Chelsea, the Premier League football team that was forced to sell after the Russian oligarch who financed its success was placed under crippling sanctions, will be bought by a consortium led by Todd Boelli, an American billionaire who owns the Los Angeles Dodgers. , the club announced on Saturday.
The £ 2.5 billion, or $ 3.1 billion, would be the highest ever paid for a team in any sport. The sale, one of the most unusual in modern sports history, still requires the approval of the British government, which imposed sanctions on club owner Roman Abramovich and froze his assets, including Chelsea, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement posted on its website early Saturday, Chelsea said the proceeds from the sale would be placed in a frozen British bank account, with the intention that all funds would eventually go to charity, as Abramovich promised.
In addition to the sale price, Chelsea said Boelli’s group has promised to invest 1.75 billion pounds in the club, part of which for the much-needed renovation of the stadium.
Boehly’s group is backed by US investment firm Clearlake and also includes Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss businessman, and Mark Walter, part of the Dodgers chairman.
The decision limited two turbulent months for Chelsea, its fans and Abramovich, who said on March 2 that he reluctantly agreed to part with the team just as the British government sought to impose restrictions on his condition and business.
The sale process was accelerated after the government officially froze Abramovich’s assets, part of a wider set of sanctions imposed on a group of wealthy Russians with ties to Moscow since the start of the war in Ukraine. The government has called Abramovich a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Roman Abramovich has owned Chelsea since 2003. Credit … John Sibley / Reuters
Since then, Chelsea have been in some sort of malfunction, working under a special license issued by the government, which comes with harsh conditions that have severely affected his business. Currently, the team cannot buy or sell players on the summer transfer market, nor can it sell tickets or goods to its supporters. His expenses are very limited, which affects everything from team travel to printing and selling programs.
Restrictions aimed at ensuring that no money goes to Abramovich will be lifted only after the sale is over.
Chelsea, led by Thomas Tuchel, the German coach who secured the Champions League title in the months since taking over Stamford Bridge last year, is struggling on the pitch as he tries to orient himself in his new reality.
The results are mixed: while Tuhel’s team is currently in third place in the Premier League, he was eliminated from the lucrative Champions League last month. Several players with expiring contracts have announced that they will leave at the end of the season and until the sale is over, Tuhel and the club will not be able to replace them.
The Boehly Group was given a week to close the deal after being selected last week by the New York-based consulting firm Raine Group and members of the Chelsea board.
The sale came to an end last week when it appeared to have been discontinued after one of Britain’s richest men, Jim Ratcliffe, announced an offer reflecting an offer from the Boehly consortium after the deadline. On Wednesday, Ratcliffe, who had emphasized his British credentials when he made his offer, said Raine had turned down his offer but promised to keep fighting to secure the team.
The British Treasury will have to issue a separate sales license, with specific clauses that include requiring none of the proceeds to go to Abramovich.
Buyers and Raine discussed the possibility of proceeding to go to the victims of the war in Ukraine, an idea Abramovich came up with when he said he would give up a huge debt the club owed him. But it is not clear how such a transfer will work.
Todd Boelli, center, billionaire investor and private owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, heads the group that agreed to buy Chelsea FCCredit … Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press
Abramovich invested nearly $ 2 billion in personal funds during his 19-year tenure as owner, during which he covered losses of about $ 1 million a week while recruiting some of the world’s best players. The strategy was expensive but successful: Chelsea enjoyed the most successful period in its history, becoming a serial contender for domestic and international honors and winning five Premier Leagues and two European Cups.
If Boehly’s deal to buy the team passes with the necessary approvals from the government and the Premier League, which must also give its blessing to the sale, his group will have to figure out a way to sustain that success while reducing losses associated with field success. and the allocation of hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate Chelsea’s aging Stamford Bridge, which has a capacity of just over 40,000 people and is much smaller than the arenas that host the biggest teams in the Premier League.
The sale, in line with the way it started, was a curious process led by Joe Ravich, a Russian-speaking banker and co-founder of the New York-based Rhine. The announcement that Chelsea is available for sale has attracted interest from around the world, attracting a mix of serious successful candidates to minor figures who seem to have used the public interest in buying Chelsea as a means to increase their profiles in Chelsea. the media. .
Ravich had said little in public, but made the startling and still unfounded claim that Chelsea and other Premier League teams could cost more than $ 10 billion in five years.
The process, while quick to take on the size of Chelsea, has also provoked ridicule from some countries, as deadlines for final bids have been repeatedly extended to get the highest price, even when seller Abramovich could not expect to receive payment. . The highly public nature of the sale also meant checking in on something that led to some inconvenience for potential buyers.
A joint proposal involving the Chicago Cubes, the Rickets family, and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin has struggled to overcome allegations of racism after anti-Muslim emails sent by family patriarch Joe Ricketts reappeared in 2019. Efforts to distance Rickett’s offer and statements highlighting the family’s opposition to racism have failed to convince some Chelsea supporters, and Ricketts withdrew from the process last month, leaving the last three candidates.
All three groups – one led by Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Palyuka and the other funded by another group that owns a basketball team, Philadelphia 76ers owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer – made one last push to travel to London last week to met with Chelsea board. They presented their views on how to ensure that Chelsea remain an important force in domestic and European football; how his women’s team can build on its current success; and how they planned to solve the mystery of Chelsea Stadium.
Under an agreement signed by Abramovich’s predecessor, Ken Bates, Chelsea could virtually not move to another stadium, leaving the only option for a costly restoration of Stamford Bridge, which under a plan postponed by Abramovich in 2018 would cost more than $ 1 billion.
Entering the Premier League, the Boehly Group will join a string of American investors who have been attracted to the richest and most popular football league in the world. The revenues and scope of the Premier League exceed those of its closest competitors. But maintaining a competitive advantage will not come easily – or cheaply – with the current top team, Manchester City, fueled by the seemingly bottomless funds of the United Arab Emirates royal family and Newcastle, which was recently acquired by Saudi Arabia.
Without strict financial guidelines like the ones that exist in professional sports in the United States and promises to meet the expectations of a generation of Chelsea fans who are now accustomed to the kind of success brought and bought by Abramovich, the possibility of losing a lot of money quickly is very real. opportunity.
The latest Chelsea reports show that Abramovich has swallowed nearly $ 2 billion in losses to turn the Blues into a great power, changing the player trading market while doing so. The kind of money Abramovich paid to bring the best talent to West London had never been seen before, and they set the stage for an inflationary spiral that only widened with the arrival of state clubs in England and beyond.
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