Tottenham finances explained as worrying £300m trend shows need for improvement

For Tottenham Hotspur this Premier League season has been one of struggle under head coach Ange Postecoglou.

Sitting in 14th position, while hit by a spate of injuries during the season, the performances have fallen below what fans expect and the lift-off that supporters might have hoped to see by now through the club’s world-class stadium still hasn’t materialised.

for the 2023/24 accounting year, a period in which the club finished fifth in the Premier League and qualified for the UEFA Europa League.

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The headline figures were that the club made a pre-tax loss of £26 million, down from the £94.7m pre-tax loss that was seen in the 2022/23 period.

Total revenue for the year decreased by 4 per cent to £528.2m, down from £549.6m in 2023, while match receipts amounted to £105.8m, down from £117.6m due to nine fewer home games than prior year.

Other impactful areas included UEFA prize money sitting at £1.3m a steep decline from the £56.2m earned in 2023 when the club reached the last 16 of the Champions League.

There was also a significant bump in terms of the broadcast money received, with the new Premier League TV deal and a higher finish in the league compared to 2022/23 meaning that the club brought in £165.9m against a figure of £148.1m for 2023.

The losses being reduced 73 per cent year-on-year is, on the face of it, a significant positive in these days where compliance with the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) is a major concern for many clubs in English football’s top flight.

But looking at some of the trends within the accounts, and what is to be expected for the rest of this current season with the Spurs financial year for 2024/25 running until June 30, suggests that there is a major risk of things looking worse before they get better. That may be impactful when it comes to how willing the club are to invest in the market in the summer, especially when considering that the future of Postecoglou remains uncertain and any exit for the Aussie would result in a multi-million pound severance package.

The profit and loss column was significantly impacted by the player trading for Spurs in 2023/24. The sale of Harry Kane to Bayern Munich, with Kane having held no book value at Spurs due to him being a product of the club's academy, represented pure profit, allowing the club to book all of the guaranteed fee, helping them jump from £16m in player trading profit in 2023 to £82m in 2024.

That figure massively skews what Spurs have managed to achieve in terms of player trading in the last five accounting years, with the club having only made a combined profit on the disposal of player registrations of £80m in the preceding four years before Kane's sale. That makes them the sixth-worst in the Premier League when it comes to player trading profit.

When you consider how Chelsea have been able to invest in the squad heavily due to hugely successful player trading, to the tune of £417m in the five years up to 2022/23, and with Spurs being by some way the worst performer of the so-called 'big six' in that area, the inability to trade effectively has contributed to a trend of loss-making seasons, and points to the managerial tumult behind the scenes during that period and a lack of a working transfer strategy.

The long-held notion has been that Spurs are a profitable football club. Indeed, the club made a profit every year between 2015 and 2019, with cumulative profits of £328m. Since then, however, there have been five years of losses that have amounted to a combined £300m. The net profit for the last decade has been £28m, and no profitable season has been posted since the club moved to their new stadium.

Of course, the stadium built in 2019 will be a the main reason Spurs have hope for future growth but, with the significant debt attached albeit at far lower rates of borrowing that we currently see today, it has an impact on the balance sheet. The flip-side is that Spurs could not have raised matchday revenues in the way that they have, up from £41m in 2015 to a high of £118m in 2023, nor could they have seen commercial revenue increase from the £60m in 2015 to £255m for 2024.

But in order to stop the loss-making seasons continuing, the club has to improve both its player trading strategy, but also and most crucially, has to get back to being a regular competitor in the Champions League, especially given that it is now more lucrative than ever following the revamping of the competition to a league format for this season, adding an extra two games.

Spurs' North London rivals Arsenal have seen their revenues leap forward by more than £200m in the last three years thanks to getting back to the top table of European football. The 2025 Deloitte Football Money League, published in January, had the Gunners leapfrogging Spurs, Chelsea and Liverpool when it came to revenue.

Spurs thought smarter and more long-term when it came to building a new stadium that allowed them to futureproof themselves, but the lack of such smarts when it comes to the football risks them falling behind some other clubs perceived to be smaller, who have managed to find a winning formula when it comes to player trading and recruitment.

Spurs could find themselves in the Champions League next season if they were to win this season's Europa League. The impact of such success cannot be overstated and would effectively allow the club the chance to get some forward motion far earlier than they would have otherwise anticipated.

The figures for 2024/25 likely won't make great reading. There will be no hefty player trading profit which, let's not forget, involved them having to sell European football's best striker. There will be an increase in European money from a deep run in the Europa League, but that will just about touch the £30m mark, a fraction of the £100m-plus that Aston Villa will earn from their Champions League journey this season.

Spurs will also see a sum of around £25.5m drop off what they earned for finishing fifth in 2023/24 compared to what they would earn from the Premier League in merit payments should they end the season in 14th position.

The club has enormous potential, and that is largely due to the stadium, location, fan base and way that the balance sheet has been managed sensibly to allow for investment without the threat of a PSR breach any time soon. But there is much work to do, and it is all to do with what happens on the pitch.

Successful strategy takes time to develop and work, and the managerial churn that has happened at the club has shown that there has not been a workable football strategy in place. This season's Europa League offers them a potential get out of jail free card, but achieving that will be no easy task given that Manchester United are chasing the exact same panacea.