Levy / ENIC

[LeeMcl]

I also cannot stand the conflation of the stadium construction with success on the pitch.

However, the thing I try to push back against is the somewhat separate idea that because ENIC is bad, and ENIC built the stadium, the stadium is bad. That's poor analysis.

The stadium is, for the type of project it set out to be, a smashing success, and seeing it through demands a European heavyweight club to fill the stands and the suites and the branding opportunities and all the rest of it.

ENIC are not up to the challenge they built for themselves. Levy cannot helm a project at this scale. That's the problem.

If any of us were to build an extension, costed at say £100k. And then overspend to 3 times that level, take years to do it and end up being unable to put furniture into the building. No one would say what we did was a success. We would be called stupid. Even if we did put gold door handles on and had a whirlpool installed.

Whatever the stadium is. And it’s good. It is not a success in the way it’s actually impacting on finance / team / club. And I thought that was the point.

It’s why Archway was sent to the wolves. Why all the compulsory purchases were forced. Why we all had cake tomorrow….

It’s all lies and distractions. If Tavistock gave a shit we would not be in the mess we are on the pitch. They don’t care.

 

[BernardMatthews]

The board care about success on the pitch if the revenues drop and fans stay away. Thats the only way to hurt them.
Don't be stupid and think ENIC don't care about us winning. Of course they want that.
They just aren't prepared to spend what it would take to win. It is as simple as that. They are all about what is sensible business first, and doing whatever it takes to win second.

Definition of ENIC’s “success on the pitch”………

 

[Incomplete_usernam]

We have the most bizarre fanbase in sports honestly, the level of just submissive acceptance to mediocrity is beyond pathetic quite frankly.

People blaming one of the best managers in football and trying to shift blame away from the real issue is just utterly mind boggling to me, what kind of mental gymnastics are these people performing to justify the complete failure of the owners?

How many more coaches/managers do we have to churn through before the penny drops?

All these day trippers and prawn sandwich munchers that have infested the club don't give a fuck about results, just a nice day out at the shiny stadium and some goals to cheer, winning or losing is seemingly irrelevant to them, hence why they feel or harbour no resentment towards the ownership for their complete failures.

It's sincerely embarrassing.

 

[Paxman]

I seem to remember during the stadium build tales of Levy’s attention to detail, emails at 2am, wanting the best, going that extra mile and so on.

Shame he doesn’t seem able to apply this to the actual reason why the club exists.

 

[StripiestPilot]

The frightening thing is that we have spent a lot of money on this squad. There are hardly any players who didn’t cost at least £15m and we have almost £150m worth of players sent away on loan. Even if they spend money, with our terrible football operation I doubt we’ll get anyone good.

How come Wolves, Leicester and Southampton are finding good players without breaking the bank yet we are spending huge sums on shit?

 

[Murphy]

The frightening thing is that we have spent a lot of money on this squad. There are hardly any players who didn’t cost at least £15m and we have almost £150m worth of players sent away on loan. Even if they spend money, with our terrible football operation I doubt we’ll get anyone good.

How come Wolves, Leicester and Southampton are finding good players without breaking the bank yet we are spending huge sums on shit?

Exactly. Go and get Wolves' scouts. They seem to have replacements for their replacements planned.

 

[iz futbal]

How come Wolves, Leicester and Southampton are finding good players without breaking the bank yet we are spending huge sums on shit?

The reason weve been better than wolves and southampton in the table is because we lucked with Kane randomly popping through the academy. Put Kane in any of those teams and they would both get 5-10 more points easily every year.

We are unlikely to randomly find another Kane again and we will have to rely on levy and his 'committee' buying players. Ouch.

 

[Ulrika Jonsson]

I’ve read a lot of posts today in this thread and I got to about 3 pages back and got fed up reading posts from people who have clearly not been anywhere near the Finance world. I wish I could pin this to the thread so the same people could read it before they keep making dumb posts.

I will try and do it as a FAQ

”ENIC are bleeding THFC dry”
no. In company laws you can’t just move money from one company to another so this is bs. ENIC only get from THFC:
- dividends. I bought shares in THFC in the early 80’s when it floated on the stock exchange. I still hold them today. There has not been any dividends paid to shareholders in the last 20 years
- Capital growth. ENIC bought THFC for less than 100million quid. It’s now worth north of 2billion when they sell. But until they sell this is just paper money.
- Levy salary - Levy owns nearly 30% of ENIC and draws a salary from THFC of circa 5mil. This is probably a bit on the high side for a company turning over half a billion but not majorly.

”Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd is a different entity to THFC and THFC gets no benefit from this”
No. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd is owned by THFC. THFC is the beneficial owner of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd.
It is a different entity because of the debt used to finance the build of the stadium and represents an efficient tax structure. Theoretically in this structure the debt is solely Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd’s and doesn‘t impact THFC ie. in theory the club could let Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd go insolvent and the club keeps going. I say in theory for a reason.

“The debt from the stadium is killing THFC‘s transfer plans”
No. The stadium debt is “good debt” in that it is largely at fixed interest payed over a very long period of time. Think of it like a mortgage. “Bad debt” is short term and generally at high interest rates - think of it like car finance or even credit card debt. It is healthy for companies to have good debt - all publicly listed companies have it.

”ENIC have put no money into THFC”
This is partially (mostly) true. ENIC are not a Jack Walker or Abramovich who invest their personal fortunes into their clubs because they love it. Very few owners do.

What ENIC has done is acted as guarantor on the debt required by Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd to build the stadium. Neither THFC nor Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd have the financial status to get the stadium built without Joe Lewis bank rolling it.

“We should never have built the stadium but invested in the team instead”
No. this isn’t an either / or question. It’s different. Stadium Debt v Player Investment is the equivalent of Mortgage Debt v Credit Card Debt.

All of the comments so far have been pretty factual but here is a personal opinion. Where would we be if THFC (with ENIC help) hadn’t built the stadium? We would still be in a 100 year old rickety stadium with 35k capacity. Our rivals including Woolwich are in 60k+ seat stadiums. Jesus, even frigging Everton are planning to build a 50k+ stadium.

What would have staying at WHL meant for us long term where we collect nearly half the match day revenue of our rivals? Certainly bottom half of the Premier League with the occasional relegation thrown in.


Im going to start a frigging “Ask UJ” thread to give factual responses to all the idiots who frequent this site.

 

[Ulrika Jonsson]

Unfortunately my work above will be forgotten once it drops back 2 pages. And everyone will go back to making the same comments “ENIC is bleeding us dry!”

 

[Deuterz]

Unfortunately my work above will be forgotten once it drops back 2 pages. And everyone will go back to making the same comments “ENIC is bleeding us dry!”

They may not be bleeding us dry. But they neither run as a competent football club who work within their budget successfully, nor do they run us as an ambitious side who are willing to spend lots of money in order to win success.

We are in no man's land under ENIC. A mediocre football team surrounded by a shell of wonderful facilities. All of that shine won't last very long when the core to any club, the players, are less than average and a team who play in a shell like St Mary's can come to our wonder stadium and play us off the park at a stroll.

ENIC out.

 

[stevee]

Unfortunately my work above will be forgotten once it drops back 2 pages. And everyone will go back to making the same comments “ENIC is bleeding us dry!”

I was going to say that you're wasting your time but you beat me to it.

Top posts.

 

[BernardMatthews]

Im going to start a frigging “Ask UJ” thread to give factual responses to all the idiots who frequent this site.

Great idea. Let me start.

What was your favourite Gladiators challenge??
(Personally always liked the gauntlet and pyramid)

 

[Crispin]

I’ve read a lot of posts today in this thread and I got to about 3 pages back and got fed up reading posts from people who have clearly not been anywhere near the Finance world. I wish I could pin this to the thread so the same people could read it before they keep making dumb posts.

I will try and do it as a FAQ

”ENIC are bleeding THFC dry”
no. In company laws you can’t just move money from one company to another so this is bs. ENIC only get from THFC:
- dividends. I bought shares in THFC in the early 80’s when it floated on the stock exchange. I still hold them today. There has not been any dividends paid to shareholders in the last 20 years
- Capital growth. ENIC bought THFC for less than 100million quid. It’s now worth north of 2billion when they sell. But until they sell this is just paper money.
- Levy salary - Levy owns nearly 30% of ENIC and draws a salary from THFC of circa 5mil. This is probably a bit on the high side for a company turning over half a billion but not majorly.

”Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd is a different entity to THFC and THFC gets no benefit from this”
No. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd is owned by THFC. THFC is the beneficial owner of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd.
It is a different entity because of the debt used to finance the build of the stadium and represents an efficient tax structure. Theoretically in this structure the debt is solely Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd’s and doesn‘t impact THFC ie. in theory the club could let Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd go insolvent and the club keeps going. I say in theory for a reason.

“The debt from the stadium is killing THFC‘s transfer plans”
No. The stadium debt is “good debt” in that it is largely at fixed interest payed over a very long period of time. Think of it like a mortgage. “Bad debt” is short term and generally at high interest rates - think of it like car finance or even credit card debt. It is healthy for companies to have good debt - all publicly listed companies have it.

”ENIC have put no money into THFC”
This is partially (mostly) true. ENIC are not a Jack Walker or Abramovich who invest their personal fortunes into their clubs because they love it. Very few owners do.

What ENIC has done is acted as guarantor on the debt required by Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd to build the stadium. Neither THFC nor Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Ltd have the financial status to get the stadium built without Joe Lewis bank rolling it.

“We should never have built the stadium but invested in the team instead”
No. this isn’t an either / or question. It’s different. Stadium Debt v Player Investment is the equivalent of Mortgage Debt v Credit Card Debt.

All of the comments so far have been pretty factual but here is a personal opinion. Where would we be if THFC (with ENIC help) hadn’t built the stadium? We would still be in a 100 year old rickety stadium with 35k capacity. Our rivals including Woolwich are in 60k+ seat stadiums. Jesus, even frigging Everton are planning to build a 50k+ stadium.

What would have staying at WHL meant for us long term where we collect nearly half the match day revenue of our rivals? Certainly bottom half of the Premier League with the occasional relegation thrown in.


Im going to start a frigging “Ask UJ” thread to give factual responses to all the idiots who frequent this site.

Good debt. Lol. A billion pounds of good debt. Well done Dan.

You have fixated on the economics of ENIC. You seem to think their stewardship of the club over 2 decades is a good thing.

The money they have borrowed on our name is tangible. The 2 year delay and 400 miion overspend is criminally bad and a public company would have fired his nepotistic arse.

In a business sense they have been good for Enic. Risk averse. Zero implications for Tavistock if the shit hits the fan.

For Tottenham they have been awful. 2 transfers of......

Fuck it I can't be arsed.

I just want these incompetent owners gone.

 

[Sir Archibald Crooks]

Unfortunately my work above will be forgotten once it drops back 2 pages. And everyone will go back to making the same comments “ENIC is bleeding us dry!”

Do you think they make good decisions on the football side? Are we a competent well run, ambitious club in regards to football? Do we have any plan?

 

[Ulrika Jonsson]

Oh and I forgot property developmwnts

”all these property developer nets - golf courses, cinema complexes, etc - don’t benefit THFC, only ENIC”
No. the developments aRe owned by THFC or its subsidiaries, they are not owned by ENIC. The beneficiary of the investments is THFC not ENIC. Even if THFC was selling the land to ENIC for redevelopment ENIC would have to pay fair value per accounting rules. You can’t sell land worth 5million quid to another entity for a $1. That’s dumb if people are suggesting this.

I haven’t looked into the details but I can guarantee you that THFC are not sitting around saying “I’ve got this 200mil sitting in pocket, I could either buy a new first team or build a cinema complex. Wow, how awesome would a cinema complex be? When is the next Fast and the Furious movie due out? We have to get it done by then!”

These developments will be largely funded by good debt. When they are operational they will add to the revenue received by THFC for non-footballing activities. This is a good thing.

 

[stevee]

Do you think they make good decisions on the football side? Are we a competent well run, ambitious club in regards to football? Do we have any plan?

That's a separate argument mate.

All she was doing was trying to explain to some on here why the stadium is a good thing and that enic do not take money out of the club

 

[Deuterz]

That's a separate argument mate.

All she was doing was trying to explain to some on here why the stadium is a good thing and that enic do not take money out of the club

Building the best stadium in Europe won’t be a good thing when it’s consistently half empty because people aren’t paying top tier prices for mid table football for very long. The last couple of stars we have that get bums in seats won’t be around much longer either.

The two go hand in hand. The stadiums a good decision if we were going to deliver the football to go along with it. Otherwise it’s just a really fancy bowl for other teams to embarrass us in.

 

[ArtyB]

Seems that we've hit a ceiling then, at least until we can have more big events at the stadium now that the pandemic is on the wane...

 

[stevee]

Building the best stadium in Europe won’t be a good thing when it’s consistently half empty because people aren’t paying top tier prices for mid table football for very long. The last couple of stars we have that get bums in seats won’t be around much longer either.

The two go hand in hand. The stadiums a good decision if we were going to deliver the football to go along with it. Otherwise it’s just a really fancy bowl for other teams to embarrass us in.

But it's not "consistently half empty".

 

[Sir Archibald Crooks]

That's a separate argument mate.

All she was doing was trying to explain to some on here why the stadium is a good thing and that enic do not take money out of the club

Perhaps, but we're meant to be a football club and so often that appears to be the absolute bottom of our owners priorities. The last 5 years especially has been tantamount to gross incompetence. The club needs a change, 21 years is too long for anyone.