Tottenham Hotspur reduce off-field staff wages by 20%
Tottenham Hotspur are reducing the salaries of non-playing staff by 20% as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The measure means that 550 employees will endure the cuts for the next two months and comes after Premier League rivals Newcastle furloughed their staff.
“The club’s operations have effectively ceased, some of our fans will have lost their jobs and most will be worried about their future,” Spurs chairman Daniel Levy said.
“Our sponsors will be concerned about their businesses and our media partners have no certainty when we may play games again or whether we will be allowed to play in front of our fans.
“In the meantime, the club has an annual cost base running into hundreds of millions of pounds.
“We have seen some of the biggest clubs in the world such as Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus take steps to reduce their costs.
“(On Monday), having already taken steps to reduce costs, we ourselves made the difficult decision – in order to protect jobs – to reduce the remuneration of all 550 non-playing directors and employees for April and May by 20% utilising, where appropriate, the Government’s furlough scheme.”
Levy offers a bleak outlook for the game as Covid-19 sweeps across the globe.
“When I read or hear stories about player transfers this summer like nothing has happened, people need to wake up to the enormity of what is happening around us,” he said.
“With over 786,000 infected, nearly 38,000 deaths and large segments of the world in lockdown, we need to realise that football cannot operate in a bubble.
“We maybe the eighth largest club in the world by revenue according to the Deloitte survey, but all that historical data is totally irrelevant as this virus has no boundaries.”
On the subject of finances, Levy was paid a £3million bonus for delivering the club’s new stadium.
The hefty gift, which was additional to his £4million salary, was deferred from 2018, after Spurs moved into their 62,000-seater stadium – widely regarded as the best in the world – last April.
Levy was paid the bonus almost a year ago in 2019.
