Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
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Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

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Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in London, England. It is owned and operated by the Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, replacing the club's previous ground, White Hart Lane. With a seating capacity of 62,850, it is the third largest football stadium in England and the largest club ground in London. It is also used for NFL International Series games. It features the world's first dividing, retractable synthetic turf pitch used for NFL games, concerts and other events.

The construction of the stadium was initiated as the centrepiece of the Northumberland Development Project, intended to be the catalyst for a 20-year regeneration plan for Tottenham. The project covers the site of the now demolished ground White Hart Lane and areas adjacent to it. It was conceived in 2007 and announced in 2008, but revised several times, and construction of the stadium, beset by disputes and delays, did not commence until 2015. The stadium opened on 3 April 2019 with a ceremony before the first Premier League game held there.

The name "Tottenham Hotspur Stadium" was meant to be temporary, the intention being to sell the naming rights to a sponsor, but it has still not been renamed. The stadium is sometimes referred to as New White Hart Lane by fans and some in the media.

Tottenham Hotspur was formed in 1882, and early matches of the club were played on public land at Tottenham Marshes. As their matches became more popular with the public and the number of spectators increased, the club decided to move to an enclosed ground allowing it to charge an entrance fee and control the crowd. In 1888, the club rented a pitch at Asplins Farm, next to the railway line at Northumberland Park. However, the ground soon became overcrowded, and in 1899 the club moved to a piece of land owned by the brewery company Charringtons to the east of Tottenham High Road behind the White Hart pub. This became the White Hart Lane ground.

The club acquired the freehold of the ground, as well as additional land at the northern (Paxton Road) end, in 1905. Starting in 1909, a new stadium with stands designed by Archibald Leitch was built over a period of two and a half decades. The stadium had a capacity of nearly 80,000 by 1934. Over the years, the stadium underwent a number of changes and seating replaced the standing areas, which reduced the capacity to about 50,000 in 1979. Significant standing areas, however, still existed, including the long stretch of raised standing terrace favoured by fans on the East Stand known as The Shelf.

Beginning in the early 1980s, the White Hart Lane ground was redeveloped, and in order to comply with the recommendation of the Taylor Report of 1989, it was turned into an all-seater stadium. The capacity of the stadium was reduced to around 36,000 by the time the refurbishment was completed in 1998. The capacity was, by then, lower than the grounds of other major English clubs, with many of these clubs also planning to expand further. As revenues from gate receipts in that period formed a substantial part of the club's income (before it became dominated by TV broadcast rights deals), Tottenham began to explore ways of increasing the stadium capacity to allow it to more effectively compete financially with rival clubs.

A number of schemes were considered over the years; these included rebuilding the East Stand as a three-tier structure, and moving to different stadiums and locations such as Picketts Lock and the Olympic Stadium at Stratford, London. None of these plans came to fruition, except for a proposal to redevelop the existing site that would become the Northumberland Development Project.

The club first announced in 2007 that redevelopment of the current site was one of the options under consideration. In April 2008, the club revealed that it was considering the acquisition of the Wingate Trading Estate immediately adjacent to the north of White Hart Lane for building the stadium. In October 2008, the Northumberland Development Project, which included the construction of a stadium, as well as a club museum, homes, shops and other facilities, was announced. The early plan was for Tottenham to move into the new stadium, while it was partially built, at the beginning of the 2012–13 season, with the stadium completed by the end of the following season. However, the project was delayed, with the plan undergoing a number of revisions and the completion date pushed back several times. The club also did not fully commit itself to building the stadium in Tottenham until January 2012, after it had lost its bid for the Olympic Stadium to West Ham United.

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