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Sheikh Jassim and five others linked with Tottenham takeover amid Amanda Staveley latest
Former Newcastle United director Amanda Staveley might have made the most headlines with her interest in buying a stake in Tottenham in recent months but she is not the only interested party.
Daniel Levy, who owns around 30 per cent of the club as well as being the club’s chief strategic decision maker, announced in April that Spurs were seeking fresh capital.
It has since emerged that this will likely be in the form of a minority investment, somewhere between 10 and 25 per cent according to a variety of sources.
However, there are also a number of groups and individuals who have reportedly been interested in a full takeover of the North London club.
Levy values Spurs at around £3.75bn – which would be a record for a football club and crack the top-10 most expensive sports takeovers of all time – and a deal is only realistic for a small pool of elite investors.
Here, we take a look at those linked with Spurs, ranging from Gulf state billionaires to private equity titans.
Amanda Staveley
Staveley has raised £500m for a new football investment and, according to the latest reports, is eyeing a minority investment in Spurs before the end of the year.
Until recently, Staveley sat on the board at Newcastle United, the club for whom she became the public face of the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s controversial takeover in October 2021.
The investment vehicle she launched alongside her husband and business partner Mehrdad Ghodoussi to complete her investment in Newcastle, PCP Capital Partners, was recently liquidated.
Staveley has run into several legal and financial issues in recent years and any investment in Spurs would come from her extraordinary contact book of Middle East investors rather than her personal fortune.
Qatar Sports Investment
Daniel Levy is a a known associate of Paris Saint-Germain and European Club Association president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who is the head of the Qatar Sports Investment.
The sovereign wealth fund was linked with buying into Spurs in 2023, although this has been refuted by several sources.
What’s more, UEFA’s conflict of interest rules mean that QSI’s ownership of PSG would complicate matters – probably beyond the point of a feasible resolution.
MSP Sports Capital
MSP Sports Capital are a New York-headquartered private equity firm that have been continuously linked with Premier League clubs in recent years.
Everton were the subject of a failed takeover attempt by MSP Sports Capital, whose interest in the Merseyside club has been ended by Dan Friedkin’s imminent investment.
Previously, MSP Sports Capital were keen on a full takeover of Tottenham, and TBR Football understands that they want so far as to conduct full due diligence with a view to submitting a formal offer.
They are backed by Jahm Najafi and Jeff Moorad, two of the most powerful investors in sports.
Najafi and Moorad have already overseen investment in five football clubs through MSP, as well as McLaren Racing and X Games.
Liberty Media
Liberty Media have previously been named as the most valuable sports investment empire in the world, controlling assets such as the Formula One group, MotoGP and various media ventures.
Interestingly, the firm also has a stake in Kroenke Arena Company which controls the Ball Arena in Denver, home of Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke‘s Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche franchises.
The publicly listed company has been linked with a potential takeover of Tottenham by outlets such as The Times, although there has been little in the way of substantiative updates on this front for some time.
Spurs and Liberty do already have an existing link through the club’s commercial relationship with F1, who run a karting experience at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in a lucrative 15-year deal.
Sheikh Jassim
Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, the mysterious Qatari billionaire who failed in a bid to buy Man United last year, has also been loosely linked with investing in Spurs.
Jassim is an investment banker in the Gulf state and reportedly has a net worth of around £2bn, although his family – the ruing monarchy of Qatar – control assets of around £275bn.
If indeed his interest was genuine, his connections to the monarchy could lead to conflict of interest issues because of the Qatari state’s connections to Paris Saint-Germain.
It also seems unlikely that Jassim, whose ambitions in sport have been characterised as sportswashing, would be interested in a minority deal which would not yield a great deal of strategic influence.
Jay-Z
While the reported interest of superstar rapper Jay-Z in Spurs might initially seem unlikely, the 54-year-old is a billionaire and has made several successful investments in sports.
His Roc Nation Sports agency represents the likes of Kevin De Bruyne and Vinicius Junior, while he has previously been linked with investing in Arsenal.
Incidentally, the Roc Nations Sports agency stable also consists of several Spurs youth players.
The celebrity football club takeover (Tom Brady at Birmingham City, Ryan Reynolds at Wrexham) is in vogue at present.
And while Jay-Z would likely be a minority partner in a consortium of investors, his endorsement would be valuable to Spurs for marketing reasons as well as in terms of their capital base.