The difference between myself and Simon Jordan is that I fully comprehend that I don’t know what I am talking about. I have never managed a football club, I have never played anything close to professional football and one look at my manly form will tell you, “He ain’t no athlete!”.
I am a football fan, a worshipper from ‘The Lane’. I can spout words about 4-4-2 or the high press but, when I look in the mirror, I have to admit that my technical knowledge of the sport I love is negligible. So what? That’s life and we all have different skills and abilities, only fools think they are good at everything!
The fan base at Tottenham is packed with talents that range from delivering the mail on a cold morning to working on corporate takeovers or delivering babies in a maternity ward. We are a rich and diverse cosmopolitan community bursting with abilities and united by a cause.
That word ‘cause’ has a deadly effect on the human mind. Without a cause, you can’t fill the trenches and populate the battlefields with corpses. Thankfully our cause does not hide fatal consequences; once our battle is over we all disperse and go home safely.
That’s why the only time we all act together is when we rise from our seats as Harry Kane rushes towards the goal. Inside the stadium are we truly united and working together with one intent. Once outside we revert to our everyday lives and argue with each other about what needs to happen next at Spurs. In many ways that is exactly how things should be, after all, this is all about entertainment, not corporate strategies.
However, that perspective only really works when the fans are happy with the club management. When they are not, things can become fractious, voices get raised and banners unfurled. Such circumstances are not uncommon in this entertainment business [ it’s not an industry ].
Yet it is only we fans who feel that tension, the owners feel nothing unless they see a threat to their wealth. We do not have the power to pose that threat and 30 people protesting at the training ground isn’t enough to scare the caretaker let alone anyone at board level.
Consequently, right now perhaps we should be considering what it is we can do? Maybe we should take a moment to consider what is possible? Perhaps we should be focusing on what is real and how we can help shape the future of the club we love?
We have to start with the position that we all know that working together simply doesn’t happen. That’s called being real. There is something about the human animal’s love of hierarchy that stops us from establishing the common good as our purpose. Queen Elisabeth II is on the throne today because the first country to execute a king and replace divine right with commonwealth couldn’t prevent argument and factionalisation. Therefore, we know that revolution is not the way forward, it never has been and history tells us that does not work. Our only chance is evolution.
The reality before us, as a guaranteed certainty, is that one day there will be new owners of THFC. We know those owners will be extremely wealthy and because of the stadium and its NFL potential, they are likely to be American. Our most pressing problem is, with the proposition Levy has constructed at Spurs, we could be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
Let’s consider this! We are a sports and entertainment complex catering to live concerts, NFL football, English soccer [forgive me, but I am wielding the knife here] with state-of-the-art facilities and a substantial property portfolio in London.
In addition, the offering on the table for a prospective buyer also includes access to a highly lucrative global media distribution machine that feeds a global audience. Further, there is a real prospect that in the future, English elite soccer clubs will be able to create their own media distribution and manage their media product for their benefit. Well, that’s what Simon Jordan says!
Whilst we are all talking about our football club and our feelings and our importance as fans, what is being sold from under our feet is a completely different commercial animal and ‘soccer’ is an ever diminishing value on its balance sheet. I am sure you can all see the danger when what THFC represents to a potential owner is not a football club but a global media opportunity.
Who would this sale appeal to?
Straight away, you can hear the nonsense of business babble as the CEO of Walt Disney steps in front of the camera and starts talking about “…natural synergies and obvious potentials for cash revenues and profit centre leveraging…”. The next thing we know is that we have Mickey Mouse as CEO! [the comments section is below].
Once we have peaked over the abyss to view the calamity of getting entirely the wrong owner then perhaps we can consider how we, the fans, can help to attract the right owner. The beauty of such a strategy is that we do not have to act together, we can all contribute to this effort individually and entirely in our way.
How does this work? Simply of course!
In any corporate buy-out, millions of dollars are spent on due diligence; the process of checking that what you are buying stacks up and you are not being sold a sack of brown stuff. In the 21st century, part of this process is called e-discovery and law firms make huge sums of money trawling through all available information on global digital media.
There has been a huge amount of investment in software and bots to facilitate this search. What that means for us is that everything published, this blog, that blog, your blog, Twitter, and the rest gets taken up in that process of due diligence.
The more we start to put out there what character of owner we want the more we are taking some control of the battleground of the future, our future. If we start considering what type of owner we want and start publishing why we want that owner, the more attractive we become to the right owner and the less attractive to the wrong owner.
OK, OK, OK, this is highly speculative but it is founded on working principles. Besides, what else do we have, not buying beer at half-time?
The final question is not why this will work but how it will work. At this point, we come back to the crowd in the stadium and all the skills that lie currently dormant there.
We must have several thousand supporters who know what due diligence is all about on a professional level. They know what they are talking about.
We must have several thousand supporters who have been involved in business buyouts small and large. They know what they are talking about.
We certainly have several hundred thousand fans around the world who would want to choose the next owner of the club they love. They know what they are talking about.
Spurs fans are no fools, they know what they are capable of in themselves but now is the time to realise what we are capable of as a whole. We do not have to do it together, we can do it all in individual ways and from within our comfort zones.
We just have to start the debate in digital media and amongst our friends which asks, “Who is the best owner for Tottenham Hotspurs? Who is the owner who will protect our football club as the primary duty of care of their ownership?”
We need to ask every Spurs fan who they think would be a great candidate for our next owner.
That is how our due diligence starts in our search for the right owner. We can at least take some sort of control over our destiny by just publishing as much material as possible about potential new owners.
We are saying to Levy, “You are history, and we are looking to the future”. We can bring levels of expertise to the debate that owners would have to pay thousands of pounds for just because our lawyers, our business people, our bankers, our postal staff, our tradespeople, our bus drivers, our doctors and nurses, our journalists, and blog writers, everyone in the stadium rising in hope of a winning goal, is a Spurs fan.
History tells us that revolutions have never worked, but revolutionary thinking has always been the way forward. Consign ENIC to history and let’s start our search for the new owners.
Blimey https://www.youtube.com/c/THEBOYHOTSPURYOUTUBE/featured
You really want an owner who orders his employees to sht in their pants at work, because ‘having a comfort break decreases productivity’?
I don’t care how rich he is, that sort of behaviour is totally unacceptable from a high street butcher, let alone the richest man in the USA.
This is not a small thing, you need to ask what a ‘fit and proper persons’ values are about the people they employ.
This is not solely about money, it is about human values, human behaviour and human decency.
Also with oil now over $90 / barrel, opec countries are flushed with cash and need to spend it before oil ultimately crashes due to these senseless ESG virtue signalling initiatives.
City Footbal Group (CFG) are 78% owned by Abu Dhabi, 10% American hedge fund Silver Lake, 12% Chinese SWF and professionally managed by Ferran Soriano x-Barca.
subject of the Yid word was raised again…
Thought Citeh were Manson and NUFC the Saudis..maybe that was why the yes of the Yid word was raised again..I can see more Arab money coming into the EPL..including at LFC..
Agree about Levy….controls all the switches but doesn’t know where the lights are.
Don’t hold your breath. As a broadcaster Amazon has an inherent conflict of interest owning a sports franchise everywhere except maybe Italy or Spain where laws don’t matter so much.
Americans own in part or full: City, United, Liverpool, Arse, Villa, Palace, etc around half the teams in the prem and many many more around the world and in lower divisions. Is this a bad thing? I urge you to read an excellent recent piece in the Ringer. I tried to post the link but it’s awaiting for approval so if it ever posts great if not you can google ringer american owners european football or something similar.
As a sometimes American investment banker (well always American) I can tell you that the real problem at Spursa is not ENIC but Levy himself who is a terrible decision maker, serial micromanager and incompetent evaluator of how resources should be deployed to run a football club. No wonder he hides from the media. Replace Levy with one of these guys featured in the Ringer piece and our fortunes will change.
Americans own in part or full: City, United, Liverpool, Arse, Villa, Palace, etc around half the teams in the prem and many many more around the world and in lower divisions. Is this a bad thing? I urge you to read this excellent piece in the Ringer recently posted.
https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/soccer/2022/1/27/22891886/american-investors-european-soccer
As a sometimes American investment banker (well always American) I can tell you that the real problem at Spursa is not ENIC but Levy himself who is a terrible decision maker, serial micromanager and incompetent evaluator of how resources should be deployed to run a football club. No wonder he hides from the media. Replace Levy with one of these guys featured in the Ringer piece and our fortunes will change.
Ignorance is bliss.
Not at all, they are in fact decent guys like you and me. If you’ve ever watched any of the youtube channels (some of which are decent and anti Levy), you will have come across Brian Dagul. He’s a married guy from Canada that comes over as much as possible, spending a small fortune in doing so, to organise and lead these protests against enic. He’s as far from a football hooligan as it’s possible to get.
Open your mind H. They are no different from you and your opinions, please stop hating on them.
Quite right Cyril
i apologise for my typo for dropping a zero, more fool me but thank you Cyril.
um… A.are u sure Bezos divorced his wife or was it vice versa? B.not sure which Harry u mean- 1/if Harry Kane, he already has a partner & children, 2/if Harry Redknapp I am not sure ex Mrs Bezos would be that taken with him, and 3/if Harry Winks, she might say one night stand maybe, long term commitment don’t think so thanks. Forgive me if I have missed a Harry here, thank u. in the meantime coys
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft…
Another good piece..would question the necessity for American owners as a franchise system the NFL could be played anywhere in the world and with some Oil States creating massive holiday / luxury money laundering ( bit like London) regions within their own nation states I can see NFL , Baseball all being attracted to places other than the US, it has worked well with boxing.
I for one would rather have owners other than Americans , we now operate under a leveraged buy in , why it would be any better than a leveraged buy out is something that needs to be looked at.
We can all dream of an owner a philanthropist who has so much money he or she can run the club how the fans want it run. The reality is that those that invest will want a return on their money…pricing THFC at 3 billion makes that extremely difficult for all but a limited few or hedge funds..
We clearly need more ambitious owners who dream of something other than performing in a British farce …the difficulty arises because we have grown off the park so more rapidly than on it, catching up will not be cheap…and the blame for that lies with one man ..Daniel Levy
Lol
The reality is that every other business in the world envies that of footie because customer loyalty is off the scale. Big Mac goes up in price then go to Burger King. The Bill and Chain gets a stroppy landlord, go to the King’s Head. Footie fans, well other than the johnny come lately american investment bankers, will never switch loyalty so they can do what they like. That said, what i have noticed is that Levy has thin skin. Sugar put up with a lot of anti sugar chanting before he sold. Levy does not react well. Either at the Villa game last April or during the UTD game in the autumn. Someone told me that Nuno’s time was up when the crowd chanted “you don’t know what you are doing” as Winks replaced Skipp i. That game. I disagree. Nuno’s time was up when the crowd chanted “we want levy out”
Lightweight…. these people need to be treated harshly 😉
That is 300 mill. The club has been valued at 2.4 bill and levy has mentioned over 3 bill (although he might have been talking about enterprise vale rather than shareholders equity). Either way the gap cannot be financed. When Bezos divorced his wife McKenzie Harry shd have been down on one knee to her the next day
Hold on tight guys…
WE’RE ‘IN THE RACE’!! 😂
I’ve already written a personal email to Jeff Bezos requesting that he buy the club and name its home Amazon Stadium 🙂
I haven’t had a reply 🙁
100% not ☺️
well said, they’ll probably protest when the opposition team coach is pulling up – Wonderful
We are the club that sold we went to the final merchandise (obviously a market) and game dvds. Getting the fanbase not to spend is near impossible and that’s not including selling Son shirts in South Korea.
Buying stuff may sting a little on a spreadsheet as you’ll need to sell say 14000 replica shirts to pay the average premier league players weekly wage (est 50% margin)
The inevitable problem we’re going to get is, the same problems that have blighted our fan base for the last 20+ years. Levy will step things up when he sees the ‘customer reference number’s’ behavioral algorithms are going wonky. Only then.
He’ll let the team “ave a little go” as Arry might say, but once everyone is sufficiently re-engaged then he’ll pull the plug again. In the same, premeditated and cyclical fashion we have seen time and time again over the last two decades.
Football fans are the best ‘customers’ in the world. In no other business do your customers only shop at your store, they are loyal to your business and they will never switch allegiance.
So, after a spell of consuming the same, unfulfilling products and becoming jaded, you put out a load of new, up to the minute lines, and suddenly they’re happy as Larry again. Claiming that their store is still the best store in town, that it’ll soon be better than all the other stores up the road, “just wait and see!”.
Alas, the ‘up to the minute’ lines and items begin to lose their appeal, as they become less current and shop-soiled. So they ask; “When are we getting some new lines in, like the stores up the road? They always replenish their stock with the latest stuff and sell on the the old stuff once it’s of no use…” Only to be told that your store does things “differently” and that there’s nothing on the horizon.
They get in a mood, but they never go and shop up the road. When you feel it’s time to bring in some new stock to cheer them up a bit is up to you. You know you hold all the aces, because they will never shop elsewhere…
It’s about ROI and unfortunately the returns don’t seem that great for someone to invest. Look what oil money spent over the last 20 years even with a new built stadium in City’s case.
So unless the club is winning it’s hard to get investment to buy the club, and just look at the stadium naming to validate that point.
Enic and Tavistock are the answers to their own profitable cash out at Tottenham unless you can get 60,000 fans to stump up £5k each for a consortium.
The people waving bedsheets are aggressive, socially inadequate toilet cleaners.
I would send mounted police through them, hose the rest and throw the remains in jail, indefinitely.
What worries me is our money has been used on and will be used on blocks of flats, hotels etc. I don’t know the in’s and outs of business but if these are under different company names when ENIC sell THFC will they of farmed off money from the club to assets not included in the sale ?.
Protest with our banners AND stop spending money on games and merch. That will send a message enic can’t ignore.
The demonstrating crowds with banners outside Hotspur Way and the club shop, often being filmed and reported on by the media both national and worldwide, will infuriate and embarrass Levy as he is obsessed with good PR. Whilst hitting enic hard in the pocket will force even the aloof Lewis to ask what is going on.
Both methods are right and both methods will have an effect, mounted together in a concurrent campaign they will hurt our owners over time.
The world will become more familiar with our grief via the demonstrations. Gone will be the squeaky clean name of enic. We are all on the same side and have the same desires about ridding ourselves of these parasites. We shouldn’t childishly argue about which is the best method but join forces and do both. Alone we are nothing, together we are everything.