Tottenham Hotspur take £90m loan following big-spending summer
Tottenham Hotspur have taken out a £90m loan from Australian bank Macquarie in a move that improves the heavily indebted Premier League club’s cash flow.
Spurs have borrowed the sum against future media rights revenue that they are due to receive from the Premier League during the current season.
Such loans are not uncommon even in the top flight of English football and typically reflect a short-term squeeze on liquidity resulting from outgoings. Bloomberg first reported the loan.
Tottenham spent heavily in the summer transfer window, committing around £180m on new signings including Xavi Simons and Mohammed Kudus, before wages and agent fees are taken into account.
Spurs also have long-term debts which stood at more than £750m at the last count, much of it in long-term financing related to construction of their stadium.
The Lewis family, which majority owns the north London club through company Enic, ousted executive chairman Daniel Levy in a surprise move last week, although there is no suggestion that decision was related to the Macquarie loan.
It led to fresh speculation that Enic could sell Tottenham, who are valued at around £3.5bn, although the Lewis family shot down sale talk earlier this week.
Spurs owners ‘know club needs investment’
They also revealed they had “received, and unequivocally rejected” proposals from financier Amanda Staveley’s PCP International Finance Limited and US-Chinese consortium Firehawk Holdings Limited.
“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,” they said.
Spurs chief executive Vinai Venkatesham added on Monday that it had been made “unambiguously clear that Tottenham Hotspur is not for sale”.
“I think it is very fair to say that we have firm backing from the Lewis family against our ambitions to be successful on the pitch, both on the men’s side and women’s side,” he said. “They know that’s going to require investment, and we have their firm backing.”
It follows a summer of upheaval at Spurs, with Venkatesham – formerly of rivals Arsenal – and new manager Thomas Frank arriving and both Levy and long-serving director Donna-Maria Cullen joining former boss Ange Postecoglou in leaving the club.