We are only one-third of the way through this season but Tottenham Hotspur have already started announcing plans for next summer.
Spurs will be flying to Australia in late July to participate in the ‘Sydney Super Cup’, a new friendly tournament backed by the government of New South Wales. Tottenham will play A-League side Sydney FC at their home ground, the Allianz Stadium, on July 29. Then on August 1, Tottenham will play Chelsea at the Accor Stadium, which was built for the 2000 Summer Olympics.
The non-stop nature of modern football means that these games will come straight after the conclusion of next summer’s World Cup. The final will be held at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 19 July, 10 days before Spurs’ first game in Australia. Given their international teams are expected to go far, the chances of Pedro Porro (Spain), Cristian Romero (Argentina), Richarlison (Brazil) and Micky van de Ven (the Netherlands) turning out in Sydney are fairly slim.
There is nothing new about Tottenham going to Australia, of course. They played Newcastle United in Melbourne in May 2024 in a post-season friendly, a homecoming for then-manager Ange Postecoglou. They went to Perth to play West Ham United the summer before, at the start of Postecoglou’s tenure. Back in the Mauricio Pochettino era, Spurs went to Melbourne in July 2016 to play Juventus and Atletico Madrid. And at the end of the 2014-15 season, they flew to Sydney to play Sydney at the Accor Stadium.
Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen keep an eye on Kaka during the 2015 MLS All-Stars match in Colorado (Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)
So this will be Tottenham’s fifth trip to Australia within 11 years, a clear sign of how valuable that market is to Spurs, and their strong relationship with Australian promoter TEG, which is behind next summer’s trip to Sydney.
It is no secret that the south-east Asian market is hugely important to Tottenham too. Spurs started this season with a trip to Hong Kong and South Korea, where Son Heung-min played his memorable final game for Tottenham in front of an adoring crowd before his move to MLS side LAFC. The summer before, Spurs went to Japan and South Korea. In 2023, it was Singapore. The summer before that, Spurs went to South Korea, their first international tour since 2019. And in that summer of 2019, after reaching the Champions League final, Spurs played in Singapore and Shanghai.
You have to go all the way back to the summer of 2018 for the last time that Tottenham went to the United States. They played games in San Diego, Pasadena and Minneapolis. The summer before that, they were in the U.S. too, playing in Orlando, New Jersey and Tennessee. They had one game in Colorado in the summer of 2015, and games in Seattle and Chicago in July 2014, in Pochettino’s first season in charge. So four trips to the U.S. during the first four years of the Pochettino era, but nothing since 2018.
It is only natural to wonder why Spurs have not been to Stateside for so long. By their next available summer, 2027, it will be nine years since their last trip.
The U.S. is an important market for any Premier League team. Spurs are also hugely popular there. Go into any American city and you will find a dedicated Tottenham Hotspur supporters club, with big meet-ups for every game, no matter when it kicks off. Go to any home game at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and you will bump into plenty of American Spurs fans who have flown over to watch their team.
Spurs fans tailgate before a match against PSG in Orlando in July 2017 (Joe Petro/Getty Images)
The club’s executives want to do something for their American fans. Traditionally, there was a plan to alternate summer tours between the U.S. and Asia. But the idea of a rotation policy was disrupted by Covid-19, and for the first post-pandemic summer in 2022, a trip to South Korea was easier to plan than a return to the U.S. due to uncertainty over travel restrictions. Circumstances have made it difficult to return to the U.S. since.
This summer, for example, is not an easy one for any Premier League team hoping to fly out to the U.S., which is hosting the World Cup with Mexico and Canada. That expanded tournament will be taking up the biggest stadiums for most of June and July.
The U.S. market will effectively be saturated, and when it is over, many of the stadiums that were used for the World Cup will have to be used for events that were delayed by the football, such as Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour. The Premier League is considering where to have its 2026 Summer Series, with Asia one of the options.
Over recent years, specific factors have shifted Spurs’ path towards their key markets in south-east Asia and Australia, rather than North America. Their long-standing partnership with AIA — the Hong Kong-based insurance company — directs the club to work with fans and partners in that market. Next season will be the last in which the AIA logo appears across the front of the Spurs shirt, although it will become the club’s training wear sponsor after that.
Then there was the pulling power of Son, Tottenham’s legendary captain. He has been integral to the club’s international growth over the last decade, and it was no coincidence that they went to South Korea in 2022, 2024 and again this year. Those tours largely became about Son, attracting huge crowds to games and fan events. Postecoglou, Spurs’ head coach from 2023 to 2025, was a reason for Tottenham to go to Australia.
Harry Kane and Michael Dawson with the Chicago Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo at Wrigley Field in 2014 (David Banks/Getty Images)
Ultimately, a club like Tottenham will receive plenty of offers for summer tours from promoters or potential tournaments. Financial considerations are always important in making these decisions. Put simply: how much money they will bring in, whether through revenue-sharing or guaranteed fees, and how much it will cost the club to do it.
Planning a tour that does not make money holds few attractions. But these figures have to be balanced against potential sporting impact. Premier League prize money is so significant that it would be a false economy to go on a money-spinning tour that left no time or facilities for pre-season training.
These tours are always big logistical challenges, especially if a club is flying a group of at least 100 people, including players and staff, both football and non-football. If a club has to pay for its own travel and accommodation — which is often the case with revenue-sharing models for U.S. tours — those costs can seriously add up. Especially if they have to charter flights, and pay expensive hotel and food prices. That means that even a well-supported Premier League club can struggle to turn a profit from a summer tour in a saturated market.
Travelling to Asia or Australia is not cheap either — it certainly costs a lot to put up more than 100 people in a good hotel in Seoul — but these trips can still be more profitable if they come with lower costs and better fees.
All those factors have combined so that Spurs’ recent summer tours have tended towards Australia and south-east Asia. Next year will be no different. But the hope is that Spurs will return to the U.S. at some point to see their fans there.