How would West Ham or Spurs relegation hit London?

Relegation for West Ham United or Tottenham Hotspur would affect staff at every level of the club as well as impacting their local communities, a former Premier League chief executive has said.

In terms of crowd size – with both averaging attendances of around 60,000 – either club would be the biggest ever to be relegated from the Premier League.

Football finance experts have forecast West Ham could lose around £100m and Spurs as much as £261m, with the repercussions being felt far and wide.

"It's really the off-pitch side that gets hurt the most," former Aston Villa chief executive Keith Wyness told BBC London.

Wyness arrived at Villa just after their relegation in 2016 with one of his first tasks being to decide where cuts should be made.

He said: "In the Villa case, nearly 250 people in the end had to be reduced from the payroll.

"It was brutal. A lot of the cuts came in the sponsorship and commercial revenue side, where there was less need to service some very complex deals, but you have to look at streamlining every part of the club."

Another area of concern is the charitable foundations through which Tottenham and West Ham deliver valuable work in their neighbourhoods.

Those foundations provide mentoring, education and employment opportunities, as well as engaging young people and reaching some of the most vulnerable across London.

"We made sure the foundation itself stayed as strong as possible," said Wyness. "But it had to be scaled back, there's no doubt.

"It's certain that a lot of the plans we had to grow or develop those areas had to be put on hold."

On the Tottenham High Road there are fears among some bar and café owners about a possible drop in footfall on match days.

"It is a bit of a nervous time," said Asllan Islami, general manager of the Blue Coats pub.

"We won't have those key London derbies against Arsenal and Chelsea, or those regular big matches against Manchester United, Manchester City or Liverpool."

Islami – who himself supports Spurs – is remaining optimistic, nevertheless.

"On the flip side there would be four extra home games in the Championship and if Tottenham were having a good season, I'm confident the crowds would still come."

Indeed, when Newcastle United last suffered the drop in 2015-16, their attendances rose slightly during a successful year in the Championship as they secured an immediate return to the Premier League as title-winners.

For Villa too the average crowd across their three years in the Championship fell by only around 5% on the previous three years in the Premier League.

However, neither Villa nor Newcastle were trying to fill stadiums as big as Tottenham's or West Ham's during a cost-of-living crisis.

Nor were they operating against a backdrop quite as competitive as London in terms of other sport and entertainment offerings.

"Crowds stayed pretty strong," said Wyness. "Though of course, there was absolutely no room for increasing ticket prices.

"And when it came to the top end hospitality we had to be really creative. It's much harder to try and sell those areas when you don't have the attractive Premier League fixtures every week."

He believes this is "where West Ham and Spurs have got to be careful - they can't focus on revenue streams they had built on the Premier League model.

"They've got to be realistic about it – no rose-tinted glasses. They've got to realise who they are right now. Some of those fixtures will not be so attractive."

Tottenham v Lincoln or West Ham v Stockport are potential Championship fixtures next season and would clearly be a much harder sell than Spurs v Arsenal or West Ham v Chelsea.

Currently Spurs charge fans an average of £76 for each home match, with only five clubs in Europe costing more. It's forecast that their matchday revenue of £131m across the season would plummet to around £79m in the Championship.

In an economic impact report published by Tottenham in December 2023 they claimed to generate £344m for the local economy and stated an aim to increase that to £585m by 2026-27.

They also said they supported 3,700 full-time jobs in the local area, with a target to raise that to 4,300 across the same period. Relegation would almost certainly hinder their chances of achieving those targets.

Over in Stratford, a West Ham relegation would hit every London council taxpayer in the pocket. The Hammers are tenants at London Stadium.

Under the terms of the agreement they signed with then Mayor Boris Johnson ahead of their move to the former Olympic Stadium in 2016, their annual rent will be cut in half should they go down. That would leave them paying just £2.2m a year.

Furthermore, the running costs of the additional four home games would also have to be met by the Greater London Authority, leaving the cost to Londoners at around £2.5m a year.

Asked how off-field staff at each club will be feeling right now, Wyness said: "It's just a very worrying time.

"There will be people, especially in the present financial climate, who will be very concerned, and that will translate into their job performance.

"It's so important for the leaders off the pitch in the club to be able to handle this with great humanity."

BBC London asked both clubs what plans are being drawn up to prepare for the possibility of relegation but they declined to comment.

Wyness said: "I hope they are planning properly, and not just paying lip service to it.

"You've got to be getting all your consultations ready in terms of layoffs and all that sort of thing, and I'm afraid it's just not pretty but this is the time to focus and be professional."

With so much at stake beyond the confines of the pitch, the stars of Tottenham and West Ham will be playing for far more than professional pride over the next few weeks as they bid to keep their clubs in the Premier League.

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