By: Jack Howes.
12th March 2026.
I wake up every morning feeling sick. As a lifelong Spurs fan with season tickets for the men and women’s teams, born in Enfield and currently able to see the Spurs stadium out of my living room window, the prospective relegation of the men’s team isn’t making my bum squeak so much as play its own sonata.
Post Tottenham Stress Disorder may not be a mental illness categorised in the DSM yet, but a few more gutless defeats and psychiatrists around the world cash in on Spurs fans’ trauma, guiding us insquare breathing techniques to use when we remember Conor Gallagher is on £200,000 a week.
Amidst the doom and gloom of the Premier League where Spurs and Arsenal are at wrong ends of the table, Spurs Women have been my, and many others’, sole source of footballing joy. Which brings us to the burning question: presuming a miracle-working-manager is not discovered under a stone in Tottenham and Spurs men are relegated, will the women’s team be impacted? Or to put it bluntly, will men, twas ever thus, ruin everything for women?
It’s not an unreasonable concern. If and when relegation for the men is confirmed, Spurs’ overall revenue is forecast to drop from around £600m to £350m a year. The women’s team makes a loss every year and CEO Vinai Venkatesham, who has done great things for the women’s team, bears a lot of responsibility for the fiasco on the men’s side and is reportedly unlikely to remain at the club long-term.
With the arrival of a new CEO who may not have the same interest in the women’s team, and club revenues falling by over 40 percent the doomsday scenario would see spending on Spurs Women halted and a promising young team sold for parts.
For a few reasons, I hope and think this will not be the case. First, the costs of running Spurs Women are relatively low; in the most recently published accounts, for the 2023-24 season, overall expenditure was £7m – a drop in the ocean for a club of Spurs’ size. That season the women’s side made £4.3m in revenue, helped by a run to the FA Cup final, meaning net losses for the side of about £2.7m.
Two seasons on, Spurs are spending considerably more on the playing squad, with £1m cumulative outlay on Toko Koga, Cathinka Tandberg, Signe Gaupset and Matilda Nilden across the last two transfer windows. The wage bill is presumably also rising, with the signing of those players alongside a glut of free agents.
Given those increases, plus the cost of replacing an entire coaching staff last summer, I estimate we are currently spending closer to £10m on the women’s team. With relatively little attendance growth, revenues will likely have remained at similar levels, perhaps increasing slightly on the back of the most recent record-breaking WSL TV deal. Taking all of this into account, I estimate the annual loss from the women’s team at about £5m a year currently.
If Spurs Women are indeed losing around £5m a year what might that mean? Even if the club’s incomings drop to £350m, £5m would represent only 1/70th of the club’s revenue. In other words, Spurs Women make up a relatively small part of Tottenham’s business structure. Conversely, the team generates fans and press attention at a level disporportionate to the money spent on it.
Additionally, it has taken considerable time for Spurs Women to progress up the table, with good results this season demonstrating the huge progress we’ve made on and off the pitch. If we were now to sell players, or merely scrimp on the fees or wages needed to sign new players this summer, we would be doing this at a time when spending on the women’s game is increasing exponentially. To recover lost ground in years to come we would therefore need to spend several times the amount saved. Ultimately, if the club want a competitive women’s team making cuts now just means having to spend a lot more later.
Spurs Women are also one of the few sources of positive PR the club currently possess – a good young team, beloved by its core fanbase, playing a style of football befitting the club’s values, garnering increasingly positive traction on social media and from the press. Cutting back on the women’s team to atone for failings on the men’s side would save relatively trivial sums (at least in footballing terms) and would be a PR disaster – one that would rank alongside Manchester United’s plan to make their women’s team train in portakabins.
Additionally, if Spurs men go down then next season there may be more focus on the women, as the only Spurs side playing in the top tier. That will bring pressure, particularly from the press. And it will be up to Spurs Women to uphold the club’s honour, preserve a modicum of club dignity and, most importantly, avoid the fate that has befallen the men. In the face of such attention, failing to invest in the team, or selling key players, would be catastrophic.
In a round-about way it is possible that relegation for the men will create an opportunity for Spurs Women. More focus on the women’s team will mean more pressure but if the squad and coaching staff harness it effectively and have another a good season, it could increase interest in the side. Fans of the men’s team, shorn of the usual fixtures against Arsenal, Chelsea, West Ham et al, may even be more inclined to go and watch Spurs Women. I would not be shocked to see the women’s team attract new fans, particularly for away games at the Emirates and other Premier League grounds. And if these new fans like what they see, maybe they will continue to watch and support the team.
Alongside that, a Spurs men’s side winning matches and boosting the vibes, even in a lower division, might perversely also do the women’s team some good. An under-rated factor in Spurs Women’s disappointing crowds this season has been Spurs Men destroying the club’s vibes and making fans of the men’s team, who many of us hoped could be won over to Spurs Women, to want as little Tottenham in their lives as possible. So, while these words may look daft in 12 months’ time, there is a chance that Spurs men in the Championship may bring some feelgood factor back to the club. After all they could actually start winning again – and make attending games less of the torture it is currently. If so, perhaps the women’s team will attract more fans.
To butcher a really promising team and create another self-made PR disaster, for the sake of saving a couple of million quid, would be incomprehensibly foolish. I am *fairly* confident that Spurs will not be this foolish, and that even under a new CEO, Spurs Women will get the investment needed to continue progressing.
With bated breath, we wait to see what unfolds…
Spurs Women Blog 
Unfortunately, dont agree.
Its inevitable that there will be a drop-off in financial support if they are relegated. Most of the available money will be thrown at an immediate return to the cash cow that is the Premier League, and I think common sense tells you the Women will be put on a back-burner.
There is precedent as well. Look at Leicester. Given resources to gain promotion to the WSL, recruited well initially, and now find themselves completely under-funded and staring relegation in the face following the collapse of the mens team, which may well see them relegated to League One.
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