Financial Results - club announcement

[Stuart Leathercock]

The results (loss), comments, loans deferring purchases and levy’s comments make it sound like we’re actually a bit broke / not as well off as we think we are. Ala arsenal paying off their stadium

The results seem worse than they are because the club are depreciating the stadium and training ground quite quickly at present (depreciating at around £72m a year, which I'm guessing is a 20 year deprecation). If you remove that 'accounting cost' from our numbers then you can see we'd actually be in profit overall.

While we're nowhere near broke, we will have to start paying attention to FPP soon. For this set of accounts I think our run rate is about 88% so we're well under the limit, in the next set of accounts we'll also be fine as I expect our revenue number will jump to £530m+ for that period and our additional player amortisation costs in this financial year won't have jumped up too much on last season.

If we miss the CL this season though then we might be close to the wire on FFP in season 2023/24, with us potentially having high amortisation costs that season even if we don't buy anyone on top of Porro and Kulusevski that we've already committed to. This is because (assuming we amortise our players over an average of 5 years) then next year we'll be amortising 5 continuous years of reasonably high spending, whereas in the last few years we've always had that year where we spent zero on transfers to bring the amortisation costs down a little.

 

[Stuart Leathercock]

Fucking pricks.

I wonder what the ffp limit they can go to is now, bet it is huge. SwissRamble will be doing his report this week so I expect it to be embarrassing on that front. Not that they care.

It's not really unfortunately. We missed our opportunity to make large investments a few years ago.

If we look at the new FFP rules we should be able to discount both the depreciation of the main assets (stadium and training ground) and the interest payable on the debt for those assets from our headline numbers. This season that would leave us with around £410.4m of costs and £462.6m of revenue (as we can add transfer funds received on) so give us an FFP ratio of about 88%. Next season I think we'll be closer to 77%. However with the commitments already in place for player amortisation then year 2023/24 might see us sail a little close to the wind in terms of FFP if we don't qualify for the at least the Europa League.

 

[Stuart Leathercock]

If they wanted to they could spend over £300 million on players and still be within FFP. But they don’t. Wages to turnover down 10%. It’s all cost cutting. Repeatedly.

Sorry but that's not really true. If we spent another £300m on players then we'd be adding about £60m a year to our player amortisation (assuming standard 5 year contracts). I think we would still then be just about the right side of the line for financial year 2022/23 but the one following that we'd like be outside of FFP unless we made the CL.

 

[Stuart Leathercock]

It’s £2-3m in food and beverage for these types of events, including hospitality elements. I would imagine it’s another £1-2m for the venue charge. So probably around £5m per event IMO. There’s what 15 or so of these a year so potentially £75m. Even being conservative I would say it’s at least £50m a year.

I don't think the numbers in the accounts bear that out. It looks like we received £17m of additional corporate revenue (when the new sponsorships and increased merchandising are removed) in year 2020/21 with an open stadium compared with 2019/20 when there were pretty much zero events. So that‘s £17m total revenue from catering at the Spurs home games, venue fee/catering at additional events and whatever is made from the stadium tours and skywalk attraction.

 

[MR_BEN]

If they wanted to they could spend over £300 million on players and still be within FFP. But they don’t. Wages to turnover down 10%. It’s all cost cutting. Repeatedly.

Wages to turnover % being down is not cost cutting… it’s due to turnover rising, and getting some deadwood off the books…

 

[muppetman]

Wasn't sure where to put this but I thought it was interesting and shows that perhaps we are roughly where we "should" be in the pecking order.

My feeling is that wage bill seems to be the closest predictor to success (ie the higher the wages, the higher the chance of success) so are we spending what we can or is money going elsewhere?

Sorry, not really clued in on the finances and hoped somebody here would be.

 

[Zaphod]

I imagine if we got a few of the players out on loan off our books we'd drop down a place or two.

 

[Trix]

Wasn't sure where to put this but I thought it was interesting and shows that perhaps we are roughly where we "should" be in the pecking order.

My feeling is that wage bill seems to be the closest predictor to success (ie the higher the wages, the higher the chance of success) so are we spending what we can or is money going elsewhere?

Sorry, not really clued in on the finances and hoped somebody here would be.

And a fair chunk of that is out on loan ffs.

 

[kmk]

Wasn't sure where to put this but I thought it was interesting and shows that perhaps we are roughly where we "should" be in the pecking order.

My feeling is that wage bill seems to be the closest predictor to success (ie the higher the wages, the higher the chance of success) so are we spending what we can or is money going elsewhere?

Sorry, not really clued in on the finances and hoped somebody here would be.

Clubs like Chelsea, City, United and Liverpool also pay the highest agent fees, which you can never get back.

 

[Impspur1]

So frustrating that our big wage earners dont even play for for us

 

[SirHarryHotspur]

Wasn't sure where to put this but I thought it was interesting and shows that perhaps we are roughly where we "should" be in the pecking order.

My feeling is that wage bill seems to be the closest predictor to success (ie the higher the wages, the higher the chance of success) so are we spending what we can or is money going elsewhere?

Sorry, not really clued in on the finances and hoped somebody here would be.

The company accounts as filed with companies house shows the total wage bill as £209,180,000 but that is for an average of 719 employees during the year which includes all playing squads and other employees so how that compares with other clubs , no idea.
If you believe salary websites then the senior squad is being paid something like £131,000,000

Tottenham Hotspur F.C. 2023 Salary Cap

Tottenham Hotspur F.C. 2023 payroll table, including breakdowns of salaries, bonuses, incentives, weekly wages, and more.

www.spotrac.com

 

[whitesocks]

I don't think the numbers in the accounts bear that out. It looks like we received £17m of additional corporate revenue (when the new sponsorships and increased merchandising are removed) in year 2020/21 with an open stadium compared with 2019/20 when there were pretty much zero events. So that‘s £17m total revenue from catering at the Spurs home games, venue fee/catering at additional events and whatever is made from the stadium tours and skywalk attraction.

Presumably all the food and drink services are franchised off.
So this £17m is possibly the rent charged to the franchises. That is a nice little earner, if we dont need to worry about all the costs.

The revenue the franchises receive from the fans could well be 10X higher. But after costs, their profits are possibly a similar amount to the rent they pay to the club.
ballpark guesses.

 

[kent brockman]

So frustrating that our big wage earners dont even play for for us

Indeed. And also that the amortisation of their transfer fees hit our PL.

Presumably ~17m per annum for Ndom/GLC alone (combined fee of ~100m over six-year contracts).

 

[Westmorlandspur]

Indeed. And also that the amortisation of their transfer fees hit our PL.

Presumably ~17m per annum for Ndom/GLC alone (combined fee of ~100m over six-year contracts).

In the euphoria of Napoli winning the league for first time since Maradona. Will they lose their mind and actually buy Tanguy in the summer. League winners medal for him for 10 mins appearance in most matches and every chance of a champ lge final.

 

[chrisd2k]

I'm in the technology sector and true to form try to stay away from accounting, but these results worry me a bit. That's quite a loss just on the face of it no? After making Deki permanent, I'm not sure how much we can continue to spend of our own generated money as we aren't fortunate to get handouts from our owners.

 

[whitesocks]

I'm in the technology sector and true to form try to stay away from accounting, but these results worry me a bit. That's quite a loss just on the face of it no? After making Deki permanent, I'm not sure how much we can continue to spend of our own generated money as we aren't fortunate to get handouts from our owners.

The stadium was meant to be generating money hand over fist but at near full capacity with european football of a kind, and big events, we are posting big losses.

Is it the only way this stadium can pay its way is if we have CL or superleague money every year?
Or we sell to some head-chopper who will write off all the debts?

I don't think conte understands, although I hope he gets the message this weekend one way or another, that europa qualification or worse is a financial disaster for the club. It is staggering that he hasn't understood this.

 

[Stuart Leathercock]

Presumably all the food and drink services are franchised off.
So this £17m is possibly the rent charged to the franchises. That is a nice little earner, if we dont need to worry about all the costs.

The revenue the franchises receive from the fans could well be 10X higher. But after costs, their profits are possibly a similar amount to the rent they pay to the club.
ballpark guesses.

No. They're not franchised off. This number is the total revenue from catering at the Spurs home games, venue fee and/or catering at additional events and whatever is made from the stadium tours and skywalk attraction.

 

[Stuart Leathercock]

I'm in the technology sector and true to form try to stay away from accounting, but these results worry me a bit. That's quite a loss just on the face of it no? After making Deki permanent, I'm not sure how much we can continue to spend of our own generated money as we aren't fortunate to get handouts from our owners.

The loss is merely down to depreciation of the building projects that we have capitalised and amortisation of players. The important number really is EBITDA

 

[Stuart Leathercock]

The stadium was meant to be generating money hand over fist but at near full capacity with european football of a kind, and big events, we are posting big losses.

Is it the only way this stadium can pay its way is if we have CL or superleague money every year?
Or we sell to some head-chopper who will write off all the debts?

I don't think conte understands, although I hope he gets the message this weekend one way or another, that europa qualification or worse is a financial disaster for the club. It is staggering that he hasn't understood this.

The stadium is generating a lot of additional income compared to WHL. However the costs of operating it also seem to have gone up considerably. See my note above regarding why we have posted a loss. If you capitalise the training ground and stadium at £1.4b (I've not bothered to look in the accounts and made that number up as one that seems about right) then depreciate that capitalised cost over 20 years then you've 'lost' £70m every year before you even start. It's not 'real' money it's just accounting money. As I said before EBIDTA is the key number to look at to in the accounts of football clubs (and indeed most buinesses).

 

[ComfortablyNumb]

The stadium is generating a lot of additional income compared to WHL. However the costs of operating it also seem to have gone up considerably. See my note above regarding why we have posted a loss. If you capitalise the training ground and stadium at £1.4b (I've not bothered to look in the accounts and made that number up as one that seems about right) then depreciate that capitalised cost over 20 years then you've 'lost' £70m every year before you even start. It's not 'real' money it's just accounting money. As I said before EBIDTA is the key number to look at to in the accounts of football clubs (and indeed most buinesses).

Not sure you would depreciate fixed assets quite like that.