Club watch

Diving's been a trait in Football Manager games for a few years as a passive trait, although it's hidden behind a euphemism rather than outright call players divers

 

Sign the bloody thing..

 

It's Football BSider, so don't get your hopes up

Also, weren't they reporting we were offering him £400k a week the other day, or was that merely some pundit who doesn't understand how money works?

 

Oh well, that's killed any negotiations for Timo Werner...

 

Lloris was hoping it might be Smirnoff.

 

From the FT

Tottenham Hotspur has refinanced more than £600m of loans taken out to build its new stadium, with the English Premier League club tapping US investors through private bond markets to secure its financial future.

The team moved into its £1.2bn arena, one of the most expensive in Europe, in April. To support construction, it borrowed £637m from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and HSBC. Those loans were due to be paid back by April 2022, creating a potential financial cliff edge.

The club completed a private placement in the US this week that converted roughly £525m of its debt into bonds, with staggered maturities of between 15 and 30 years.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Daniel Levy, Tottenham Hotspur chairman, said the move to limit the club’s debt-servicing costs, along with revenues from the new stadium, would provide the financial headroom to compete with Europe’s top clubs.

But he insisted there would be no change to the frugal business plan and player transfer strategy instituted during his nearly two decades running the club.

“I understand, as I am a fan, clearly you want to win on the pitch,” he said. “But we have been trying to look at this slightly differently, in that we want to make sure we ensure an infrastructure here to stand the test of time.”

The message won over US private investors for the bond issue but may be seen as provocative by fans who want a spending spree to reinforce a team that has fallen agonisingly short of the sport’s top prizes in recent seasons.

“We could have easily spent more money on players,” said Mr Levy. “Who knows if that would have bought us more success or not . . . The right approach is to build from the bottom up. There is no quick fix to becoming a much more significant global club.”

Tottenham has firmly established itself among the “Big Six” in English football’s top tier, which also includes Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea. Each is among the world’s 10 highest-earning football clubs, due in part to their share in the Premier League’s multiyear broadcasting rights, currently worth £9.2bn.

Under head coach Mauricio Pochettino, Tottenham has qualified four times in a row for the Champions League, Europe’s most prestigious club tournament that distributes roughly €2bn among participating teams.

That success is particularly striking because the English club’s wage bill has been the lowest among the Big Six. Academic research has shown the best predictor of a team’s league position is how much it spends on player salaries.

Although Tottenham has outperformed, it has won no major trophy in many years, finishing second in the Premier League in 2016-17 and losing in the Champions League final last season.

To complete the refinancing of its stadium loans, BofA, which acted as bookrunner on the bond issue, has also provided a £112m loan, while HSBC has provided a revolving credit facility. Goldman, which took a leading role in Tottenham’s previous transaction, did not participate. Rothschild acted as financial adviser. The average annual interest rate on this new debt is just over 2.6 per cent, according to people briefed on the transaction.

Private placements in the US were particularly popular with English clubs in the 1990s and early 2000s, with Manchester United, Arsenal and Newcastle United among those to issue long-term bonds.

US private placements typically carry investment-grade ratings, in contrast to the recent rush of bond issuance from Italian football clubs. Inter Milan and AS Roma have tapped the high-yield bond market in the past two years, while Juventus raised a bond this year without a credit rating.

Mr Levy said the Tottenham bond issue was “significantly oversubscribed”, reflecting a strong credit rating from investment agencies and confidence from US investors that the club is a relatively sure bet in the volatile world of football.

Asked if the deal would free up more money for player transfers or new deals for current stars — some of whom have held off on contract renewals unless they are offered significant pay rises — Mr Levy insisted the refinancing “will have no bearing on how we run the club . . . and no bearing on those types of short-term movements [like transfers].”

Still, there are signs the club has begun to loosen its purse strings. Over the 2017-18 season, it achieved record revenues of £380.7m and pre-tax profit of £138.9m — the largest annual profit ever recorded by a football club. This summer its net transfer fee spending was about £70m, among the highest in the Premier League.

To increase revenues further, Mr Levy wants to transform Tottenham Hotspur Stadium into a “Madison Square Garden in London” — referring to the New York indoor arena that hosts sports, concerts and other events. The club has already secured deals to host two NFL American football matches a year for a decade, and an annual Saracens rugby union match for five years.

“Clearly, if you have a stadium of this magnitude and quality, to only have 25 to 30 games a year being played by Tottenham Hotspur, it’s not making use of the capital we have invested,” said Mr Levy.

...and here's the official confirmation
https://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/2019/september/club-refinances-construction-debt/

 

So in summary, our stadium debt is to be repaid across 30 years at 2.6% interest?

Interesting to note that in 2006 Arsenal refinanced the Emirates across 25 years at 5.6% interest.

 

1. Taking the numbers in the FT article as true

2. Carrying across https://www.not606.com/threads/new-stadium-thread.297537/page-209#post-13089278 ...

1.026 ^ 15 ~ 1.47

(1.47 - 1) * 525 = 246.75

246.75 / 15 ~ 16.5

So THFC have to generate 16.5m pa profit in order to meet the
interest demands for the earliest bond maturity dates.

Would be useful to know the bond repayment details (what % within
N yrs etc - I assume bond usual repayment T+C state no earlier than
the first maturity date) .

 

And a bit over 28m per year to cover the capital repayments. So the stadium costs around 45m per annum. Extra seat income is about 50m from football alone and food and drink will add a substantial chunk to that. With non football events and naming rights I think we are going to cover the costs with at least £50m to spare.

 

What a comfortable, natural looking photo...

 

So the're going to buy Eriksen and repatriate him? Don't we have enough trouble with Danes already without taking on more. I should know I am descended from Vikings.

 

RDBD I know very little about this kind of high finance deal so a question. 30 years is a long time and nobody knows what the state of football will be then. Assuming it went pear shaped and ticket sales fell and SKY lost interest are there ways out or have we fixed ourselves into this for the full 30 years?

 

1. If broadcasters seriously decrease revenues there will be a lot of big victims before Spurs.
2. If attendances fell drastically, then that has an impact.

I believe #2 would not happen, because Spurs are a well-supported club.

 

Really I was asking your opinion on the financial aspects. I don't expect the worst scenario to happen but I just wondered if we could get out of it.

 

On a more positive note Eriksen looks better in this game.

 

Why would you want to ??
Only the capital repayment regime is not in the public domain.
The interest regime is a good deal IMHO.

 

OK if the world collapses around Spurs and they end up in the knackers yard I'll know who to blame RDBD. Not that I'll be here

 

How nice to see the club have entered an official banking partnership with my bank...who I currently have a relationship with that is mainly based on spite

 

Here's the minutes from the latest THST meeting
https://www.thstofficial.com/thst-n...eeting-with-the-spurs-board-on-8-october-2019

Disappointingly, this little nugget sounds uncannily like somebody in the THST is one of those Twitter berks who keeps using Chelsea or The Sheikh Mansour Team as measuring sticks when anyone with any sense can tell that, while we're one of the six richest clubs in the PL, we're very clearly the sixth of the sixth richest by some margin

• THST acknowledged that some other clubs have greater resources and a bigger profile than THFC. But most don’t. And when fans are paying high prices, and when the stadium is generating so much money, there is less likelihood of acceptance that the Club hasn’t got the clout to compete at the very top
• DL said he was very conscious of the high expectations, and he understood that. However, the Club is not yet at the same revenue levels as the other Top Six clubs. He said they had just delivered a brand new, world-class stadium and that revenues would take time to come through, particularly as initial operating costs are high