By David Owen
March 31 – Tottenham Hotspur, the North London Premier League football club, have reported one of the biggest profits in Premier League history – as foreshadowed by Insideworldfootball in August 2013. A concise announcement on the club website notes that profit for the year ended June 30, 2014 after interest and tax was £65.3 million, compared with just £1.5 million the previous year.
The biggest pre-tax profit for 2013-14 up to this point had been £40.5 million by Manchester United. As previously noted, last season has turned out to be an absolutely barnstorming year for Premier League profitability, with business advisory firm Deloitte assessing the combined pre-tax profit of the 20 clubs at £190 million, almost four times higher than the previous record of £49 million set in 1997-98.
Few other details were provided by the club, but one can safely surmise that the outstanding bottom-line result was attributable in large measure to the September 2013 transfer of Welsh star Gareth Bale to Real Madrid.
A few days before the transfer, Insideworldfootball wrote that while it was tough to predict who would emerge as 2013-14 champions, “you don’t need too powerful a crystal ball even at this stage to foresee which club is likely to make the season’s biggest pre-tax profit. Assuming the soap opera of Gareth Bale’s transfer to Real Madrid (or A.N.Other) reaches a consummation before the window closes, and assuming the fee is anything like the £80 million-plus we keep reading about, then the Welshman’s current club – Tottenham Hotspur – will probably be propelled, no doubt temporarily, to the top of the league’s profitability rankings…
“Since Bale has been on Spurs’s books for more than six years, I would be surprised if the £7 million paid to [Southampton] had not been fully, or almost fully, amortised. If it has, then the transfer fee received for Bale could provide a meaty £80 million-sized boost to the club’s bottom-line.”
In its latest announcement, Tottenham said the club had moved from net debt of £54.8 million at the previous year-end to net funds of £3.2 million. Net assets had risen to £183.7 million from £78.4m.
Looking back on a remarkable financial year in a week in which the club’s latest hot property Harry Kane made a dream debut for England, chairman, Daniel Levy, noted without fear of contradiction that the period saw “major changes” to the squad.
He added: “The appointment of Mauricio [Pochettino] and his coaching staff in June 2014 has resulted in a coherent determination from top to bottom of the footballing side of the club to ensure our sporting philosophy is adhered to – that is to have a balance of experienced and home grown players, playing attacking, entertaining football our fans love to watch. This strategy will continue as we embark on the summer transfer window.”
Levy went on: “We continue to devote our energies to delivering a new home for the club in Tottenham. It has been rewarding to see the progress and growth now being made both on and off the pitch and we look ahead with realistic optimism.”
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