Telegraph: Ineos agrees to pay more than £11m to resolve legal dispute with Tottenham

On November 6, The Telegraph reported that Ineos agreed to pay Tottenham more than 11 million pounds to quickly resolve the litigation dispute.

Manchester United co-owner Ratcliffe's company Ineos has been accused of breaching a five-year contract worth £17.5 million that allowed Tottenham to promote the company's Grenadier as the club's "official vehicle partner".

The agreement is thought to have been signed in 2022, but Ineos has had a relationship with Tottenham since being recognized as the club's "official hand sanitiser supplier" during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tottenham ended its relationship with Ratcliffe in March and launched legal action three months later. They claim an annual installment of more than £5m was not paid on December 1, and an earlier inflation-related payment of around £500,000 was not paid.

According to the "Daily Telegraph" report, although the specific amount paid to Tottenham has not been made public, people familiar with the matter revealed that the amount agreed upon by the two parties was approximately half of the North London team's request. In addition, Tottenham terminated the agreement with more than two years left on the contract and demanded nearly 5.3 million pounds in compensation. Soon after, Ineos countersued Tottenham, claiming more than 1 million pounds. They accuse Tottenham of being involved in sponsorship discussions with Audi linked to Harry Kane's move to Bayern Munich.

Ineos' defense also noted that the commercial partnership "failed to materialize" but ultimately resulted in the parties agreeing that "the agreement could be terminated at the end of the third year of the contract term."

They insisted: "In this case, it was the club that owed Ineos more than £1 million because Spurs did not provide Ineos with any rights in the final stage of the third year."

Tottenham admitted that there were commercial negotiations with Audi, but denied that these negotiations gave Ineos the right to terminate the contract because Spurs never reached an agreement with the German car manufacturer. Spurs claim their agreement with Ineos "requires annual payments from £2.125m in year one to £4.6m in year five, all payments plus VAT and indexed for inflation" and that they will seek "further or other relief as the court deems appropriate".

At the time, an Ineos spokesperson said: "Ineos Automotive has been a partner of Tottenham since 2022, expanding the cooperation agreement between Ineos Group and the club since 2020. We have a contractual right to terminate our cooperation agreement and exercised this right in December 2024."{Ineos has cut sponsorship ties with a number of major sports teams, including Ben Ainsley's sailing team and the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, with the Daily Telegraph reporting in February that the latter were launching legal action claiming their deals were due to last until 2027 but were terminated early. Ineos claims it has been forced to cut costs due to Europe's "extreme" green carbon tax. Ratcliffe also blamed rising energy prices and taxes on the company's decision to close its synthetic ethanol plant in Grangemouth, Scotland, resulting in the loss of 80 direct jobs and a further 500 indirect jobs.