Tottenham Hotspur’s Strategy To Become A ‘Super-Club’ Involves Jose Mourinho, Amazon, Alex Morgan And Gareth Bale

Mauricio Pochettino never wanted his Tottenham Hotspur team to be the subject of the latest season of Amazon’s
AMZN
‘All or Nothing’ series which has poked a camera through the doors of some of the biggest organizations in world sport including the All Blacks, Dallas Cowboys and Manchester City. He saw it as a fragmentation of the sacred bond between him and his players. Spurs chairman Daniel Levy, however, saw things differently. 

Of course, the £10 million Amazon paid Tottenham for behind the scenes access for nine episodes was surely a factor in Levy’s attitude towards the proposal, but making the North London club something of a TV drama represented the next stage of a process a number of years in the making.

Levy has long wanted more for Tottenham Hotspur. Having spent decades in the shadows of their more illustrious London neighbors, Spurs have embarked on a program to make themselves a so-called ‘super club’ in their own right. The most fundamental component of this was the construction of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, a gleaming 62,303-seater spaceship of a stadium which opened last year, setting a new standard for the Premier League
PINC
matchday experience.

Super clubs attract big names and few in the managerial game boast a bigger name than Jose Mourinho, the two times Champions League winner who replaced Pochettino midway through last season. Levy viewed the appointment of Mourinho as symbolic of how far Spurs have come under his stewardship, but this somewhat glossed over how the Portuguese’s stock had fallen after a less-than-glorious spell at Manchester United. 

Conveniently for Amazon, Mourinho makes for great TV. ‘All or Nothing Tottenham Hotspur’ isn’t so much a peek behind the curtain at Spurs, but an insight into one of the great characters of the modern game. Almost all of the season’s most talked about moments revolve around Mourinho, such is the pull of his personality.

Nonetheless, Tottenham Hotspur have almost certainly boosted their global standing as a brand both through their hiring of Mourinho and their documentation by Amazon, which have dovetailed nicely. In the end, Pochettino didn’t have to worry much about TV cameras being poked where he didn’t want them because he was gone only a few months into the 2019/20 season.

Now, Spurs have made waves in the transfer market by luring Gareth Bale back to the club. The Welshman became the most expensive signing in the sport’s history when he left North London for Real Madrid in 2013, scoring in two Champions League finals and underlining his status as one of the best British players of all time over seven years in the Spanish capital.

There have been conflicting reports over how much Tottenham are paying Bale, but by all accounts the Welshman has broken the club’s wage structure. For a player into the twilight of his career and increasingly injury prone, Bale’s signing also breaks Spurs’ transfer strategy of recent years which has seen them target talented youngsters with potentially high sell-on value.

Just like Mourinho, though, Bale will get fans talking about Tottenham Hotspur. Levy’s bet is that this will ultimately translate into new revenue streams at some point in the future, with the Amazon ‘All or Nothing’ series in particular exposing the North London club to the lucrative North American sporting audience.

The signing of Alex Morgan, American superstar of the women’s game, also plays into this. More people follow Morgan on Instagram than follow Tottenham Hotspur. The 31-year-old is an exceptional player and will improve Tottenham Hotspur Women on the pitch, but the addition of the World Cup winner and Olympic gold medallist is just another part of a larger, overarching process. Mourinho’s appointment, the Amazon series, Bale, Morgan… it’s all linked.