Building the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium - a £1.2bn 'overnight success' 25 years in the making

Tottenham Hotspur executive director Donna-Marie Cullen has spoken on the challenges and rewards of building a £1.2bn stadium.

Spurs moved into the 62,850-seater Tottenham Hotspur Stadium back in 2019 after a brief stint at Wembley following their final exit from White Hart Lane in 2017. The state-of-the-art stadium had been envisioned some years back, but with the logistics of delivering such a development in a densely populated North London, as well as the fact that the project ended up £1bn more than when it was first mooted, it was a challenge to deliver.

Aiming to create a multi-purpose venue that could be used all year round and not just on Spurs matchdays, had actually been part of the initial dream. A decision was made early to make a bespoke stadium that could accommodate NFL games in the UK, creating a new revenue stream, while the F1 Karting Experience that opened up underneath the stadium in recent weeks on a 15-year deal.

Speaking at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit, where football.london was present, Cullen said: “It was three years of our lives that we’ll never get back but it’s rewarding when everyone walks in and likes it. It was part planning, but if you have someone like Daniel [Levy] in the mix there are a lot of ‘what ifs?’ and ‘why nots?’ that push us a bit further, and maybe drive our architects to distraction.

“When ENIC first bought the club in March 2001, White Hart Lane, even then, was a very old stadium which had gone through iterations of ‘Should the East Stand be built?’. Alan Sugar tried to get the numbers to work on that but simply couldn’t do it. You’d have obstructed views there for years.

“But we realised that it was part of the business plan that you can’t compete in this