Tottenham Hotspur Take out £175m Bank of England Loan

Tottenham Hotspur have borrowed £175 million from the Bank of England, as the club seeks to mitigate the financial effects of the current Covid-19 crisis.

Spurs suspect that they may lose as much as £200m of revenue between lockdown beginning in March this year and June 2021.

As a result, they have requested help from the UK Government’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility. This has provided them with an unsecured loan.

It will need to be repaid in full by next April, though Spurs could redraw it for another year. The interest rate on the loan will be set at 0.5%, which is very low in commercial terms.

Tottenham have suffered a large commercial hit as their new stadium was also set to host a variety of non-football events that would have generated large amounts of revenue.

These included England versus Australia in the rugby league Ashes, a rugby union club match, two NFL games and Anthony Joshua’s world title fight against Kubrat Pulev.

Technology can bring the fans back

Spurs chairman Daniel Levy has said that he would like to see collaborative work done on how to find a technological solution to the problem of fans not being able to attend games live.

“It is imperative that we now all work together – scientists, technologists, the government and the live events sector – to find a safe way to bring spectators back to sport and entertainment venues," he said.

"Collectively we have the ability to support the development of new technologies to make this possible and to once again experience the passion of fans at live events."

Spurs announced last September that they had refinanced their stadium loans.

This comes after Spurs refinanced their stadium loans last September. The club had borrowed £637m from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and HSBC for the £1bn stadium construction project.

That cash was due to be repaid by Aril 2022. Levy has managed to convert around £525m of that debt into a bond scheme, however, that has staggered maturities of between 15 and 30 years.

The club's acccounts for last season, which were announced back at the start of the Covid-19 situation, showd total revenues of £460.7m.That revenue produced post-tax profits of £68.6m.

One Spurs player tests positive

Meanwhile, Spurs have also confirmed that a key first team player has tested positive for Covd-19.

The player has not been named, as the club would like to keep the details of his illness confidential. He has not shown symptoms, but will now isolate for seven days.

The positive test occurred in the latest round of Premier League testing, the fifth such round of testing which involved 1,197 players and members of staff at the 20 clubs in the competition.

The Premier League hierarchy has pledged to be transparent throughout the whole process of the competition restarting. There have now been 13 positives from 5,073 people screened on total in the Premier League.

There were zero positive results from the fourth round of testing, a sign that the protocols to keep players and staff safe from infection are working.

There had been concerns that a rising number of infections might stymie the league’s resumption on June 17, but that does not look like happening now.