It won't close the gap totally and forgive me for trolling, it is a really good day and I am always amused by comments about the unimportance of lower revenue club. Here is a good look at Spurs revenues relative to the five teams above them in terms of revenue, based on the 2014 season. The Forbes figures from May are even worse and show the gap is similar or a little greater than the
£120M figure MMS cited depending on how they convert the currency.
http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2015/04/tottenham-hotspur-bottom-line.html
http://www.forbes.com/soccer-valuations/list/
The new stadium will make up for the match day revenue gap, which after the 2014 season was
£57 million (£101M for Arsenal v £43M for Spurs) as MMS pointed out . With every match sold out, and a season ticket wait list supposedly 45K long, they should be able to sell the seats. Based on the stub hub pricing controversy, I would imagine they can raise prices as well, though they did not raise rates in 2015.
Tottenham’s match day revenue rose £3.7 million (9%) from £40.2 million to £43.9 million, but they were still overtaken by Manchester City £47 million. This is not going to change any time soon, following the decision to freeze ticket prices for 2014/15 season. Importantly, Tottenham generate less than half of the revenue of their rivals Manchester United and Arsenal, who both earn more than £100 million a season in their far larger stadiums........ Tottenham have only the 11th highest attendance in the Premier League with around 36,000, behind Sunderland, Everton and Aston Villa, but this is effectively full capacity with the club selling out all Premier League home games. This underlines the need for a new, larger stadium, which would satisfy a waiting list that has risen to over 45,000.
The real place they can hope to make up ground is on the field, though, based on the last 17 years, that is not too likely, Harry Kane's awesomeness aside. In 2014, making the UCL was worth about £40M more than getting Europa'd in terms of both TV and prize money, using stubby pencil Euro to Pound math.
Given the equitable nature of the Premier League TV deal, the real differentiator for the leading English clubs is in fact the Champions League. In 2013/14 Tottenham were more or less the same as the top five domestically, but their total broadcasting income of £95 million was easily surpassed by Chelsea £140 million, Manchester United £136 million, Manchester City £133 million and Arsenal £123 million, thanks to their Champions League receipts.
Although Tottenham earned €5.9 million prize money (£9.2 million including gate receipts) for reaching the last 16 of the Europa League, this was much lower than the Champions League, where the four English clubs earned an average of €38 million, ranging from Manchester United’s €45 million to Arsenal’s €27 million.
So, if the stadium came off well (closing the gap by
£60M, and they swapped spots with the Gunners in the Europe (closing the gap by an additional
£40M that will only grow with the difference in TV deals), they would be very close to meeting the gap, but still
£15-20M short. That would largely come from being way behind in terms of sponsorship dollars where Arsenal trounces them by
£35M a year. Even as great as Kane's mouth breathing face looks on a T-shirt, they are not going to catch Arsenal in sponsorship money.
As MMS pointed out it also remains to be seen what kind of debt they will have to take on to finance the multiple hundreds of million pounds they will spend on the stadium. They will get money from the NFL, and the club owns all of the land, some of which is going to be developed for housing and shopping and will help offset cost. Several articles toss around figures li
ke £150M as a target for naming rights, though that is all speculation until they actually put paint on the side of the building With those inputs, they might have less impact from stadium debt than what Arsenal had to pay in the last ten years Overall, financing a stadium in 2017 is probably easier than in 2005, just due to the much greater amount of cash that is coming into the BPL teams from the TV deals, though rising player salaries & transfer costs will eat some of that advantage.