In The Money: Daniel Levy call could yet pay dividends for Tottenham after ‘absolutely wild’ development
Never one to pass up the opportunity to raise a few extra pounds – never mind potentially millions of pounds – Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy may well be feeling smug about a recent business decision.
Tottenham are one of a number of high-profile football clubs and players to have launched a fan token scheme, which offers fans across the globe access to a unique range of activities, rewards and experiences.
Basically, it is a way of supporters being made to feel even more special, even if they are effectively being asked to purchase certain things that would previously have been free.
The Spurs Fan Token, as it is officially known, was plugged by the club on its official website on September, but not a lot has been said about it since – for better or worse.
However, finance expert and author Martin Calladine, who has written books such as ‘No Questions Asked: How football joined the crypto con’ and ‘Fit and Proper People’, shared details on Twitter [21 December] regarding an interesting development in recent days.
“Some absolutely wild price speculation going on with Spurs fan tokens,” he said. “Prices more than doubled between Tuesday and Wednesday, before collapsing back.
“Remember, these tokens are a membership rewards scheme and definitely not for trading.”
To back up Calldine’s initial point, he posted a graph showing the prices of a fan token had climbed from below £3 on 18 December, to around £6.50 on 20 December.
Exactly what was behind that influx is unknown, but it now appears to have reverted back to around the £3.50 mark as of 21 December.
In short, the longer the price stands at a figure such as £6.50, the more Spurs stand to profit from a scheme many consider controversial.
While that figure alone is tiny in the grand scheme of things for a club that recorded a total revenue figure of £444million in its June 2022 accounts, as per the club’s official website, times it by thousands and you can begin to see why it can be so profitable.
Discussing the pros and cons of the scheme in a chat with Tottenham News on 3 October, football finance expert Dr Daniel Plumley said: “For Tottenham in particular, we’ve seen those wider strategies outside of football – the NFL deal, the F1 deal, the way they’ve set the stadium up to be multi-use, so they’ve done a lot right.
“They must be seeing something in this, and I think there are still potential possibilities in the market, but the barriers and the challenges with it still remain, it is one to keep an eye on.”
Given the tokens were available to non-members for an initial price of £1.65 two months ago, it is clear to see that they are already now much more valuable.
Just 10,000 tokens sold at that initial price, for example, would bring in £16,500, compared to £65,000 for the figure on 20 December.
The sustainability of the scheme is questionable, and as The Athletic pointed out on 3 October, 95 per cent of non-fungible tokens (NFT) projects promoted by athletes and celebrities in a recent sample were now worthless.
If it can bring in any sort of profit for Levy, though, then it can only be considered a positive from his perspective.
As these figures from this week alone go to show, however, it is an incredibly unpredictable scheme and ultimately one that may cause more harm than good as supporters are persuaded to dabble into this rather murky world.
In other Tottenham news, a player who recently produced a 100-per-cent performance has been declared fit to face Everton this weekend.