Daniel Levy will be privately delighted by Barcelona news amid £28m Tottenham prospect - opinion

Daniel Levy, like many of the big wigs at the so-called Big Six clubs, has been far more wary of upsetting Tottenham fans since the European Super League debacle.

That project, alongside the similarly unpopular Project Big Picture, aimed to crystalise the existing advantages of the biggest clubs and make existential changes to their foundations.

Spurs distanced themselves from the Super League pretty quickly and, ostensibly, plenty of soul searching followed and hand wringing followed.

But ENIC and Levy ultimately see Spurs as a capital appreciation project that they can flip for a huge, perhaps unprecedented margin further down the line.

We have seen the first shoots of this with Levy’s revelation that the club is seeking fresh strategic investment, with reports suggesting they could sell a 10-15 per cent stake in the club.

Given Spurs’ self-anointed £3.75bn valuation – which, if a full sale was actioned, would be the biggest sports takeover of all time – a 10-15 per cent stake could set an investor back up to £560m.

To justify that price tag, the hierarchy need to do everything they can to increase turnover.

And the latest news from Barcelona will have them seeing pound signs.

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Spurs to play matches abroad following Barcelona update?

Premier League CEO Richard Masters recently claimed that there were no plans to take Premier League matches abroad.

But his language was suitably diplomatic so as to leave the door ajar.

The elite Premier League clubs are keen for brand exposure in the United States in particular and many analysts believed that is only a matter of time before their lobbying efforts come good.

Speaking in 2020, Daniel Levy himself said he was open to it – and in the world of football business, you know what that means.

“It’s important that we are always open-minded to anything that is proposed,” the Evening Standard quoted the Spurs chairman and co-owner as saying.

“We are in an industry where we are competing for talent, viewership and sponsors with other leagues across the world alongside other sports so we can never rule it out completely.

“In Spain, they are playing the Supercopa in Saudi Arabia this year, so we’ve got to be conscious that there needs to be a balance.”

Levy’s interest therefore will likely have been piqued when he learned that, as has emerged this week, La Liga plan to move December’s fixture between Atletico Madrid and Barcelona to the United States.

As Kieran Maguire told TBR Football earlier this summer, this kind of development is likely to be the start of an incremental process to move Premier League matches abroad.

Will Spurs ever play competitive matches abroad?

The independent regulator for English football will have plenty of backstop powers, but it is unlikely to stop clubs from playing individual, commercially lucrative matches in the US and further afield.

It is easy to see why the likes of Spurs want to exploit the US market – market research group CLV Group, for instance, found that the North London club could earn an extra £28m annually from America.

The fan backlash that followed the juddering Super League plot will be at the forefront of club owners’ minds, so the move towards this model will be slow.

But it is happening before our eyes and should be arrested before we reach the event horizon.