Tottenham Hotspur's owners have maintained their stance that the north London club is not for sale amid reports that a US consortium has launched a record £4.5billion takeover bid.
A report in The Sun suggested that tech entrepreneur Brooklyn Earick is heading up a consortium that has made an approach to buy the club, just weeks after Spurs owners ENIC rejected two informal approaches to bid for their majority share of the Premier League outfit.
Earick, who failed this year in a bid to acquire Formula E team Maserati, is reportedly fronting a £3.3billion takeover bid from a 12-strong group including NFL and NBA investors, with a further £1.2bn set aside as transfer funds for head coach Thomas Frank. That total package would top Todd Boehly's takeover of Chelsea for £4.25bn in 2022.
However, sources close to the Lewis family, who run Tavistock, the company behind ENIC, told football.london that their stance has not changed and that Tottenham is still not for sale. The family are also believed to have received no bid from Earick's consortium or expression of interest at this point.
ENIC owns 87 per cent of the Lilywhites, but due to the remaining shares being publicly traded, the club is beholden to the UK takeover code. That states that any expression of interest or bid must be lodged with the takeover code panel and made public, which has not been the case at this point.
It remains to be seen whether ENIC's stance would waver if a bid were to actually be made, especially if it was north of the club's valuation.
The current reports come during a period of huge change at Spurs with the Lewis family major players in it all. Executive chairman Daniel Levy left after 24 years at the helm following an internal review pushed through by the family.
Siblings Vivienne and Charles Lewis have been in the directors' box for the recent home matches against Villarreal and Doncaster Rovers in the Champions League and Carabao Cup respectively. Vivienne also accompanied the club on their summer tour to Asia.
Earlier this month an Asian consortium of investors led by Dr Roger Kennedy and Wing-Fai Ng through Firehawk Holdings Limited indicated an informal intention to make an offer for Spurs on the day Levy left his role. Amanda Staveley and PCP International Finance Ltd are also believed to have shown enough interest, without making an actual indication of a forthcoming bid, all of which triggered takeover panel rules on disclosure.
PCP later made it clear that they would not be making an offer and in a statement triggered by the takeover interest, Spurs confirmed at the time that ENIC had "received and unequivocally rejected separate preliminary expressions of interest" to acquire their entire stake in the club.
They stated then: "The board of the club and ENIC confirm that Tottenham Hotspur is not for sale and ENIC has no intention to accept any such offer to acquire its interest in the club."
Spurs CEO Vinai Venkatesham reiterated this month: "There's been a lot of newspaper articles and a lot of media speculation around a takeover, so I can be really clear on this. So 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.
"We made a statement very late last night and a statement I hope was unambiguously clear that Tottenham Hotspur is not for sale."
The report of Earick's approach also mentions a £250m stadium naming rights deal having been lined up by the consortium, although that figure would be at the lower end of such deals unless it is only a relatively short-term contract.
The Staples Center in Los Angeles, the home of the NBA teams the Lakers and Clippers among other sports franchises, became the Crypto.com Arena in 2021 as part of a £565million 20-year naming rights deal. Also in LA, the SoFi Stadium, home to the Rams and Chargers NFL teams, was opened in 2020 with a naming-rights deal worth £504million over 20 years.
With the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium globally known for football and NFL as well as other sporting events and concerts, the expectation was always that any naming rights deal would reflect that status as one of the world's best arenas.