In football, fans tend to focus more on the net worth of the players and how much they make in salaries and endorsement deals. Not too many focus on the chairmen and people who control these clubs, especially if they are not the known billionaires like the Sheiks and Russian billionaires.
Tottenham chairman, Daniel Philip Levy is one of the wealthiest football club chairmen but goes on about his business without making so much fuss about it. He is estimated to worth £1 billion according to Forbes. This will definitely surprise so many to see that Daniel Levy’s net worth actually crosses the 1 billion dollar mark.
He started his life in a middle-class income home and has worked his way up the ladder to become one of the richest Britain businessmen in football alongside Ed Woodward of Manchester United.
Daniel Levy was born in 1962 at Essex and studied Economics and Land Economy at Cambridge University where he graduated with a First Class Honors. In 1962 into a working-class family and is now one of Britain’s richest businessmen alongside Ed Woodward.
Levy studied at Cambridge University and graduated with a first-class honors degree in economics and land economy. Levy has always shown signs of a person that will be entrepreneurial-savvy right from a young age as he was involved in the running of his family chain of clothing store business, Mr. Byrite, a chain of clothing stores.
He later set up a joint business with former Spurs chairman, Paul Kemsley before he became the club chairman. From his experience in the retail family business, he was now fully into corporate finance where he rose through the ranks and became the head of the English national investment company, ENIC in 1995, a company that is owned by a Billionaire from the Bahamas, Joe Lewis.
This was when his reputation started soring high. It was due to his astute business and finance knowledge that made the company grow steadily into a full sports company and in no time became a company listed on the stock exchange market under two years that he became chairman.
From his role at ENIC, he ensured the company continue growing and start to invest in several sports businesses from gambling to software Company, retailing business and later in football clubs stakes. They started with the clubs abroad like Rangers, Slavia Prague AEK Athens, and FC Basel before getting a 29% stake in Tottenham Hotspur.
It was in 2001 that they then took major control of the club after buying majority shares from Alan Sugar and he became the club chairman. Being the chairman of a club is not an easy job as he was taking over a mid-table club and has a responsibility to turn them into a world known club. Several hiring and firing of managers took place under him and he ensured that the new manager was a better version of the outgoing one.
This was what led them to win the League Cup in 2008 when they defeated Arsenal on their way to lifting the trophy and defeated Chelsea in the final.
All these came with Levy earning himself a name in the game as one of the toughest men to deal with and if there is any club willing to price away any of his players, it has to be for the record fee ever. The first major experience was when Manchester United came for Dimitar Berbatov and he ensured that the deal drag till transfer deadline day.
His biggest payday was when he sold Gareth Bale to Real Madrid for a world-record fee of £85.5 million for Gareth Bale from Real Madrid. This was a deal that turned England and he ensured that he got the best possible cash for his most priced asset. Another of his legacy at the club was his eye for great managers.
Bringing in Mauricio Pochettino in 2014 was a masterstroke that not too many saw coming then but has worked for him. His negotiating power was not only in signing and selling players as he was able to secure a lucrative £25 million per year kit deal with Nike which was after what will become his biggest achievement, building the biggest club stadium in London, the New White Hart Lane.
No matter what happens at Spurs in the future, Daniel Levy has imprinted his name on the record books of the club.