Front Office Sports

Premier League soccer club Tottenham Hotspur keeps saying it’s not for sale, but suitors keep circling—and industry sources say it’s only a matter of time before a deal gets done.

Spurs majority owner ENIC Sports & Development, which is controlled by the Lewis family trust, has remained steadfast that the club is not on the market. Three “expressions of interest” have been rejected since September—from PCP International Finance, Firehawk Holdings, and a group led by tech entrepreneur Brooklyn Earick (expressions of interest come before formal takeover offers).

A Spurs spokesperson told Front Office Sports Tuesday “we can say on the record the club is not for sale, as we have repeatedly over the last few months.”

But sources aren’t buying that the Spurs cannot be bought.

“Everyone knows damn well they’re for sale,” one European soccer club owner tells FOS.

“Surely she doth protest too much,” says another European soccer club owner, referencing the line from Hamlet.

Last month, Spurs received a nearly $134 million (£100 million) capital infusion from its existing owner, money meant to boost spending power on players, facilities, and more. That investment reflects the “Lewis family’s ongoing commitment to the Club and its future,” the club said in a statement at the time.

Sources speculate that Spurs could simply be waiting for a bid that blows them away. The club has an estimated valuation of $3.3 billion, according to Forbes. The Earick group reportedly made an expression of interest valued at $5.9 billion (£4.5 billion). Spurs, a historically successful English football club that has existed since 1882, is currently in fifth place in the Premier League with a record of 5-3-3. Chelsea, a comparable franchise in terms of history and potential value, sold in 2022 in a deal worth up to £4.25 billion.

Although the team called Earick’s approach “unsolicited,” he made social media posts suggesting otherwise. The value of the other approaches that have been rejected were not clear.

“If you want to maximize the number, say it’s not for sale,” one of the European club owners tells FOS.

Including the two club owners, four total sources who work in European soccer tell FOS a Spurs sale is bound to happen. Two pointed to the fact that longtime owner Joe Lewis—the 88-year-old London-born billionaire—stopped having “significant control” of the club in 2022, when it was transferred to a family trust. The following year, Lewis was charged with insider trading in the U.S., and in April 2024 he was sentenced to three years of probation for providing nonpublic stock tips about his private-equity firm’s portfolio companies to his girlfriend and private-jet pilots.

Several factors make a sale all but inevitable, sources say, including Lewis’s waning influence and the recent departure of Daniel Levy—former Spurs chairman who was one of the most influential people at Spurs for nearly 25 years. Levy and members of his family still own a stake in the club through a roughly 29% interest in ENIC, but one source says it’s common knowledge that he and the Lewis family—including Joe’s adult children, Vivienne and Charles—didn’t see eye to eye.

“I think this was a power play,” the source says. “I would imagine the kids are going to monetize and sell the club.”

Tottenham, which used to be publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange, has been private since 2012. Roughly 13% of the team is still owned by smaller minority owners, who can still trade their shares every two months on a platform called Asset Match. The U.K. City Code on Takeover and Mergers still applies to the club because of those minority shareholders, meaning any formal offer that would impact their interests must be publicly disclosed—although informal expressions of interest or exploratory talks generally do not trigger the same reporting requirements. Any deal would also be subject to Premier League approval.

The Premier League and UEFA declined to comment. The U.K.’s Independent Football Regulator, PCP International Finance, and Earick did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Firehawk Holdings could not immediately be reached.

Daniel Levy has been the most influential person at Tottenham Hotspur for almost 25 years. The chairman transformed the financial fortunes of the soccer club through increased commercial success, built a $1 billion stadium, and firmly established the North London team as one of the English Premier League’s “big six.” It just doesn’t have the silverware to show for it.

For the past 18 months, Spurs have been the focus of interest from new investors. New York–based MSP Sports Capital was linked with a purchase in late 2023 before stepping back, and Levy held talks with Qatar Sports Investments chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi about a potential minority stake in 2024.

Recent months have also seen former Newcastle United co-owners Amanda Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, linked with a takeover move backed by wealthy investors from Qatar.

But Levy doesn’t appear ready to relinquish control of his boyhood club.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported Levy has “stymied” takeover talks. His high valuation of Spurs and his wish to remain in charge of strategy have been major roadblocks.

As the most visible senior figure at the club, Levy is often a lightning rod for criticism toward majority owners ENIC Sports Inc., the firm helmed by London-born billionaire Joe Lewis. The Lewis family holds 70% of the ENIC Sports Inc. investment, with the rest of the 87% held by Levy, the highest-paid club director in the EPL.

While ENIC owns the controlling stake, Levy wields tremendous power from leading the club’s financial turnaround. (Spurs have eclipsed the $3 billion valuation mark by Forbes’s most recent estimate.) The club is now one of the most valuable and high-profile assets in the Tavistock Group, the holding company of which Levy is a board member and where his son Josh serves as co-CEO. (Lewis’s children, Vivienne and Charles, hold positions as managing directors.)

“Daniel Levy earns well at Spurs. As per the most recent accounts, he was taking home more than £6 million a year as well as the shareholding he possesses in the club,” says U.K. football finance expert Kieran Maguire, author of The Price of Football and host of the eponymous podcast.

“But he wants them to be successful on the pitch, and soccer delivers something that is unique, and that is fame and adulation,” says Maguire. “He was heavily involved in futureproofing the club and building the new stadium, which was done when interest rates were phenomenally low. It really was a masterstroke.” (Around 90% of Spurs’ near $860 million debt is at a fixed rate, with a significant amount of that at interest rates of just under 3%.)

Revenue at Spurs has risen by 170% over the last decade, sitting at a little over $670 million as per the recently published Deloitte Football Money League, good for ninth among world soccer teams.

In the four financial years between 2015 and 2019, Spurs made a pretax profit just short of $400 million, the highest in the EPL. While they have failed to post a profit in the four years since, they have seen revenues rise considerably thanks to the new stadium.

Levy secured a lucrative, multiyear deal with the NFL to host annual regular-season games, part of his plan all along with bespoke locker rooms and a retractable surface that changes from soccer pitch to football field. Music is part of the equation, too: Beyoncé will play a six-night run this summer after the success of her five-night 2023 visit to the stadium. Kendrick Lamar and SZA are also slated to perform in July.

But aside from a 2019 Champions League final appearance and a 2017 second-place league finish, the biggest prizes have proved out of reach for Spurs, while the unrest among supporters—and ire toward Levy—has grown, as evidenced by recent protests before the club’s home match with Manchester United on Feb. 16.

The club has the lowest wages-to-revenue ratio percentage of all 20 EPL teams at 42%, something viewed by fans as focusing more on the bottom line than competitive success, while the squad cost less than the other members of the “big six,” namely Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, and Manchester United.

But that focus on business performance has afforded them greater room to invest in the coming years, something that will aid Levy’s efforts at achieving the silverware he craves.

Jordan Gardner, a U.S. investor in European soccer and adviser to those seeking to invest in the space, believes that with the desire to stick around to try to secure competitive success, Levy has little motivation to step aside.

“People underestimate emotional attachment,” Gardner tells Front Office Sports. “If I’m Daniel Levy and I played such a key role in building this business and making it viable, I’m looking for someone to support me rather than show me the door. He’s a strong personality and he’s unlikely to want to do a deal with people with whom he is not aligned.”