Thread: LATEST STADIUM NEWS

Originally Posted by Matt

The one outstanding issue Im still not sure on is proposed changes to the stadium itself. Im still expecting a new planning application for design changes to the stadium itself, but if the changes are relatively small and primarily internal they may not need approval. Im hoping this information may come out at the meetings.

I still haven't gotten to read the new documents but for internal revisions I always thought that might be on the agenda. I'm not sure what the club is thinking but a few changes would increase capacity slightly like:

Take stands another couple of metres closer to the pitch.

Reduce space between rows and reduce width of seats.

Fill in the dipping corners of the wavy upper tier.

etc.

Agenda for Planning Sub Committee on Feb 13 2012 7:00PM : Haringey Council

The meeting will be on this site live (February 13th) for those who want to watch it. Just go to above link, scroll down, and click the provided link – or just use the search function on the Council main site.

@BlueCrew LA

Have a question for you and I dont want to stray this too far off topic but....

Do you think Levy & ENIC will sell the club before the stadium is completed? I'd imagine it would be after the stadium is completed to make the highest profit possible but I was just wondering about this in regards to our wage structure. Given the timescale for this project and wanting to up our wages would we have to wait until 2016 to start breaking the bank?

Originally Posted by spursman18

@BlueCrew LA

Have a question for you and I dont want to stray this too far off topic but....

Do you think Levy & ENIC will sell the club before the stadium is completed? I'd imagine it would be after the stadium is completed to make the highest profit possible but I was just wondering about this in regards to our wage structure. Given the timescale for this project and wanting to up our wages would we have to wait until 2016 to start breaking the bank?

There's no reason for ENIC to sell the club until after the build is completed. I mean full completion not just the stadium so we're probably talking 2017-18.

Whether the wage structure will change is completely dependent on Levy. We could offer more right now but we self impose our wage restrictions. I could see us in the mean time running ourselves similar to Arsenal right now. Contrary to popular belief not every big club has a few players over 100k, outside of Citeh, United, Barca, Madrid most clubs have no more then three. The point I tried to make to Park Lane Yiddo a few pages back is that the threats to our players will still be there all throughout the build and likely a few years afterwards because of the clubs persuing them. Just a reminder....

Originally Posted by BlueCrew LA

Neither do I but I'm not as doom and gloom as others I guess.

Say the stadium was done today, Spurs have our debts we're paying off etc, would the threat of the potential exodus be gone? Not really, granted we would be able to offer Modric a little higher wages but we're not going to suddenly start offering £150k contracts. To use Arsenal as an example this summer they lost Fabregas and Nasri. Arsenal self impose wage restraints on themselves, I've always hated that club but it's the one thing I respect. Fabregas would want to go to Barcelona from any club, even Madrid. Nasri though he left to one of the handful of clubs that you can't really compete with because they have huge reserves of money not generated by the club. Even with a new stadium there's not much we can do to match what Citeh or Chelsea are willing to offer players, and to a lesser extent United but they don't have the same backing as Citeh or Chelsea.

So consider this who can we conceive either Bale or Modric leaving Spurs for?

Chelsea, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan (long shot), Citeh (don't really need him) and United (doesn't seem keen to play up north).

Fast forward now to stadium completion how many of those clubs could feasibly still pry him away? Pretty much all except maybe Milan. So the threat of Modric leaving would be almost the same. Remember who want Modric, it's not like we're being muscled out by Liverpool or Arsenal. I think provided we keep winning we have a good shot to keep our lineup intact. It would take years of sustained success before we had the financial ability to compete with the likes of United and we'll likely never compete with Citeh unless we get sugar-daddied which is possible. Not my preference though.

One more thing, I was surprised by Chelsea this winter. Some of the stories coming out suggested they're mindful of FFP, I was sure they would just ignore FIFA and dare them to take action. In the old days they just would have thrown money at Cahill just so the situation would have been sorted quicker. The first bid of £50k is around what if there wasn't an inflated market would be a good offer based on his ability and experience. If that's how they approach transfers going forward then I think they'll be less of a threat. Chelsea will still come in with the occasional sizable transfer fee, but the wages will have to be more reasonable because they have to be accounted for every season. A transfer fee can be minimized by a chairman injected cash into the club, which is still allowed under FFP to a limit.

Thank you for the always insightful info.

Also, given the history that Arsenal has ever since they moved in regards to spending. Are we going to be looking at a similar situation? I understand that say we get 400 million in a naming rights deal and X amount from Haringey etc we should be looking at having to pay 25 million towards the stadium ourselves? Or have that got that figure wrong.

Originally Posted by spursman18

Thank you for the always insightful info.

Also, given the history that Arsenal has ever since they moved in regards to spending. Are we going to be looking at a similar situation? I understand that say we get 400 million in a naming rights deal and X amount from Haringey etc we should be looking at having to pay 25 million towards the stadium ourselves? Or have that got that figure wrong.

I'm not sure one that number so I wouldn't like to speculate, seems plausible but I'm not holding my breathe.

Arsenal could actually be a monster in the transfer window right now if they wanted to be. I'm not sure what will happen if they miss the CL but the stadium is a convenient excuse for them. The stadium build wasn't planned nearly as good as Levy & co and they're still paying for that in a way but this myth of them not having money is just not true. Without getting too technical Arsenal have over £200m in cash reserves, you'd be hard pressed to find a club anywhere with that much available cash. Yes some is debt service reserve but which includes stadium debt but put it this way David Silva, Toure, Aguero, Dzeko they could have afforded any of them. I personally believe their frugal nature is a collaborative effort between Wenger and the board, but things I've read lately seem to put more blame on the board.

Anyways Levy would be in a similar position to Arsenal but with far less debt, and our debt would be very managable. So basically everything the club produces could feasibly be available. Levy gets a bad rap for being frugal but actually all things considered wages, fees and bonuses he spends a good percentage relative to our turnover, off the top of my head over 65%. If he kept that level of commitment with a new stadium then we'll be fine, because unlike the Arsenal board I don't think Levy would horde cash reserves while our first team squad is depleted and we drop in the table. In the league the only ones that could out muscle us would be Citeh and maybe United. It must be said though much of United's financial ability and exposure is due to the fact they're successful. If they have a dip after Ferguson pretty much all of us would be in a similar boat.

What will a new stadium mean to transfers and salaries?

Well you need to look at football clubs incomes to gauge the impact.....

(2010-2011) The top EPL clubs at the moment are Utd 350m, Arsenal 274m, and Chelski 256m, if you look into those numbers further you see - Utd generate similar gate receipts to Arsenal close to 100m, Chelski are 40m behind. This reflects not only the ground size but also the considerable income generated from UCL home games.

Once you get away from gate receipts the picture differs considerably ... TV income is based on EPL position and again massively enhanced by a CL run but it's marketing that really counts ...

Utd generate close to 100m in commercial income, Arsenal generate just 36m why? Well two reasons Utd are more successful, you can't sell League or Cup winning memorabilia if you don't win anything, and secondly Arsenal mortgaged their future with some frankly awful long term naming right and sponsorship deals on the Library.

So what of Spurs?

A new ground coupled with UCL football would increase our revenue to about 80m (I don't think we'll ever see prices as high as the library) that's almost double our current revenue. UCL becomes even more important as every home game would be worth probably twice what it was at WHL.

But what about marketing? for a side that hasn't won the League for 50 years we have managed to maintain a very good commercial income in fact amazingly it's more than Arsenal's. You would expect that to increase but will it? If Levy can pull of a miraculous 20 year 400m naming rights deal we will in effect get the ground for free, as currently our naming rights income is zero. If however he also has to forward sell shirt sponsorship then our actual annual income will drop, we would 'lose' on a yearly basis 10-20m from shirt sponsorship. This is where Arsenal messed up forward selling 20 years naming rights to Emirates at a knock down 100m and 10 year shirt sponsorship to Nike at a pathetic 6m a year.

We can look at the Arsenal model to see exactly where they went wrong -

Income - 274m

Lost opportunities

Naming rights - sold at 5m a year until 2024 - probably worth 20m a year today and goodness knows how much by 2024
Shirt sponsorship - sold at 6m a year until 2014 - probably worth over 20m a year today.
20 year bond - 22m a year until 2024

These three deals alone are costing them 51m a year now and will continue to cost that and more for two more seasons and then 40m a year for a further 10 years. It's not just the debt on the Library that's hurting them it's these very poor (hindsight is so easy) commercial deals.

There is no way a savy business man like Levy will make the same mistakes, if as looks likely we forward sell the naming rights for twenty years that will be 20m a year income we will not receive, but offsetting that we won't have to make any debt repayments on bank loans or capital bonds. So all thing considered we should still see our income rise from 119m in 2009-10 to something approaching 300m in 2016 ... that really puts us right up there with Europe's big earners.

Of course you can't beat success on the pitch and unlike the short sighted goonettes it's safe to say we understand that .. it's all about the glory, as Utd have shown keep winning and the money will follow.