn in May, again placing them ahead of London rivals Chelsea but just behind Arsenal.
Ultimately, however, Spurs’ value is the number that tempts ENIC, which will have noted the sales of others in recent times to provide a more pertinent yardstick.
Chelsea were sold to Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital for £2.5bn in 2022 and the infrastructure they already have in place would no doubt embolden Tottenham’s owners to seek more when the time comes for chips to be cashed.
A value based upon revenue multiples, as scientific as it tends to get in the football industry, might see Spurs pitched in that £3bn region if it was six times turnover but do not expect ENIC to get near to the £4bn valuation placed upon Manchester United when Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought his minority stake last year if they were to pursue a sale in the short term.
Spurs have won two trophies in 24 years — why are they so expensive?
Silverware isn’t everything. Just ask the Dallas Cowboys, widely considered to be the most valuable franchise in sport and without a Super Bowl title in three decades.
Tottenham, for all their fallow years, are one of the Premier League’s ‘Big Six’ and, as such, a club that carries a certain premium. They are now a mainstay of the top 10 in Deloitte’s Money League, an annual assessment ranking football clubs on revenue, with the most recent returns, for 2023-24, placing Spurs ahead of Chelsea and Borussia Dortmund.
The club have a global fan base and commercial and matchday revenues have soared since they moved into their new 62,000-capacity home, which is the envy of the Premier League and brings added financial guarantees through the hosting of NFL games and high-profile concerts, such as Beyonce and Lady Gaga. Its position in London, a magnet for overseas investment, also accentuates the appeal.
How much does it cost to run?
A fraction of what some of Tottenham’s rivals require. A frugal approach over the last decade has intentionally placed the club at the bottom of the Big Six pile, with wages a clear indicator of their caution.
Tottenham committed just 42 per cent of their £528m turnover on paying players and staff in 2023-24, compared to Chelsea (72 per cent) and Liverpool (63 per cent) in the same year.
Not that it brings a trophy but Tottenham have also long stood as the Premier League’s most profitable club. Since the 2013-14 season, Spurs have filed a cumulative pre-tax profit of £79m, returns that a host of clubs could only dream of.
Have Spurs paid off their £1bn stadium costs and why have they not signed a naming-rights deal?
Timing was everything with Tottenham’s stadium. The construction costs of just over £1bn would likely have been twice as much if built now, while generous interest rates on money borrowed have also worked enormously in the club’s favour.
A refinancing of loans in 2019, just before the Covid-19 pandemic, saw £637m secured at average rates of 2.66 per cenr. Tottenham’s last accounts saw a total of £851m in loans sat on the balance sheet but £770m of that is borrowed at a fixed interest rate.
As The Athletic has explored, the average repayment date of the total debt stack is not until midway through 2042. In other words, a very manageable long-term liability.
It is a point of curiosity — and perhaps contention internally — that Spurs have remained without a naming-rights deal for their home. This is now their seventh full season since moving in April 2019 and that means a lot of money has been left on the table.
Levy told a fans’ Q&A in 2023 that “finding a brand and sector that matches the club’s values is vital” but the search for someone to hit the numbers Tottenham want goes on.
What is the mechanism for an offer being made and accepted?
Tottenham are an unusual case, given that they follow the UK Takeover Code, and events of the last 48 hours would indicate that this will play out very publicly. A snapshot of the process was outlined in the club’s statement, with any prospective buyer of ENIC also obliged to table an offer to acquire the remaining shares in Tottenham Hotspur.
It was added that both PCP and Firehawk had until October 5 to either confirm an intent to make an offer for ENIC’s shares or announce that a deal would not be pursued. Clarity on that front is unlikely to take the four weeks allowed.
The decision over a sale — when, to who and for how much — will ultimately belong to the Lewis family. Vivienne and Charles Lewis, the children of 88-year-old Joe, have been left in positions of power as heads of the trust that owns just over 60 per cent of shares in Tottenham.
It has been made clear that their priority in the post-Levy era will be supporting chief executive Venkatesham in a role that had previously not been filled at Spurs, as well as non-executive chairman Peter Charrington, the former banker and director of ENIC.
Charrington was appointed to the Tottenham board in March by the Lewis family and was credited with delivering the weekend statement on the club’s ownership.
Could Levy’s retention of a 26 per cent stake in Spurs prove a sticking point?
Based on publicly available information: no, not really. Owning more than 25 per cent of the voting rights in a company can be significant, but public filings show Levy’s 26 per cent beneficial ownership in Spurs doesn’t translate into the same in voting rights.
The only two persons deemed to have ‘significant control’ over Spurs are Katie Booth, a trustee of the Lewis family’s trusts, and Peter Charrington, another who is close with the family.
The hidden factor in all of this is what, if any, potential restrictions are in place on the sale of ENIC shares. As detailed above, those are the shares most likely to be sold — rather than shares in Tottenham Hotspur Limited, which are owned by ENIC — and its Bahamas mooring means our understanding of ENIC’s structure and any agreements therein is limited.
It may be that the Levy family trusts have in place mechanisms that give them some control over a sale process. We simply don’t know. In lieu of information to the contrary, though, the assumption is Levy’s ability to block or influence a sale is limited, and has waned further now he’s been moved away from the day-to-day.
Can any member of the public buy shares in Spurs?
Yes, but the process is not as simple as it used to be. Tottenham were the first football club floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1983 but were delisted from the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) by ENIC in 2012 as they looked to secure funding for a stadium rebuild.
A small stake in the club can still be purchased from the club’s minority shareholders who seek to sell through periodic auctions every two months on the online site Asset Match. Shares changing hands are typically in the tens of thousands, a tiny fraction of the 234,811,443 in issue.
Who else might be interested in buying Spurs?
No Premier League club has been under the same ownership for as long as Tottenham and the club’s transformation since the turn of the century has created regular conjecture over how the ENIC era ends.
Tottenham invited that on themselves when publishing their 2022-23 accounts in April 2024, with an accompanying statement from Levy, then chairman, about the club’s future.
“To capitalise on our long-term potential, to continue to invest in the teams and undertake future capital projects, the club requires a significant increase in its equity base,” the statement read.
“The board and its advisors, Rothschild & Co, are in discussions with potential investors. Any recommended investment proposal would require the support of the club’s shareholders.”
That search for external investment did not yield any change to the club’s shareholding but served as an acceptance that ENIC were considering options to shed a minority stake.
The list of names to have previously been linked with Tottenham is long and once included Boehly, before his Chelsea takeover, Singaporean investor Forrest Li and Qatar Sports Investment, owners of PSG. Several major North American sport investors believe Spurs are now available and are considering their options.
None, though, reached the point where they were named in a club statement. That, alone, makes PCP and Firehawk a very different case.
How long would any takeover take to complete?
Another imponderable. The Chelsea takeover, hurried along by the sanctions placed upon previous owner Roman Abramovich, was concluded less than a month after it was confirmed that the offer of Boehly and Clearlake had been accepted but the process had spanned six weeks before that point.
Newcastle’s takeover, meanwhile, took almost 18 months owing to the hurdles faced by Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), who eventually signed off on a deal to buy out Mike Ashley.
Do not expect any sale of Tottenham to take so long but if you take ENIC’s statement at face value, it is a question that does not require an answer.
Additional reporting: Matt Slater
(Top photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)