Tottenham Hotspur have lodged a High Court claim for £11million against Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s company Ineos Automotive, the club’s former sponsor.
Court documents show that Spurs are alleging that Ineos failed to make a payment as contracted of just under £500,000 in August last year and in December missed a payment of £5.1million for the 2025-26 season.
A five-year sponsorship agreement was signed in 2022, worth a minimum of £17.5million overall, but Spurs terminated the contract in March this year, claiming the decision was prompted by Ineos’s failure to pay. As part of the deal, Ineos named seats in the Spurs dugout, had advertising displayed on big screens at matches and its Grenadier car became the club’s 4×4 vehicle partner.
As first reported by The Lawyer, Spurs are seeking just over £11million from Ineos — £5.5m for missed payments last year, another £5.3milllion for the 2026-27 season, the final year of the original sponsorship deal, as well as £300,000 in interest.
In 2024, Ratcliffe’s Ineos Group bought a 29 per cent stake in Manchester United, one of Spurs’ Premier League rivals and their opponents in the Europa League final on May 21, and it now runs the football operations at the Old Trafford club.
Ratcliffe has withdrawn from other sports-related deals, including those with the All Blacks rugby team and Sir Ben Ainslie’s America’s Cup team.
An Ineos statement read: “We had a contractual right to terminate our partnership contract and in December 2024 exercised that right.
“Like any business, we have to be diligent in how we operate and where we invest marketing budgets. It’s completely normal for partnerships to be reviewed on a regular basis, and we’ve decided that the partnership wasn’t working out for us. We have the right to terminate the partnership.”