With the Premier League 2018/19 season almost complete, North West rivals Manchester City and Liverpool are battling out the last few games for the honour of being crowned champions. Amidst the fiercely competitive on pitch action and almost unnoticed, Tottenham have gone straight in at the top of the hospitality league.
The Premier League is an astonishing revenue generating machine that from the opening season of 1992/93 has grown today to command multi billion television rights deals. The latest 2019 – 2022 TV deal is reported to be worth circa £9 billion alone.
The revenue generated by the Premier League in turn feeds the top clubs fuelling growth that now sees thirteen English clubs now feature in the 30 wealthiest clubs in Europe.
The senior management teams at Premier League clubs are today managing businesses akin to FTSE 100 companies, and every revenue stream is maximised as diversification is applied to football brands in 2019.
The football brand that has maintained top spot in revenue generation for many years is Manchester United, but others are catching up fast and diverse revenue streams may accelerate this.
With 30 – 76,000 fans attending home games every other weekend hospitality and catering presents football clubs with an opportunity many hospitality and catering providers can only dream of. The range of food and drink required on match day demands creative thinking to maximise the yield from the immense footfall. Tottenham’s new stadium seems to have grasped this better than all their competitors and as such has taken them top of the Premier League in hospitality revenue terms.
According to reports at The Sun, Tottenham are generating £800,000 in food and drink revenues at each home game through a diverse range of hospitality suites, restaurants, bars and street-food outlets on stadium concourses.
Based on 19 Premier League games and a minimum of three Champions League group matches, that is an additional income of £17.6million per season. Rivals Manchester City admit they do well to bring in £150,000 a game from hospitality at the Etihad.
Tottenham’s approach is making the rest of the Premier League work out what they can do to bridge the gap as Tottenham’s range of match day experiences eclipse anything else on offer at a European football stadium.
Michel Roux Jr, daughter Emily Roux and father Albert Roux OBE with Tottenham legend Ledley King
The big bucks are generated in fine dining with culinary royalty like the Roux Family and other fine dining options at The Vault, the Chef’s Table or Galvin’s.
Mid-market offerings, such as the various street-food vendors, the club’s own microbrewery serving craft ales, plus the longest bar in football and their three-second-per-pint beer pumps, swell the coffers further.
Tottenham have taken match day hospitality and catering to the next level through a range offering fans of all ages and incomes a Tottenham food and drink experience.
This revenue will enable Tottenham to invest in the team and accelerate progress in the Premier League and European competitions. If the brand diversification generating revenue is maintained through hospitality and catering as well as other lines of the business, we could see a new football power emerge in North London. Fans will no longer need to reminisce the good old days, they can experience them first hand on a match day.
