Tottenham Hotspur Cut Licensing Fees 85% by Migrating Off VMware, and Broadcom Is Now Apologizing

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Ars Technica ran two September pieces on the same fracture: Tottenham Hotspur's CTO reported an 85% licensing cost reduction after migrating away from VMware citing 'issues with the Broadcom takeover', and VMware executives publicly conceded they put 'too big a focus on VCF' and that 'trust, not features, is the real deficit' with small and mid-size customers. Post-acquisition repricing of a virtualization layer is the same dynamic now forming under AI infrastructure, where a handful of vendors are consolidating the layer everyone builds on. The customer response was migration, not negotiation.