Spurs’ amazing £750m stadium lets punters go boldly where no fan has gone before by letting them watch players in the tunnel
The Tunnel Club lounge lets fans get up close and personal with the players... but Mauricio Pochettino joked it could be 'dangerous'
IT’S White Hart Lane, Jim, but not as we know it.
Tottenham’s new state-of-the-art stadium will give wealthy punters the chance to boldly go where no fan has gone before by letting them watch the players in the tunnel through a giant glass window.
The £750million arena is being built next to the club’s current White Hart Lane home and is due to be ready for August 2018.
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Spurs’ 61,000-seater ground will have a retractable pitch for up to 16 non-football events a year, including concerts and NFL games.
And the largest single-tiered end in Europe — bigger even than Borussia Dortmund’s ‘Yellow Wall’ — will accommodate 17,000 home fans behind one goal.
It will also have a number of lounges and bars, including The Tunnel Club where for £9,500 a season you can watch matches in an environment Spurs claim is the closest you can get to playing.
The tunnel itself will be the UK’s first with a one-way glass wall, allowing fans to take in the view before going outside to watch the game from plush seats just behind the dugouts.
Tottenham insist their stars love the idea of fans watching them in the tunnel. But boss Mauricio Pochettino had a wry smile as he admitted yesterday: “It’s dangerous, very dangerous.
“A lot of things have happened in the tunnel — it is for that reason the price of sitting there will be very expensive!”
Yet that is not the stadium’s most expensive area.
The H Club, with its Michelin-starred chefs and cheese waiters will set you back £15,000 a season, which Spurs are quick to point out is less than the Diamond Club at Arsenal’s Emirates.
Tickets for the Tunnel Club and The H Club come in pairs — and to be eligible to buy those, you must first stump up £30,000 for a couple of memberships.
Work on the stadium might not be finished for another 16 months but I was among journalists given a virtual reality tour of the complex yesterday.
While you need binoculars to see the pitch at West Ham’s London Stadium now, hi-tech goggles let me see how Spurs’ new home will look when it opens.
The club’s marketing gurus are using these to sell packages to sponsors and wealthy punters.
I explored the stadium without having to leave my seat in the club’s offices.