news-engine

It is now nearly a year since Daniel Levy was dismissed as Tottenham Hotspur chairman by the Lewis family. It has been 12 months of dramatic twists and turns, with Spurs avoiding relegation on the final day of the Premier League season, and then spending unprecedented sums this summer to try to make sure such a scare never happens again. But while most fans focus on the football — and a dubbing by Brentford — another set of issues have been bubbling away separately. These relate to Levy’s continued position as a minority shareholder in the club. This has been in the news for much of this summer, even as we approach the first anniversary of Levy’s dismissal, and specifically this month, after he missed the opportunity last week to participate in the Lewis family’s latest equity injection into the club. On Thursday morning the club confirmed that his shareholding has been diluted, down by roughly two per cent, after the creation of new ENIC shares. Levy’s dismissal last September left him in an unusual position. He was out of his job as executive chairman and removed from the board, which he had been part of for 24 years. But he maintained his substantial stake in the club. Put roughly, Levy now owns just over 24 per cent of Tottenham Hotspur, down from the figure of roughly 26 per cent before the events of this summer. The dilution of that stake has turned into one of the stories of Tottenham’s summer. The last year has shown that even this stake, of slightly less than one-quarter, does not in itself buy you a lot of power at the club. The Lewis family are demonstrably in full control, as proven by their sacking of Levy last year. And he does not even have the right to stay on the board. Nothing has happened since to suggest that the vast majority of Levy’s ENIC stake has in fact been sold to Eight Sports, a new vehicle based on Hong Kong and US investors. Nobody has provided any confirmation that such a sale has taken place, leaving Eight Sports still firmly on the outside, not a shareholder in ENIC or Tottenham, not at the table with the Lewis family. The Lewis family are not Tottenham’s only recent source of external cash. A filing at UK Companies House dated August 14 confirmed the club’s ongoing relationship with Macquarie, a bank. Spurs pulled forward a chunk of their Premier League broadcast payments last August, receiving cash up front instead of waiting for the league to make distributions across the season. Macquarie lend them a smaller amount than those payments, then take the latter when they arrive from the league; the difference is, in effect, an interest payment to the bank.The latest filing confirms that arrangement has continued into the 2026-27 season. The amount of cash pulled forward has not been disclosed. Levy’s ENIC shareholding has decreased from 29.88 per cent to 27.38 per cent. Taken together, this means that Levy’s overall Tottenham stake has shrunk from just over 26 per cent to just over 24 per cent.