Tottenham Lost £120m, Finished 17th, and Still Won a European Trophy
The lowest league finish of the Premier League era for a European trophy winner. Spurs' accounts show a club whose finances and form pulled in opposite directions all season.
In the 2024-25 season covered by these accounts, Tottenham finished 17th in the Premier League, one place above relegation and the club's worst finish of the Premier League era, yet won the UEFA Europa League, beating Manchester United 1-0 in Bilbao through a scrambled Brennan Johnson goal to end a 17-year wait for a major trophy.
A brutal injury list across the season, which forced Ange Postecoglou to prioritise the cup competitions over an increasingly lost league campaign, coincided with a heavy financial toll. Tottenham posted a pre-tax loss of around £120m, one of the largest in the Premier League, alongside estimated borrowings of roughly £875m and interest payments of around £70m tied to the long-term financing of their stadium.
Turnover still grew by around 9% to close to £575m, helped by matchday income at one of Europe's best stadiums and the run to Wembley and beyond in the Europa League, showing the ground itself remains a powerful commercial asset even in a poor league season.
Staff costs of roughly £260m reflect a squad assembled to compete on multiple fronts, even if for long stretches of the season it looked capable of competing on only one of them.
Postecoglou was sacked within weeks of the Europa League final despite delivering the trophy, with the club citing league form. Few seasons in modern English football have shown such a stark gap between a club's cup form and everything else.
The decision to move on from a manager who had just delivered the club's first major trophy in 17 years underlined how central the stadium's ongoing debt burden has become to Tottenham's decision-making. With interest payments running into tens of millions each year, the board's tolerance for prolonged domestic underperformance, even alongside European success, appears to have shrunk considerably.
Champions League qualification through the Europa League win offers Tottenham a significant financial lifeline for the following season, but it also raises the stakes for whoever succeeds Postecoglou, tasked with justifying a stadium that generates elite revenue while a squad built to match it delivers results closer to a relegation battle.
Tottenham's accounts capture a season of total contradiction: a European trophy and a club-record-low league finish, a huge loss and record stadium revenue, all in the same 12 months.