THE LAB | Tottenham’s £100m: What It Really Means

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1:38Tottenham Hotspur have entered what looks like a genuinely new era. The Lewis family have confirmed a£100 million injection of fresh capital, their first major financial move since Daniel Levy was ousted as chairman in September. They've described this as initial additional funding, with more to come as the club's management decides what's needed to deliver success. Vivian Lewis has been seen regularly at matches, joined by her brother Charles and her husband Nick Boucher, signalling a far more visible and hands-on ownership style. The club sits third in the Premier League under Thomas Frank, with one defeat in 11 games, and this announcement feels like a statement of ambition just at the right time.

2:16But how significant is this£100m in the modern Premier League economy? What does it tell us about the direction of the club after Levy? And what kind of owners will the Lewis's really be going forward? We're joined by football finance expert Ben White to discuss all. If you happen to be listening to this on the Fighting Cop feed, please consider going over to The Lab, wherever you get your podcasts and following. You really help it grow. Enjoy the pod.

2:48Ben, this is like a big, big day for you, isn't it? When news like this breaks. Yeah, tragically it is. Yeah, busy in the replies at the moment, busy in the DMs. What is it? Did basically all hell break loose in your DMs when the news came through that£100 million has been injected by Enoch? Yeah, I seem to have got myself in a slightly tragic position where like, yeah, mates with WhatsApp, yeah, you get DMs, there's loads of chat going on in the different football groups. I mean, sadly, Spurs-specific finance groups as well, where it's sort of like there's a few of us where we look at stuff like this.

3:21So, yeah, it all goes pretty busy on days like this, where it maybe isn't even a monumental thing, really. But it's – Well, let's not – Let's not do it down already. Yeah, come on. 100 million is 100 million. Why not 200 million, Ben? Why not – Ah, bloody levy, isn't it? No, why not – Why 100 million? why have they what is that it's a good question actually why 100 million um why not 105 why not why not yeah i mean it could be more um it probably is related to i would say you don't really want to chuck in you know like uh the other week we had this he was the guy the uh what was he a dj looking to yeah yeah brooklyn and that's him yeah you don't really want to chuck a billion in straightway because it sounds good but um you want it a little bit more even than that so so um because of the nature of how finances are accounted for and things like that so you buy a player now you know your cash is coming out over five years your amortization matters over five years so that's only helping this year's accounts you can go on a big spend up now but for the next five years creates a headache so it's better to put 100 million now 100 million a few years time 100 million a few years later than it is to put in 300 million up front that's kind of accountancy a bit of accountancy but cash flow yeah it's a bit of both um so so so if you put 300 million pounds now 100 million pound doesn't mean you can only buy 100 million pounds worth of players does it no it can be spread at the amortized so that 100 million is actually more valuable in spending power because is that right am i on the right path here yeah that's right so um yeah people people often confuse the cash flow with the amortization but as you say from an accounting perspective let's say let's say you sign a player for 50 million pounds um over the next five years that'll appear 10 million charge against your accounts for five years so from an accounting perspective you would rather have 10 million coming in every season to net that off than you would have um just you know 50 million in one go now um and in cash flow perspective the deals can be structured in any way you want they can be all up front it could be spread it could be you know half up front but say you spread that out over three payments as well um you obviously want the cash to come in sort of in a more even manner as well rather than having it all up front it's fine if it's all up front and it's sat there the entire time but typically they'll work on a model where they try and net off the cash that's expected to come in with the cash that's expected to go out so does this count as income and and does include does it count as income with regard to psr so it depends how they account for it because i've read the statement it sounds like they're doing another rights issue um from from what i've read and for i think ben jacobs was reporting that as well yeah um so owners can do different things like they can give loans things like that this because the club is creating shares and selling it and selling those shares effectively to the existing owners it does count as it counts in the plus column um but it's it's not something i mean this is this is the best case i think we're talking before about this this is the best case from a club and from a fan perspective because if they were just doing an owner loan later that money has to come back out so you know you see it will affect positive positively now and negatively down the line but if it's a share it doesn't have to be repaid no no so that they get they get the benefit and some people sort of sneer at it because they're like um oh well yeah but they're getting shares but yeah why do we care you know we don't care who owns the shares or who to like dilutes the shares like why do you people do you think people care about it they just don't want their they just don't want the owners to get anything out of this really yeah yeah they want them they want us to chuck money in with nothing in return to show you how much they care which is just not really yeah very few owners ever do that in a hypothetical hypothetical world and and this isn't really a relevant question it's just to satisfy my curiosity and it's not relevant because all of this money you would imagine isn't about what we can spend in january although some of it might be um in a hypothetical world how much with that 100 million pound how much could you effectively spend does that make sense so if you just if i just said if i'd asked you the question like 100 million isn't if it's amortized it's it's worth more and effective your spending power what's the maximum amount you could get out of that 100 million so if you're talking pure five years yeah so say i mean if you if you wanted all of that to go on one player you could buy you could buy a player at say 75 million on 100 grand a week and roughly you know ignoring agents fees i'm ignoring you know sign-on fees all that sort of stuff roughly that would and you kept the rest of that cash back it would sort of pay for that player by itself but because of how it's accounted for you probably wouldn't look at it that way as a club you would probably say for example i could invest in two or three players now and somebody mentioned this on them on x a minute ago and i think it's a sensible way to look at it you could you could buy two or three players at 50 60 75 million now those would amortize so you spent let's say you spent 150 million now that amortize over five years so that charges on your accounts 30 million a year for argument's sake let's just say the cash flow is also spread so that's 30 million a year you've to worry about um and then you've got your wages on top so they're all 100 grand a week that's another 15 million so automatically 50 million of that is gone let's say per year problem is you've got your 100 million this year so you've got your 50 up but next year you need that 50 million again because you still got the wages you still got the cash going out you're still with the amortization year after you still need that 50 million and this is the chelsea problem they're doing all the spendings they have to sell every year whereas what we would hope to do is either maybe in three years time they inject some more cash just to cover the next hump but really on-field success is the way you bridge that um because then you know you bring in champions league revenue every year you're fine then suddenly yeah you pay for those those players every year basically um and maybe that is what they're going to do maybe it is about injecting cash and making us competitive because they know that tottenham in three or four years if that is a midterm for them in terms of selling that might be early for them i don't know um but if it's a midterm for them they might look at six to seven billion pounds from whoever wherever it comes from in three or four years is a good way to exit Tottenham Hotspur and make a great profit and actually just putting in 400 million pound over the next two three years isn't actually an expensive thing to do when they know the upside is selling the club for six billion in three years yeah it's not huge money for them really like it sounds crazy to say but you know putting in 100 billion here and there it doesn't really dent their personal finances.

10:08And that's where people always look to Daniel Levy. It was never really about Levy. It was more about Lewis, because Lewis is the one that could afford to put money in, not Daniel Levy. He hasn't got billions of pounds set aside. So why have they been Daniel Levy in now? I think the two things. So with Daniel Levy, I think my opinion, I mean, I might be wrong here. My opinion is that they just wanted to modernise the way the club is run. maybe they wanted fresh ideas um it wasn't really to do with the money that's being put in it was more to do with the club being run in quite a traditional manner in an ultra modern world you know these other super clubs have got very modern ways of doing things they've got very modern ways of structuring themselves and looking at things and my view is that maybe they just felt it was a bit stale and he was a bit traditional and maybe he was at the limits of where he could take us so they wanted someone who is a modern ceo which vinay is they want to get him in and give you give that sort of a fresh approach and see if they can kick on, basically, from the position Daniel Levy has got us to.

11:08Whereas the ownership thing, it feels to me like the timing lines up quite neatly. Like, was it October 2022? Joe Lewis sat back, handed more of the control over, and his kids took over. And we saw that 150 million was drawn down in that period. And now they've put another 30 million in. I think it was last December. but they've now put another 100 million in. So it feels like the kids want to give it more of a go. Was this the 100 million that was discussed previously? It was the 100 million rumored by Matt Law last month, yeah, but not the same as the bringing the revenue forward thing that they did with Macquarie.

11:45Yeah. It's interesting, actually, because if you – I was always like – when I was thinking about Daniel Levy leaving and the Lewis kids coming in, calling them kids, They're like 63-year-old, super successful business people, right? But they're just dismissed as the kids. Yeah, Vivian and Charles, right? With Peter Charrington in there as well. And interestingly, I don't know if this is interesting. It was interesting to me that it was his statement that was aligned with the news that this 100 million pound was coming in. Perhaps that's just normal. I don't know. No, I think it is interesting because in theory, he's a non-executive chairman.

12:24which, all right, you're still at the sort of the pinnacle of the tree, but non-executive chairman don't normally have a day-to-day operational type role. You know, you're a bit hands-off. You're sort of overseeing the ship rather than, you know, sailing on the ship. So, yeah, I think it's interesting. Maybe shows he's slightly more involved than you would typically be as a non-exec chairman, but maybe that's just because it's early days under their tenure. Yeah, I mean, Venkatesh also made a comment as well, didn't he? But the point I wanted to make just previously was that I was like, why are the Lewis children interested in getting involved with Tottenham?

13:03It's a nightmare. You get so much grief. You're going to be abused. Things start going wrong on the pitch. Even if it's not your fault and you've done your best job, we're still going to abuse you. That's just the way it is. Why open yourself up to this public perception? and then you look at the entire worth of the Tavistock group and it's around 6.3 billion. With a bit of work, the growth of Tottenham and football in the Premier League with it, you could easily be talking about Tottenham being worth around 6 billion pounds in five to 10 years' time. It doubles the value of Tavistock in its entirety.

13:41It adds it by about 50%, I think. Yeah, it's a huge amount. Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. I don't know whether it's just boredom. I don't know what they do. Whether they do anything else, I'm sure they do. But, yeah, I mean, they seem to be at the games. They seem to be interested. They're making the right noises. And everyone said, you know, they made the statement when they sort of made the change with Daniel Levy. And everyone said, oh, yeah, we'll believe when we see it a month later. We've seen 100 million come through. They're saying there's more to come. I think they're pretty pointed in the statement as well today where they said they used the word initial.

14:15um first then they said there's more to come you know they said it's about sporting investment and kicking on they're all the things we want to hear as fans in my perspective so no matter what i don't think fans should be thinking right we're going to go in january and spend 300 million because i don't think that's the case but i do think this gives us more flexibility i think it sort of guarantees we will dip into the market in january we normally do anyway and i think it means we're set up nicely for next summer as well um to have a have another decent sort of healthy spend in the summer so so yeah i think that's what it does is it just makes our position more healthy more healthy more liquid like more flexible it doesn't it's not a you know a game changer on its own but if it's a precursor to another 100 million a few years time and to being able to buy those two or three more xavi simons type players that you know just elevate us a bit more then you get in the champions league every year then you get that revenue as well your sponsorship revenue goes up and and you're just across the board more powerful yeah bigger spending could that 100 million pound be amortized to get in Semenyo and Adam Morton or do you need more money?

15:16I almost tweeted this the other and named those exact two players. Yeah they're the ones. We're a title challenging team if we get them in. Yeah and I don't want to be boring with this I do sort of get what some people are saying with Semenyo being like us leaning into the Frank you know a bit more direct approach because he's another kudos isn't he give him the ball he'll try and beat three men and try and do something score a goal he's not necessarily a creator he's He's a threat, isn't he? So I sort of get that maybe that's leaning into something some people are moaning about. But at the same time, if you can get some in here, you get some in here, don't you?

15:49Yeah. I mean, what could you possibly moan about? He's like one of the best players in the league. Yes, if you can get him, you get him. But to answer the question, could you do that with 100 million? Yeah, you could do that as long as you were confident that basically what it would do was if you look at our last five years, we've spent quite a lot. We've not sold much. And that's what gave us the cash flow headache over the summer. And you saw the Macquarie thing where they needed to sort of bring some of the revenue forward. They've basically gone advance on some of our Premier League revenue, which is no big deal, probably cost a couple of million pounds.

16:22It just brings the cash forward. And the reason we've done that is because we still owe a lot of money. So people don't know this was a few months back, wasn't it? So they essentially, a company gave us money based on future Premier League earnings, right? Yeah. And some people were alarmed by it. it's nothing to be alarmed by. All it was was saying, look, we know the Premier League are going to give us, I don't know whether it is, £80 million in March. We need some of that cash now. So Macquarie have said, we'll give you that cash now. In exchange, you'll give us a chunk of it when it arrives.

16:53And the fee would be a couple of million. £2 million or something, yeah. So they get their£2 million for not doing much, basically giving us a bit of cash early. And they know we're good for it. So it's a pretty low risk. Is that a bank? Yeah, an Australian bank. They do a lot of that sort of stuff. They've done it for other clubs before. So it's pretty typical, to be honest. It's nothing that was... It generated more news than it was worth. But what that did was prove that we did have a bit of a cash flow problem because of all the players we've bought over the last five years and still need to pay money towards, you know, cash to other clubs for.

17:25So that's the long way of saying, yes, we could do it, but it would potentially restrict our spending over the next few years if we then wanted to go and spend another 200 million next summer or, you know, the summer after. and you didn't back that up with, say, Champions League revenue. But you would think if you sold those two players, you'd probably get Champions League. So if you sold a player, that encounters, as long as you've paid off everything that's owed on the player, that's 100 % in the profit column. Yeah. So, Ben Tincor, you would imagine we've paid off the£27 million it costs to bring him in, perhaps.

18:01Yeah, it wouldn't be worth much on the book value. I'm crunching numbers, but you're probably under£10 million. um sometimes that sort of smooths out again when you renew the contracts um so he has had his contract renewed so he has increased i i think you can then sort of say you don't three years in and you renew their contract you can then say well this is how much they're worth now we're going to spread that over the next five years i think you can do that um but i don't know how that interacts with their restrictions so so if you're if you're selling when you say book value you mean the value they're worth to the club the accounts yeah so so in the accounts gauged how do you know this worth only 10 million so say um say we signed robert charleston's always the one i go to because he was a nice even 50 million you sign him whatever it was was it four years ago yeah you can amortize over five years so he costs 50 million that's 10 million a year off his value so they count it like it's a printer or something like it's that's how other companies would like a tractor or whatever and they would say right that's worth this much and each year we're going to say it depreciates by this this you know even value so although that doesn't work with players on the accounts that's what it says so it now says richardson's worth 10 million pounds let's say i think it was 20 million last summer so so so it's 10 million pounds say next summer but that isn't real if what but if someone buys if if he signs a new contract and we sell him for 40 million then it's 30 million profit in the books yeah gotcha but if we sell him for 12 million let's say people might think it's 12 million profit it's not it's 2 million profit it's yeah i got sure that makes complete sense so um you know a lot of people were asking the question about why we're renewing ben ten core's contract he's not perhaps at the level that that we want him to be at it may be that frank thinks he's great and that's why he signed a new contract but But that not being able to sell players and not having a squad young enough to find new clubs for them and kind of damaging the sell-on value by supporting Mourinho and Conte in the way that we did, it means that it feels like we're now building a squad that is and will have interest from other clubs if and when we decide to move them on or interest comes in.

20:10Like, for example, Odebeer, who hasn't started brilliantly for Spurs, but a good half a season and then his value is that the club will want to come in and buy him sign Intel for 35 million people might not say all right he's not good enough he's not really yet but massive selling value if things go right for him so it's it feels like we're building a stock of players that can potentially be sold if if if the opportunity presents itself and we agree to do it the world's biggest soccer tournament has arrived and you can trade the entire tournament on Calci on Calci you can trade every match from the opening stage all the way to the final on Calci you're trading against peers in a live market, meaning there's no house.

20:45And as the probability changes, you can buy in and out of your position. For a limited time, download the CalShea app and use code CUP26 to get$10 when you trade 10. K-A-L-S-H-I CalShea. Trade the beautiful game. 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see calshea.com slash regulatory. If you're a small business owner, you'll know just what it's like to be the chief everything officer. HR, payroll, employee benefits.

21:16Well, Gusto can do all of that for you. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one, remote friendly and incredibly easy to use. It's quick and simple to switch to Gusto. Just transfer your existing data to get up and running fast. Try Gusto today at gusto.com forward slash locked on soccer and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's gusto.com forward slash locked on soccer. The entire summer of soccer is on PrizePix. All 48 countries in every matchup. And if you rep your side before the round of 16 on PrizePix, you could win a trip to the finals in New York.

21:51It's the biggest tournament ever, which means there's even more opportunities to cash in while you root for your favorite national sides and global soccer stars. Download the app today and use code CUP26 to get$50 instantly in lineups when you play your first$5. Download the app today and use code CUP26 to get$50 instantly in lineups when you play your first$5. PrizePix, America's number one sports picks app. Do you think that is what's happening? I think so. I think that's important as well. You need to sell in a PSR world. Because we've seen it ourselves. We've seen it where we haven't got. I think we owe, as of last June, we owed over£300 million to other clubs.

22:25we were owed 50 million so it's net of 270 million that's quite a big bill you know whereas if you've sold players like Chelsea people say how can Chelsea do it it's because they keep on selling every summer and they're consistently doing it they made a profit this year right they made a profit yeah which is an on-paper profit but yeah it's um yeah they made a profit which is mad so it's but the problem is they've locked themselves into that model now they have to sell every summer otherwise they're in trouble so for them it's a big risk we're not in quite that position but we do need to start selling more so so yeah as you say we passed i think we did a few things that we we neglected the academy a bit so there wasn't much coming through like you said the conte marino stuff uh we didn't buy particularly well we didn't create a good environment for players to thrive in and all those things together i mean we've struggled to sell players the last few years whereas i think now like you say the squad even you look at like drag is it he's what did we what he cost 20 25 million something like that we'll get our money back and getting our money back is making profit if we were to sell him next summer um and i think that applies to a lot of the players currently i can only really see what do you mean getting our money back so i think if we were to sell him next summer i think someone would probably pay what we paid for him yeah but because we've had him for whatever it'll be then two and a half years his book value will be half what it started at so his book value might be only 12 and a half million anything on top of that is a profit so this is this is psr the way the way psr yes that's the accounting side of things yeah fascinating well i think it's fascinating anyway um actually this is how interested i am in this is i don't know if we mentioned this in the previous time we spoke i messaged you and i said uh we were talking about tax on transfers do you remember yeah yeah that's good stuff that's good stuff i mean what was the answer to it i can't remember is it that i actually this is my accountant who does my accounts i have to pay him right obviously yeah and i message him talking to him about this and he's like thank christ this is the most interesting thing i've been asked all day but yeah effectively the way they account is that they don't pay tax because especially because most clubs post losses right yeah i think it was corp tax you're asking about wasn't it and yeah they they pay corp tax on any profit but obviously a lot of attack a lot of companies football clubs don't make a profit i think there are only three or four in the premier league that do make a profit at the moment we're not one of them but we do make this again you get into the all these accounting things that sort of people glaze over but like we're quite healthy in terms of EBITDA things like that which is when you strip out some of your accounting things like your depreciation and stuff like that where we don't make a profit is because we can strip out 80 odd million a season for the stadium and say the stadium is getting less valuable as it gets older so we're going to reflect that in our accounts that's an asset that's not as valuable as it was last year and and there's other things you can strip out that make us non-profitable and therefore we don't pay tax but really we're fine but in real so in real terms you probably are profit making but you can account for it and make it look like you're not pretty much yeah that's pretty much HMRC look at that and go hang on a minute that's um no they they're sort of happy for you to count because in theory again say you're another company and you bought an asset like we bought the stadium we've paid a billion they're sort of happy they need a way a mechanism if you're saying that isn't as valuable if we were to sell it now it's not as valuable as it was 12 months ago 24 months ago so they let you apply these concepts to say we're having to write down the value of these assets that we own so we're not as valuable we haven't got as much as we had last year so you can't tax us as if we did have that much but is that true and why did why are they allowed to do it just because they've got to apply a general because there's yeah a rule so many people they've got to apply general rule for all yeah why don't they apply some rules so i pay less tax men yeah it's a good question i'll ask them i'll give them a bell cheers mate um so uh so we know why they're putting the money in is to give us more flexibility and to ensure that um that we're going to be able to compete in the transfer market and sort any cash flow issues out as well um why specifically now why not in a month why not at the end of the the calendar year what is the only relevance to why it's now i don't think so i think personally i think it's just following off the back of they they said about this you know whatever it was six weeks ago i think they've let the dust settle a little bit after all those changes and then they've come out with it it was rumored a while back so it might have been in the works for a while they they sort of want when they actually do it and they put it through they have to announce it people say oh why are they announcing it they have to because it will show up on company's house um it will pretty soon come to the four anyway and be shared online so you might as well announce it um you know you might as well take the pat on the back you get with it because it's a good thing no matter how you know how we spend it it's a good thing it's 100 million we didn't have in the club before so even some people said i'd probably go towards the hotel and infrastructure even if it did i don't think it's all going towards even if it did that's not a bad thing because that hotel brings in revenue for the club lets us spend more money every year so it's no matter how they can eventually sell the hotel to ourselves if we want to yeah yeah exactly if you're into trouble you sell it to top bowling.

27:26Yeah, well, I mean, but that's effectively what Chelsea have done is that they've sold an asset in their women's team to another company that they set up. They injected cash into that company and then transferred it to Chelsea in return for the registration of the women's team. Yeah, it's mad. And the people holding up Chelsea is a good model, an ambitious model. I mean, ambitious maybe, but it's mad. You can't keep that going forever at some point. Was that a, that felt like a sly dig at me? because I have made a point that talking about Chelsea would be an ambitious football club. Would you be worried?

27:59It's ambitious, but it's reckless, I'd say. Would you? Yeah, it's ambitious because obviously you are going out and spending a lot of money. You are going out and spending it. But when you look at their squad, I mean, would you think two billion's been spent on it? It's a little bit ropey for two billion spend. And they've now locked themselves into a model where if they don't get Champions League, they have to asset strip. They have to sell things like the women's club, the hotels. They also have to sell players every summer. So next summer, if they don't get top five, they're going to have to sell two, three players, four players before they even get started on spending.

28:28It's a cycle they've locked themselves into now. And the only way to break that cycle is to hugely up your revenues, which is not really a way of doing, or to just stop spending for two or three years, which they're not going to do either. So, yeah, they've got to sell now every year. Well, does that mean not stop spending? If they stop spending, they don't have to sell because they can use the money coming into the club. If they stopped spending, they would still have to sell. They just wouldn't have to sell as many. And there would be a point where they then didn't have to sell after three, four years.

29:00Right, fine. So we're in a situation where a really fallow season for Chelsea could be completely damaging if their players fall off in their value. Because right now they've got a lot of players that they could sell on if they needed to. They're bloated. But if they have a poor season and then the valuations and interest in their players drops, they're in a big they're in a difficult situation yeah and also the back to that amortization thing the book value i haven't been through and looked at what the book value of their players would be but because they you know they snuck in before the rules changed and the amortization was capped at five years and they that was one of their loopholes was we're going to put people on nine year contracts then we can amortize them over nine years so you spend 100 million on kaisado only 10 million a year is going against your books for that because they can amortize over that longer period so so that that helped because it meant you can spend more now but it also locks you into 10 million every year for the next 10 years and they did the same with another 20 players you know so so every single year their amortization bill is over 300 million and they've got to take that off of their accounts um their sort of profit and loss before they even get started so they are locked in they've got a small stadium they don't generate a lot of money they need champions league clubbell covers god's end for them they need they need that those additional sorts of revenue or they need to keep finding loopholes or they're in big trouble.

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32:07And Messi only trusts Duracell. So why announce it now? I guess I think you sort of already answered, but it's a good news story. Why not announce it? It's going to appear on accounts eventually. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It gets people talking. What I don't understand is why people immediately move to be cynical about it. Oh, it's for the hotel. That doesn't get us two players we need. It's like, this is good news. The fact that they're... Yeah. Go on, Ben, sorry. no matter how you which way you cut it or what it's for it's good news because say say they need 50 million for the hotel where where did where else would that money have come from if not from the revenues of the club which then stops it being spent on players whereas if they're putting 100 million of their money in that can cover that 50 minutes even if it's not 100 towards players even if some of it is for players already bought we needed to find that money from somewhere so it's an extra 100 million no matter what it specifically goes to that pound to into what thing, we've now got 100 million extra to spend and effectively to spend on football spend.

33:06And they've said pretty much as much in their statements. Yeah, well, Venkatesham talked about empowering the management team. Do you think this signals a new sort of football-first structure at Spurs, or do you reckon it's just a bit of PR? Does it feel, it might just be bullshit, might be propaganda or rhetoric, but it feels like that might be the case. That's what I want to believe right now. I think it does feel like it. I think I can understand the skepticism particularly you know because it wasn't a new owner entirely it's sort of a handing over of you know from Joe to the kids but it's like there were there were some words initially but we have seen tangible things and we've seen they said they were going to put money in we've now seen the first chunk of that they haven't said this is it they've said this is an issue when there'll be more I at the moment I don't really see any any reason to lean negative or skeptical like they're they're doing what they said they were going to do they've changed the structure they've brought in new people i think we are moving towards a more modern more competitive way of operating i don't think that means we're suddenly going to spend 500 million and we're suddenly going to go mad you know and they're going to put billions in but i think it's a more sensible yet more football first model it feels like and we'll see but that's what it feels like what um when you said it's a that that 100 million if it's a share issue counts towards psr as income so this is one where it counts so what's happening is the club is creating more shares and they're saying right we're gonna sell those shares and you could sell them to anyone in theory but they already have a bio you know for them obviously so enic have got the power to both change the the way the shares are structured off spurs because they hold over over 75 percent and then they can you know put them up for sale and they've obviously already put other money to buy them so they valued them they've sold them and i think i think the value they put on them was something like seven pence a share or something it worked out to about two and a half billion i think maybe normics worked out and if you keep doing this does the share decrease in value yeah so the shares that people own the individual shares decrease because obviously say you start with i don't know a million and you've got 1.1 million they're all worth slightly less each but so other shareholders don't love it and that's why you need a certain proportion of shares to be able to do that um but it's yeah there's no downside for the club itself it's more a downside for shareholders this is when the government so in in a broader sort of societal sense when the government print cash it's called quantitative easing if i remember rightly which means they they pump cash into the economy but the it eventually promotes inflation yeah They basically print more banknotes and just circulate them through the banks, essentially.

35:52And as you say, that means there's more cash out there, and then that has the effect of scarcity breeds value. So some more of it means you go down. It's that sort of supply and demand basics, and that then brings the value of your currency down. And that's where countries like Zimbabwe had hyperinflation, where they just kept printing money, printing money, printing money. It's so much money. everyone has so much of it that you had to pay loads to get anything and inflation goes up yeah so now i've come to my i've got to my answer that i wanted to ask which is why don't we just you know pump a billion pounds offer shares up and pump a billion pounds in but the problem is the shareholders there's probably only so much you can do but obviously existing shareholders are going boy what are you doing this is this is crazy right because they're sure i need to ask about this because there because what i don't know is why say newcastle's owners wouldn't do that so there must be some sort of restriction um yeah in terms of how much you can do i don't i don't know what those are um but there must there must be something that prevents you from going completely mental with it yeah there's a limit over and over so many times and and there might be psr rules that we don't know about that and that's the other point is yeah although it counts as cash coming in, but it doesn't count as profit.

37:11So there's sort of different accounting concepts. So it goes into your balance sheet and it's cash, but it's not profit. So when you say it counts from a PSR perspective, it sort of – well, it doesn't really, but it helps, but it doesn't count as in it suddenly you've made a£100 million profit. It doesn't improve the window to a point of£100 million. so if you put a billion in you wouldn't have a billion pounds no exactly yeah yeah so so that's the other problem is you would still be making a loss and and that's probably the other reason that newcastle wouldn't do it is because you would you would you go and spend that billion and that's the same with uh you know if the other guy the dj come in you spend a billion you can't you can't just gift that to the club but even if you could if they then spend it you've you're gonna make a billion pound loss um and then and then you're gonna fall foul of every rule that's out there so it's just on that and this is a good place for us to end is um what did you make of that 4.5 billion pound approach to type numbers you in favor it did it worry you what did you feel about it i don't i mean i've never had him before i don't know if you had um before no um i'm just i mean he seems like a he's interesting guy isn't he nasa and he's a dj it's a strange combination but it never felt all that serious to me just because I mean people say he did clearly have pictures of the stadium but they're obliged to give him a tour of the stadium and stuff like that when you declare interest it doesn't matter me and you could declare interest and they'd be obliged to show us around the stadium if they thought we had the money so yeah it's you can get those sort of things not those people no

38:52so I don't know I don't know whether he was ever really interested he might have been but it never felt like they were going to sell because they've shown no real willingness to sell. The fact that you've got a tour at the stadium didn't really make me feel like it was more likely. To me, I think last time I spoke, I just don't think they want to sell just now. I think they want to give it a go. They know they can still sell for billions of pounds in a few years' time. They can't really go wrong, really, by holding on to it. Other than public opinion turning on them. If there was legitimate money from, say, the Middle East, and no doubt that money will come, that fans might put significant pressure on the family to sell.

39:34But I don't know how quickly we'd be able to mobilize and enough people would get on board for it to even happen. I don't know. Yeah, and whether they didn't care. Like Joey Levy sat on his yacht for 20 years. He didn't give a shit. They said, like, you know. But the fact that they're visible at games is interesting to me. Like, it looks weird looking up at them because it's not Daniel Levy, right? And Josh Levy, it's not. Those guys, it's this new bunch And as much as, you know, I'm sure Vivian Lewis has been so successful. I don't know what she's done, but I'm sure she's been massively successful, but she doesn't carry herself like a chairman or an owner of a football club.

40:11I don't know what I'm pointing to. Yeah, you mentioned that before, like a Karen Brady, like sort of almost. Maybe it's just because we're used to seeing her there, but she sort of fits there, doesn't she? Because she's just like, she holds, she's like a man. She's got the power stance, yeah. she's like she's masculine and she's operated in a masculine world her entire life and so she kind of can carry it off whereas vivian yeah lewis looks like a lovely lady essentially which is probably like a yeah yeah no yeah she looks like something you could have a nice chat with she looks like a nice person that's what it is and yeah yeah and it comes back to your original point i don't know if they just love the club if they're bored if they're what but to me it feels like they they turn up to games they seem to want to give it a go they're reported to be big big fan so yeah i i'm quite happy personally with them giving it a go for the next fight especially if they're going to inject some cash um i think that's a good scenario it's a great scenario if this works it means we're still in effect we're still owned by normal people right whoever best did it vested interest it's not a nation-backed state it's not they are tottenham fans yeah there's you know it's about as good as you can can ask for really yeah exactly they can make it work i think it's ideal rather than selling to a you know somewhere where there's moral questions and there's all that sort of stuff or there's well at least we already know the moral questions that we have to answer for you know what joe lewis has been involved in but we know those whereas you know saudi backers and stuff like that it's just a different it's a minefield isn't it it's a different kettle of fish we did a we did a um an episode of the lab if you're listening to this and you haven't listened to other episodes uh about sports washing specifically but the the human rights issues of the various people that are or groups that are interested in buying tottenham if you want something cheery to listen to on your first day afternoon after listening to this why don't you find make yourself completely miserable and listen to that it is interesting though um it's well worth a listen i'd say i thought that was a good episode i spoke really well on it and it outlined a lot of the things that people like you said on the episode people might care and they might not and then it's a different episode so i get too far into it but yeah there's some terrible terrible things and and really do we want our club that we love to be associated with it the ideal world i would say no i would too but um there are people out there that wouldn't you know didn't care as well so it's uh it's one of them ones isn't it really um if you if this is going to be published on the um the main fighting cock feed just so people can listen to it because i think people you know if they don't listen to the lab to still be interested in this conversation so if you are there then and you enjoyed this conversation then go over to the lab on Spotify and follow it there and you'll get every episode, subscribe and five stars and all that good stuff as well.

42:51Ben, your Twitter is, I changed it on your advice, didn't I? What was it? It was Ben Y86 or something, wasn't it? It is now Ben underscore Y86. Yeah. Perfect. You know better than I do. That's so much, so much better than what was it before? Ben W loaded numbers. Yeah, exactly. Right, Ben, you're a legend. Thank you so much. and no doubt we'll speak soon. Yeah, sounds good. Cheers. Legally, we can't say drinking Storm makes you smarter and more focused. But with zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine and immunity support, you're smarter and more focused for drinking Storm. Storm, good energy in, good energy out.

43:30Energy for life. Find the biggest voices in sports on the Sports Social Podcast Network. Like me, Ben, and my co-host JG from the Game to Love Tennis podcast, bringing you all the drama, debate, and daily reaction for the world of tennis. With Wimbledon, we'll be covering every twist and turn of the tournament with daily podcasts throughout the championships. All the biggest talking points from SW19 will be there every day to break it all down. Search Game to Love Tennis podcast and listen wherever you get your podcasts.