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News
£8.5bn Tottenham part-takeover twist as Daniel Levy ally Florentino Perez makes official announcement
Once upon a time, Tottenham and Real Madrid had a fleeting and rather one-sided partnership. Now, the Spanish giants could indirectly affect the future ownership of Daniel Levy’s club.
Levy personally owns a 29 per cent stake in Spurs and has been looking for fresh investment in the club for some time, alt🌠hough the search was only officially confirmed in April last year.
How much equity, if any, the divisive chairman is willing to sell is not entirely clear, although it looks like minority investment in Tottenham is the more likely option at this stage.
There has been relatively noise since the North London club enlisted the Rothschild ☂bank to so🌸und out potential buyers.
Amanda Staveley’s PCP Capital Partners are the only group known to have had contact with the club, but the status of those talks is not known💖.
The fact that the mergers and acquisitions market in Premier League football is especially competitive𒁃 at present probably is𝓡n’t helping Levy and ENIC’s search for would-be partners.
Dan Friedkin’s takeover of Everton is now complete, but West Ham, Wolves, Brentford, Bournemouth 😼and Crystal🐟 Palace are all involved talks to sell minority stakes.
Spurs ꦓare in a different weight class to those clubs financially, with annual revenues of £550m at the last count, but the current malaise that has set in in N17 isn’t exactly helping their cause.
Ange Postecoglou’s side are in freefall. Their defeat to Everton 🔥by a flattering 3-2 score line at the weekend w🔯as their sixth league match in a row without a win.
Ordinarily, the manager might be under more pressure than he currently is. While the Aussie is by no means in the clear, it was Levy who was the subject of derisory chants at Goodison Park on Sunday.
Levy, an omniscient presence at Ho⛦tspur Way in Enfield, has transformed the club in his🗹 quarter-century in charge but there is growing consensus that he has taken the club as far as he can.
A former priไvate equity chief and investment banker who was initially only supposed to take the c🔯hairman role on an interim basis, the 62-year-old is the face of Tottenham.
That is in the landscape of modern football, where players and managers are supposed to be the superstars. How♒ever, it isn’t a unique situation…
Florentino Perez throws spanner in the works as Daniel Levy seeks minority investment
Real Madrid president Florentino Perez is one of the most powerful men in football.
He and Levy know each other well. As well as working together on the European Super League rebellion, they have had some tough negotiations ൲on the sale♔s of Luka Modric and Gareth Bale to Real.
Perez, a billionaire who earned his fortune in constructiℱon, has even said that Levy has texted him after Real Madrid’s Champions League triumphs to say ‘congratulations on winning it with my players’.
But the word in the football finance industry is that any ribbing between the two is good-natur𝓡ed and that they enjoy a strong professional relationship.
Perez is the pres𒈔ident of a member-based club as opposed to a private company. That means that, unlike Levy, he does not have the power to court private investment in the club.
However, it emerged in November last year that the 77-year-old was standing for re-election on a manifesto that included potentially opening the club👍 up to landmark outside investment.
Speaking exclusively to TBR Football, Liverpool University football finance lecturer and Price of Football author Kieran Maguire suggested that Perez’s plans were not good news for Levy.
“Real Madrid basically have guaranteed participation in the Champions League, whereas Spurs don’t. So they are much more de-risked than Spurs,” he said.
“I admire Spurs and I think they perhaps have a higher upside than Real Madrid. But if I was advising someone who wants a high-profile, low-risk investment opportunity, I would go for Real Madrid.
“I’m no fan of Florentino Perez, but I think there is more potential to leverage the international appeal of Real Madrid more.“
Now, Real Madrid꧑ have announced that Perez has won re-election for a fifth terms as president, opening the door to forge ahead with his plans to court private investment in the 15-time European champions.
There are only ever a handful of elite football clubs in whom equity is for sale at any one time, and the presence of another on the mar🔜ket is further competition for Spurs.
Could Tottenham’s next co-owner come from Ligue 1 mass exodus?
While the Perez situation may have shut one or two doors in the investment world, events in France could potenti𒀰ally lead to a stampede to invest in clubs outside Ligue 1.
There is a crisis in Fre🌟nch football at present, with the league’s chiefs having wildly overestimated the value of their TV rights, which are by far and away the biggest income stream for its clubs.
Ligue left it until the eleventh hour to secure a broadcast deal for 2024-25 and, even then, ꦕit was less than half of the £1bn deal they ⛎wanted.
To make matters worse, DAZN, the broadcaster who bought▨ most of the TV rights, now wants to revise the deal down to less than £340m.
And what’s more, Ligue’s other broad𒅌caster beIN SPORTS have slashed the sponsorship guarantee from their contract with the league, meaning it too could potentially fall in value by around 20 per cent.
The mood music in the summer when news of the crisis was at its most apocalyptic suggested t✱hat this could cause a mass exodus of owners from France to elsewhere in Eu🥂rope.
If that is the case, it could potentially wꦛiden the pool of investors with an eye on Spurs.