A collaborative piece by Tom Gladstone, co-founder at The Space Between agency.
One of Tottenham Hotspur’s long-standing sponsors has reportedly notified the club that their partnership will end this summer, with speculation that others will follow. The reasons given paint a bleak picture for Tottenham’s commercial partnership prospects.
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But – just as Spurs’ lowly Premier League standing coexists with a buoyant Champions League position, there are plenty of reasons why current sponsors might keep the faith despite relegation looming.
First, let’s unpick the departing sponsor’s gripes. The primary reason cited for cutting ties is performance-based, with the team currently struggling to beat last season’s 17th-placed finish in the League. Two disastrous seasons back-to-back starts to suggest an unwelcome trend. This domestic downward trajectory is compounded by a lack of pulling power when it comes to bringing in star quality – both on pitch and in the dug-out – and an increasingly disgruntled fanbase fuelling a negative (and poorly attended) matchday environment.
The inference is that the Tottenham IP has been tarnished and has lost its positive associative value. While sponsorship is proven to deliver a ‘performance dividend’ when teams are successful (as Arsenal partners may be experiencing) the opposite is also true. Poor on-pitch performance doesn’t just hit brand exposure and fan engagement levels, it damages a sponsor’s activation opportunity. Brands are less inclined to spend against the backdrop of poor performance, negative media coverage or fan discontent. Campaigns and messaging can fall flat, or worse, be seen as tone deaf.
The current reality for sponsors is clearly a long way from expectations of partnering with the ninth highest revenue generating club in Europe. They are undoubtedly a ‘big club’ commercially, whatever Big Ange might say, but not too big to go down. Relegation would have a compounding effect on potential sponsor value. Becoming a Championship club would cause a significant depreciation on that all-important IP. The claim in a recent Spurs’ sponsorship prospectus to be the ‘most exciting football club on the planet’ would need some editing.
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By GlobalDataThe other two pillars substantiating sponsorship value – exposure and tangible benefits – would also receive a hit. Sponsor visibility would drop off a cliff from the 920 million household reach and global eyeballs commanded by the Premier League. The ratecard for hard assets such as tickets, hospitality, player appearances, merchandise, and exclusive experiences would be recalibrated down.
Any wishful thinking that relegation would only be a single season hiatus might be tempered by that fact that since 2000, only 30% of relegated clubs have bounced back at the first time of asking. However, current sponsors will have contractual protection to mitigate the risk of a bottom three finish. All agreements should have a relegation clause that allows for renegotiation or, worst case, termination. There is no need to get out ahead of the drop. Indeed, given the out-going sponsor apparently signalled their intention to exit at the end of 2025, it appears that the spectre of relegation was not the deciding factor. Instead, it looks like a fundamental breakdown in the relationship, the communication and a loss of faith in the club as a credible partner.
So, will we see more sponsors head for the exit? Putting relegation to one side, how do the club’s commercial team justify the ongoing partnership potential? For a start, all the above – and the exiting sponsor’s entire rationale – is predicated on Tottenham as a men’s team sponsorship asset. But that isn’t how the club sells itself, or all that sponsors are buying into.
Tottenham’s women’s team are in the top half of the Barclays WSL and quarter finals of the Adobe Women’s FA Cup. Partners such as e.l.f. Cosmetics – who chose Tottenham Hotspur Women as their foundation partnership in UK football – are forging partnerships anchored in the women’s game. Brands are only scratching the surface of the potential in women’s football.
Beyond football, Tottenham have arguably the best stadium in the UK, positioned as ‘a London home for global entertainment’. And they’ve truly delivered on that billing. The multi-content venue has hosted annual NFL fixtures, world title boxing fights, European Rugby finals, and major music events, artists such as Lady Gaga, Travis Scott and Beyoncé. The 25-30 non-football events per year are opportunities for brand partners to extract greater value from their partnerships and all are entirely unrelated to the performance of the men’s football team.
Tottenham has also created one of the more progressive, marketing-centric partnership propositions in the market. The club have pioneered a performance marketing offering and champion a full-funnel approach to partnerships. Current sponsors Salesforce have apparently helped develop this powerful engagement engine for brand partners, leveraging club owned and operated channels, but also harnessing 1st party data to access fans beyond those channels.
With an addressable audience of over 300 million Meta users who engage with Tottenham Hotspur content and social following exceeding 120 million, that is a strong starting point for helping brands acquire or reward customers. The audience is significant and their fandom isn’t going anywhere, regardless of team under-performance.
Those are some pretty compelling levers to pull if the Tottenham commercial team need to show added value to keep existing partners sweet. Partner retention should be the number one commercial imperative when team performance dips, as the sell to new brands becomes that much harder. Not that Tottenham seem to have struggled on that front, despite the current sponsor disquiet. Losing tens of millions from a want-away partner is not welcome news but needs to be seen in the context of a commercial enterprise whose sponsorship revenue percentage growth over the last three years is greater than any other Premier League club. Top of the league on one count, at least.
Ultimately, clinging on to Premier League status will be the biggest factor influencing whether sponsors stick or twist. And should they get relegated, the decrease in sponsorship revenue will be just a fraction of the estimated £1/4 billion hit to club finances across all revenue streams. ‘To dare is to do’, but getting relegated is something the club’s commercial team dare not contemplate.
