Chelsea have agreed terms on the £4.25bn ($5.2bn) sale of the club to a consortium led by Todd Boehly, co-owner of the LA Dodgers baseball team. Before owner Roman Abramovich was sanctioned for alleged links to Russian President Vladimir Putin following the invasion of Ukraine, the club was put up for sale.
A Chelsea statement revealed that the new owners will pay £2.5bn for the club’s shares, while the proceeds will go into a frozen bank account to be donated to charity.
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The consortium, which includes Clearlake Capital, Mark Walter, and Swiss billionaire Hansjoerg Wyss, will also invest £1.75 billion in the club, including “investments in Stamford Bridge, the academy, the women’s team and Kingsmeadow and continued funding for the Chelsea Foundation”.
Chelsea stated in the statement that the sale was expected to close in late May. The takeover will require approval from the English football authorities and the UK government.
Chelsea is operating under a special licence from the UK government that expires on May 31, but Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said last month that the club was on “borrowed time” to complete the sale.
Any sale can only be completed if the bidder meets the Premier League’s owners and directors test. Meanwhile, according to Forbes, Boehly, an American investor and businessman, has a net worth of $4.5 billion (
He owns a stake in the Los Angeles Dodgers, a US baseball team, and the Los Angeles Sparks, a US women’s basketball team. He also owns a stake in the renowned Los Angeles Lakers NBA team.
His group also includes Barbara Charone, an American public relations executive, Jonathan Goldstein, a British businessman, and Daniel Finkelstein, a British journalist.
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Other consortiums in the running to buy Chelsea included Sir Martin Broughton and Stephen Pagliuca, co-owner of the Boston Celtics, but they were told in late April that their bids were unsuccessful.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the majority shareholder of the chemical group Ineos, made a late offer, but it arrived on 29 April, several weeks after the initial bid deadline of 18 March. And his bid was rejected, but he stated on May 4 that he was “not giving up.”
