Tottenham · Financial analysis

Tottenham lost £241m in three years

Tottenham won a European trophy in a season that ended with the club's largest loss of the three, and the accounts show why a club can lose that much and still sit inside the Premier League's limit. The rules allow the cost of the stadium, the women's team, the academy and community work to be taken out, and which company's accounts are tested changes the answer.

By Arthur van de Laak31 October 202611 min read

Figures as of 31 October 2026, Orange Engine release V2CI · Latest figures · What the engine does not capture

In the season to 30 June 2025 Tottenham won the Europa League, the club’s first major trophy in 17 years, and finished 17th in the Premier League. The accounts for that year show a loss before tax of £120.6m, the largest of three straight losing years.

Over the three years to June 2025 Tottenham lost £241.3m on the group’s own accounts, more than twice the £105m the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) allowed over three seasons. Once the costs those rules leave out are taken away, the figure we estimate is a profit of about £9.5m, in an assumption range of a £45.8m loss to a £24.5m profit. The range sits inside the limit at every point on the accounts of the group, and its low end needs neither the academy nor the women’s team.

The PSR figure is our estimate and not one Tottenham or the Premier League has published. PSR capped how much a club could lose after certain costs were removed: £105m over three seasons, of which £15m was allowed on the club’s own account and up to £90m more only with funding from the owner. Clubs gave the League an estimate covering these three years by 31 March 2025, with 2024/25 still under way (Rule E.50). The calculation that decides a breach came later: under the rules as amended during that season it uses filed accounts only, and for these three years it was due by 31 December 2025 (Rules E.51 and E.54). This reconstruction also rests on the filed accounts, though we cannot see what the club submitted.

What comes out, and how much

Those six lines come to £250.9m against a loss of £241.3m on the unrounded figures, which is how a £241.3m loss becomes a profit of about £9.5m.

Those lines do not all stand on the same footing. Depreciation and software come out under Rule A.1.11(a), which needs nothing more than the filed figure. The academy, women’s and community lines carry a condition: under the closing words of Rule A.1.11, each comes out only if it is separately disclosed in the notes to the accounts, or in supplementary information that reconciles to them and has been independently audited. Tottenham’s group notes separate none of the three beyond the donations. The club may have given the League audited schedules, but they are not public, so our academy and women’s lines are estimates of a deduction that may have been claimed, and we cannot say that it was.

Stadium depreciation. A stadium’s cost is spread over its working life, so each year’s accounts carry a charge for wear even though no cash leaves. Tottenham’s charge is between £42.5m and £51.4m a year, and the group prints it in its own column. The rule takes out the depreciation of all tangible fixed assets, so a club’s ground comes out of the calculation while its wages and the cost of its players’ registrations stay in. A club that has just built a stadium therefore has the most to take out, and the accounts carry the stadium at a fair value of £1,503.1m at June 2025.

Other depreciation. The rest of the charge is £53.6m, and this is where the training ground sits, though the accounts do not say so in terms. The stadium is the only property split out. Everything else is in land and buildings (£12.9m), general plant and equipment (£34.9m) or right-of-use assets, which are leased (£4.7m).

Women’s football. The group notes do not separate the women’s team, but it has its own company, Tottenham Hotspur Women Football Club Limited, with its own audited accounts. Revenue less the pre-tax result gives costs of £5.3m, £7.0m and £8.3m, which is £20.7m. Rule A.1.286 is narrower than that company’s whole cost: it counts expenditure directly attributable to training, educating and developing players, and 39 of the company’s 64 staff in 2024/25 were administrative. So £20.7m is the most that line could be on that company’s filed costs, unless costs paid elsewhere in the group also qualify: the company does not report what passes between it and the rest of the group, and its audit fee is paid elsewhere. The company holds no tangible assets, so none of this overlaps with the depreciation above.

Academy. This is the one deduction with no filed figure. The group, the football company and the stadium company each file accounts for all three years, and the notes of none of them print a cost for the academy or for youth development. The academy’s costs sit somewhere inside the group’s wage and operating lines. Rule A.1.289 counts them net of any central funds paid to clubs for that purpose, so the figure that matters is smaller than the academy’s gross cost. We assume £5m to £15m a year net, £10m in the central case. That assumption is ours, it has no source, and the club could put a filed figure on it in one line.

Community work. The rule counts donations and the net cost of community activity. The notes print only charitable donations, £1.0m in the three years. The directors’ report says contributions to the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation run at more than £0.5m a year, and the Foundation is a separate body. If the club’s own community spending is larger than the donations, the PSR figure improves.

The range, and the three things that drive it

The low end, a £45.8m loss, is the case the public accounts can support: no women’s costs, no academy, and right-of-use depreciation left in. The high end, a £24.5m profit, takes out everything with the academy at £15m a year.

• The academy moves the figure by up to £45m, and it is an assumption.
• The women’s costs move it by up to £20.7m. The company’s costs are filed, but how much of them qualifies, and whether it was shown to the League, is not public.
• Right-of-use depreciation moves it by £4.7m, because the accounts cannot show whether leased assets were treated like owned ones.

At the low end Tottenham are £59.2m inside £105m, but a loss of that size has a second test. Where the March estimate forecast a loss above £15m, a club had to show Secure Funding (Rule E.53): payments for shares or binding commitments to make them, not loans, enough to cover its cash losses from the start of the period to two seasons ahead. The accounts show ENIC, the majority owner, converting £100m of A shares into ordinary shares in December 2022 and buying £35m of new shares in 2024/25. That is owner support, and it does not show that the test was met. The central reconstruction is a profit, so it would not reach the £15m trigger, but the requirement depended on what Tottenham forecast in March 2025, and that submission is not public.

What stays in

Three large items are not deductions, and they sit inside both figures.

Interest. Interest expense was £84.3m over the three years. The group’s bonds are £525m issued in 2019 and £250m issued in June 2021, and the refinancing package they belong to carries a weighted rate of about 3.15%. No line of the interest note names them, so the bond share of the £84.3m cannot be read. The accounts print no interest capitalised in any of the three years. The cumulative amount inside the cost of the assets falls by the same £461,000 a year, to £24.4m at June 2025. We read that fall as depreciation, which would mean nothing was added in these years, though the accounts do not say so.

The warrant. The 2024/25 loss includes £23.4m for a rise in the value of warrants ENIC received with its A shares in June 2022, which let it subscribe for more shares. No cash moved. The warrants sit in the accounts as a liability at fair value, £52.1m at June 2025, and they can only be exercised on a change of control or lapse after 50 years. The directors describe them as, in substance, part of the club’s permanent equity. It is a non-cash charge, but it is not one of the deductions, so we leave it in the loss. Taking it out would add £23.4m to every figure in the range, and we do not.

Exceptional costs. Onerous contract costs of £18.2m stay in as well, £11.6m of it in 2024/25.

Is the stadium deduction fair?

My view is that it is. The purpose of PSR was never to discourage clubs from building stadiums and training facilities. The construction cost is capital investment, not an expense charged at once against profit. Depreciation spreads that investment over the asset’s useful life, and the rules remove the resulting charge. Tottenham are not receiving a bonus. The calculation is applying the rules as intended.

What interests me more is the return on that investment. Tottenham have built a stadium that earns money beyond football: concerts, NFL games, hospitality, attractions and other events. As an Arsenal supporter, I can admit that I envy the ambition of the building. It is modern, multifunctional and commercially powerful. That is where Tottenham’s strategic advantage lies, and the PSR deduction is only the accounting consequence.

Which company is tested

Everything above is on the group, Tottenham Hotspur Limited. The handbook’s definition of Annual Accounts starts from the accounts of the club itself and allows the group’s where the club considers that appropriate or the League asks for them. Which each club used is not public. At Tottenham the choice changes the answer.

The football company, Tottenham Hotspur Football & Athletic Co. Ltd, reported a loss of £342.1m over the same three years, £100.7m more than the group. After its own depreciation and donations come out the figure is about £314.9m, over the limit by £209.9m, and the academy assumption does not close that. This is our arithmetic on that one company’s accounts, not a calculation the League has accepted or Tottenham have submitted.

The reason is what that company does not contain. The football company fields the team and earns the broadcast and sponsorship money, but gate receipts and premium memberships belong to a different subsidiary, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Limited, which had revenue of £416.2m over the three years, £328.2m of it from gates, sponsorship and premium. In return the football company provides the team under a management agreement, and it booked £183.0m of management fees from other group companies over the three years. The training centre is supplied by a third company under another management agreement, and the women’s team is a fourth. So the football company’s accounts show the full cost of a team and only part of what people pay to watch it. That is why this article uses the group.

What this doesn’t say

• That Tottenham’s PSR figure is £9.5m, that they submitted group accounts, or that any rule was or was not broken. None of that is public.
• That the club is financially comfortable. A figure inside the limit says nothing about the £84.3m of interest being paid.

What this means for fans

Tottenham’s finances tell two stories. The first is of a football business that has invested heavily in infrastructure and built substantial earning capacity. The second is of a team that finished 17th in the Premier League while winning the Europa League.

Those outcomes sit alongside a reported three-year loss of £241m and a reconstructed PSR result that could be a profit once permitted costs are excluded. Neither figure, on its own, tells supporters whether the club is being run well on the pitch. PSR measures spending against a particular set of financial rules. It does not measure the quality of recruitment, how effectively the wage bill is deployed or whether investment produces trophies.

Tottenham’s stadium may prove to be an outstanding long-term investment, and the accounts already show the commercial potential. Whether that financial strength consistently translates into football success is a different question, and the one supporters will judge.