Enshittification, N17. Or why Levy failed.

A new word appeared in 2025, coined to be intentionally provocative; enshittification. It refers to the gradual deterioration in the quality of a service provided as a consequence of profit-seeking. The word was created by American author and commentator Cory Doctorow and described in his book “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It”.

It is a word most commonly used in the context of online platform businesses, but supporters of Tottenham Hotspur might recognise something similar happening at their football club. And they really do want to know what to do about it.

Platform businesses sit between sellers on the one hand and buyers on the other. At Facebook this is advertisers (who sell stuff) and users (who buy it). For Uber it is drivers and those looking to get somewhere, and for Airbnb it is property owners and short term renters. 

The process of enshittification is most easily recognised through our experience with Facebook. At first it seemed like a service that was too good to be true. For no cost at all we were all able to set up our profiles, share our lives and wish each other happy birthday unencumbered by unwanted content or, perish the thought, advertisements. Of course it was all a big trap. What do we see now when we log in? Surprise, surprise, it’s unwanted content and ads. In Q3 2025 Meta made $50 billion from selling advertising. It’s a giant revenue generation engine powered by selling advertising.

The theory of enshittification is that once platform businesses become dominant, and ideally for them an effective monopoly, they turn from being that exciting, innovative, too-cheap-to-be-true offering, to something far more sinister. They abuse both their business customers (the sellers) and the consumers, to extract maximum value for themselves. Online businesses have shown that when done successfully this leads to one of the most effective extractions of wealth from the many to the few in human history. Which is why Jeff Bezos has personal wealth of over $230 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg is not far behind.

So what has all this got to do with Tottenham Hotspur? I can’t help wondering whether Daniel Levy modelled his reign at the club on the principles of a platform style business. It’s not such a stretch when you think about it. 

A football club can be thought of as a platform that facilitates the selling of football entertainment provided by the players (the sellers) to the supporters (the buyers). Levy realised that in order to be a dominant player he needed a very high functioning platform, which manifested in a wonderful stadium. He very cleverly sold the dream to the buyers that the income from the new stadium would be invested in supporting the quality of what they were being sold, the players. But like in all examples of enshittification, this proved to be what Christian Romero would call a lie (before quickly deleting it). What Levy actually did was what all enshittifying businesses do. He squeezed both sides of the equation as hard as he could. This resulted in the sellers being paid wages that consistently lagged behind the club’s peers, whilst the buyers paid ticket prices higher than anywhere else, and certainly more than the quality of the product warranted.

Doctorow describes businesses that have reached this stage of development as being “a great pile of shit”. No self-respecting supporter would ever want to describe their club that way but many would understand exactly what he means.

The theory is that once platforms get to the point where they are abusing all and sundry they are on borrowed time. Loss of community support will inevitably see them fail and it’s our job as responsible citizens to see that this is the case. But herein lies the problem. We don’t want the club to fail because we believe that, at some level, it's our club. It’s not of course, but we like to think it is.

As much as Levy might have wanted to believe we are rational consumers, we are not. And it’s a bit of luck for him that we aren’t, because that’s what kept us coming back match after miserable match as we slumped to 17th in the Premier League. Ultimately what cost him his job was not that he abused the buyers through excessive ticket prices, it was the other side of the equation. Successfully enshittified businesses are dominant in their market, allowing them to abuse both sellers and buyers to their own benefit. Tottenham Hotspur is an effective monopoly for most of the supporters, who are not about to switch to supporting the team down the road in red just because they have a demonstrably better team. For the players, it’s a different story. They can go and play for whoever offers them the most money, and they do. They are mercenaries, and who can blame them?

The salary bill becomes a proxy for the quality of the squad and screwing down that side of the business only leads in one direction and it’s downwards, in the league table. Levy liked to dress this up as financial prudence but in the mad world of Premier League football prudence doesn’t cut it.

With Levy’s demise, will the owners change the overarching strategy, loosen the purse strings for the players and reward the supporters with the success they crave? It’s too early to say. What we need to see is an upward spiral - the considerable income generated by the club invested in higher player wages, leading to better players, winning more matches, pleasing the crowd, generating more revenue and attracting even better players.

Will the club now move off the path of naked capitalism towards a mutually beneficial position that respects the loyalty of the supporter community and returns us to the proud place where we belong, as a club known best for what it does on the pitch?

How the new hierarchy addresses the contradiction between loyalty freely given and revenue relentlessly extracted, is the unresolved question Spurs supporters are looking to see the answer to.

Andrew Pettifer is the author of "When the Final Whistle Blows: Glory, Grief and Tottenham Hotspur"