Why Tottenham could face ‘significant’ financial hit even if they avoid relegation – UK Times

Tottenham Hotspur have been warned they face a “significant” financial hit even if they avoid relegation to the Championship.

The north London club is currently in a battle to stay in the top flight after a 10-match Premier League winless run saw them slide down the table.

Manager Thomas Frank was sacked last month and replaced with interim boss Igor Tudor, who conceded it was an “emergency situation.”

It has also been estimated Tottenham could lose £250 million if they go down.

However, leading sports lawyer Geoff Cunningham of Clarion Solicitors has painted a bleak picture for the 2025-26 campaign regardless of their division, given Spurs are likely to miss out on Europe for only a third time in 21 seasons.

Cunningham said: “I imagine they will have certain commercial revenue that will increase based upon them being in a European competition.

“If they’re not in Europe, it’s not just lost revenue from being in the competition, but it’s also lost revenue of commercial rights they sell for being in that competition and also the ticket revenue and the hospitality revenue.

“Every time there’s a home game and they sell 60,000 tickets plus corporate hospitality, that’s a fair amount of revenue generated from every game.

“It’s going to be significant (loss) and there’s no way of really avoiding that. It’s just simple maths. If there’s less games and there’s less TV revenue from European competition, you are going to lose more money.”

Cunningham was more optimistic about how Spurs could handle relegation given they have the ninth biggest revenue in world football.

“I think the kind of reported £250million relegation cost is probably likely to be quite accurate,” Cunningham said.

“The Premier League revenue difference will probably be compared with where they’ve been used to finishing and if you also account European football, I think it would be quite likely to be £100m or more.

“There’s a number of ways they can plug the gap or part of the gap quite quickly with certain financial facilities, but I don’t think they’ll do that. I think they’re a club with pretty good financial stability and I think they will naturally cut their cloth accordingly.

“Player contracts will reduce significantly and they will manage themselves pretty well.

“They are likely to be able to survive in the Championship at a very good level and likely compete, like Burnley do, with promotion quite quickly after relegation.”