This is an updated version of a profile that was first published in March this year
After two months of the kind of twists and turns you might find in a soap opera, a consortium led by Todd Boehly’s group (and comprising of Clearlake Capital, Mark Walter and Hansjoerg Wyss) agreed a deal to buy Chelsea.
The deal was completed by the end of May, with the group paying £2.5bn to buy Roman Abramovich’s shares and pledging a further £1.75bn to invest in the club.
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It has been an eventful start to his time as Chelsea owner. The new era kicked off with one of the most eventful transfer windows that any club has ever experienced. Thomas Tuchel, Chelsea’s Champions League winning manager, was then sacked just six games into the Premier League season.
This is the Boehly’s story.
“When I was growing up it was (about playing computer games) Pac-Man and Donkey Kong,” he told Bloomberg in 2019. “I certainly didn’t know about Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham. I didn’t know about these clubs. Kids these days are fully aware of what’s the best and the Premier League is the best.”
Meet Todd Boehly, the Chelsea owner, who succeeded Roman Abramovich. The Americanis not doing this alone. Other names on the ticket are Swiss multi-billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, fellow LA Dodgers owner Mark Walter, property developer Jonathan Goldstein and investment firm Clearlake Capital. Chelsea fans Daniel Finkelstein and Barbara Charone are involved too. More about all of them later.
Buying a Premier League club is not something Boehly only just started to consider in light of the sanctions the UK government imposed on Abramovich. Boehly had a £2.2 billion offer rejected for Chelsea in 2019, the same year he spoke to Bloomberg about his ambitions to get involved in the sport.
Boehly, Chelsea’s owner, who succeeded Roman Abramovich (Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
The businessman set up Eldridge Industries seven years ago, a holding company that owns stakes in about 80 different finance, media, sports, real estate and tech companies. Among his portfolio is a percentage in global franchises the LA Dodgers and the LA Lakers, serial winners in baseball and basketball.
With those on the shortlist to takeover Chelsea primarily coming from across the Atlantic, there was concern among the club’s fanbase. The Glazers running of Manchester United, as well as Stan Kroenke’s troubles at London rivals Arsenal, meant the prospect of Chelsea ending up in American’s hands was not universally celebrated.
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But Boehly’s conversation with Bloomberg in September 2019 might have helped ease some of those fears, especially as this was not part of a PR pitch to win over cynical Chelsea supporters. The club had consistently made it clear that Abramovich wasn’t interested in selling to anyone at the time so Boehly had little to gain by saying anything he didn’t mean.
“Football is the biggest sport in the world,” Boehly insisted. “I can’t believe American football can get to use the word ‘football’ because to me that word should be football. The fact is it is still the best product in the world. It’s 90 minutes so it has a great timeline. The passion that the fans have for the activity and the sport and the teams is unparalleled. So when you start to think about what you’re trying to build with these teams is, you’re really trying to A, win and B, be part of the community.”
Boehly’s rise to prominence has been pretty remarkable too. He’s admitted to not being the best student at William & Mary, the second-oldest university in the US after Harvard, and wasn’t sure how to get into finance. Advice from his former geometry teacher at Landon School in Maryland, Steve Sorkin, led him to apply for an internship in the UK, which provided the opportunity to work at Citibank in London while also studying at the London School of Economics. This kick-started his career, so no wonder he has a bit of a love affair with England and its capital.
It was at Landon School that he displayed another form of a competitive edge. He was on the wrestling team that won state tournament titles in 1990 and 1991 and the facilities there now carry his name.
He got his first full-time job at CS First Boston in New York, now known as Credit Suisse, in 1996 and things went rapidly from there. As he told Yahoo Finance last year: “I lived with a simple mantra. If I said I was going to do it I’d get it done. And when you have a reputation for being able to get stuff done it’s amazing what more stuff ends up, piling up in your inbox.”
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His next move was to JH Whitney & Co, an old-school venture capital business. He learns a lot about valuing businesses and using debt. This led to a switch to Guggenheim Partners in 2001. Later that year he spotted that Enron, the American energy company, was about to go bust and told investors to get out.
By the time he left to set up Eldridge in 2015, he was a co-owner in the LA Dodgers, bought by a consortium he was involved in called Guggenheim Baseball Management for $2.15 billion (£1.64 billion) a decade ago. What will encourage those of a Chelsea persuasion is the success the Dodgers have enjoyed since his involvement, winning eight division titles, three National League pennants and the World Series in 2020.
Boehly doesn’t run the Dodgers by himself but the way he operates gives a clue to how he could do things at Chelsea.
Talking to Yahoo Finance last year, he said: “You always just have to keep remembering that the fans are the centre. And the second that you kind of veer, just go back to think about the fans.
Boehly (right) and the Dodgers’ new ownership group in 2012 (Photo: Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“I think we’ve got a great team now… like any business, you have to have the people that are in the business run the business and really feel like they own the outcome. Let them run.”
In many ways, that doesn’t sound too different to how Abramovich operated. Director Marina Granovskaia effectively ran the football side of Chelsea, with technical and performance advisor Petr Cech providing support from when he took up the role in 2019. Chief executive Guy Laurence was in charge of the commercial and marketing side. They all left Chelsea when Boehly took over.
Sources talk about the consortium running Chelsea similarly to how Fenway Sports Group operates at Liverpool. FSG still makes major transfers, but works far more within the club’s means.
Chelsea accumulated £1.5 billion of debt under Abramovich’s ownership, although the Russian has made it clear he doesn’t want the sum repaid.
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Boehly is not trying to buy the club to take it backwards, though. He remains very ambitious and invested heavily in the squad this summer — spending a club record £273m.
This includedformer Arsenal forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang joining from Barcelona in a deal worth £10.4million with left-back Marcos Alonso going the other way. Raheem Sterling was signed for £47.5m from Manchester City.
The arrivals of defenders Wesley Fofana, Kalidou Koulibaly and Marc Cucurella for up to £165.5 million replace Antonio Rudiger, Andreas Christensen and Alonso.
Chelsea secured Denis Zakaria on a season-long loan with an option to buy next year for £30million.Some money was brought in with Scotland midfielder Billy Gilmour joining Brighton for £9m, while youngsters Ethan Ampadu, Harvey Vale and Xavier Simons agreed loan moves.
It was a recruitment drive of staggering scale, comparable to the one bankrolled by Roman Abramovich in the weeks following his £140million takeover of Chelseain 2003.
Clearlake co-founder Behdad Eghbali has been highly visible and active in all Chelsea transfer discussions.
One contact talks about his desire to compete with Real Madrid. The La Liga side may not be what they were in the transfer market but are still regarded as one of the biggest clubs in the world.
People talk of a very data-driven man, someone who believes in the analytics of a player.
The need to generate more revenue is high on the agenda. It is believed Boehly is encouraged by the increased funds that foreign media rights could bring. He also believes there is still a huge market in the USA that Chelsea have not made the most of yet. Improving the stadium, which seems to be a major factor in the sale, is regarded as another money maker.
Plans have already started to be worked on, although that isn’t a major development given rebuilding the ground is one of the conditions of the sale. The Sunday Times reported that architects Jane Marie Smith and David Hickey, who is the former project director for Abramovich’s now-cancelled 60,000-seat redevelopment, are being consulted. Another clue to what he might want to do with Stamford Bridge, and the surrounding area, comes in his 2019 Bloomberg interview.
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“The new stadiums that English clubs are building, they’re starting to take an American approach to stadiums and making them environments,” he said. “They were very utilitarian historically but now they’re starting to think of them as ‘lifestyle’.
“Originally stadiums would be a place where you would go and then leave, just watch an event. Now they’re starting to think about entertaining you earlier and keeping you longer. That works on lots of levels — it drives the experience, the economics and it also takes away from the congestion of arrival and departure.”
Those who have met Boehly regard him as intelligent but also restrained, rational and astute. Take, for instance, the first tech investment Eldridge made, in a company called Replay Technologies. It involved putting nine cameras around the home plate in Dodgers Stadium to give viewers a 360-degree replay. Boehly’s company later sold that to Intel and it’s now used by all the US sports in their broadcasts.
Given the costs involved in owning a club at the highest level, let alone Chelsea’s issues with maintaining a healthy bank balance, one might wonder why Boehly — who says Eldridge made over $1 billion in 2020 — sees a Premier League club as a good investment.
He believes he has a good idea of what he would be taking on having done a lot of the required due diligence three years ago. When asked by Bloomberg about the huge cost of taking on a football side in 2019, he said: “It is hard to buy quality and also not have to pay up. Then it’s a question of can you continue to build on what you’ve acquired at that price? I continue to believe that there is a global opportunity for the best ones.”
Boehly, though, could do not the deal to buy Chelsea on his own.
It is perhaps understandable due his finances and expertise that Mark Walter, principal owner and Boehly’s trusted colleague at the LA Dodgers, joined the ranks.
Their bond developed at Guggenheim Partners, a private investment firm. Since combining with other investors to acquire the LA Dodgers a decade ago, they have also bought a stake together in NBA club LA Lakers and the 2016 WNBA champions, the LA Sparks. Walter’s personal wealth thought to be worth $4.4 billion (£3.5 billion).
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Wyss is another wealthy benefactor with a personal fortune estimated by Forbes to be £3.8 billion. His most famous part of the saga so far is being the first to reveal Abramovich was looking to sell the club. His interview with Swiss newspaper Blick came before Abramovich’s statement was released on the club’s official website.
The 86-year-old made his money in a medical device company, which he would go on to sell, called Synthes.
Wyss was described by sources as a “partner” along with Goldstein, but it is the latter who has a greater input. As one describes it, Goldstein is “the second person in this consortium”.
Wyss (left) pictured in 2015 and Goldstein in 2019 (Photos: Getty Images)
Goldstein’s name has certainly rung alarm bells among the Chelsea fanbase because he is a Tottenham supporter. He also co-founded real estate investment firm Cain International, which looked into buying Spurs in 2014.
But Cain’s biggest investor happens to be Boehly’s Eldridge firm so it is more understandable why he is on board. The fact he is a passionate football fan, even though it is of a rival team, matters to Boehly because he knows the game and he knows the players. He also lives in north-west London so would be in a better position to keep an eye on things than Boehly or Wyss, who both live in the US.
Perhaps just as importantly, Goldstein knows how Boehly likes to operate. Quoted in the Sunday Times recently, it is clear he does not see his personal affiliation to a club in the north of the capital as a stumbling block. He described the chance to buy Chelsea as a “generational opportunity”.
Goldstein was chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council between 2017 and 2021 and got to know Lord Daniel Finkelstein, who is part of the consortium. He is already a committed Chelsea supporter so there is someone to speak up on fan issues. For example, unlike 12 months ago, there would be someone to rally against the concept of joining a breakaway Super League.
Finkelstein also has political connections as a member of the Conservative Party, which he represents in the House of Lords. He sat on the panel for the government’s fan-led review into football.
Finkelstein, pictured in June 2017, is a Chelsea fan (Photo: Arthur Edwards – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Like Boehly, he has a love of statistics and has written a highly-respected column in The Times newspaper since 2002 on football data called The Fink Tank. It is understood Boehly appreciates his work in this department and that it marries up with the rest of the consortium’s own ideas on recruitment and investment.
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The links to the Conservative party don’t end there. Eyebrows were raised when former chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne, arrived on the scene. The consortium reached out to Robey Warshaw, a London-based advisory firm where Osbourne is a partner, to help try and close a deal. Rather than help, the link was talked about as a possible hindrance among some contacts because it left them exposed to accusations of favourtism given the obvious links to the government. But it doesn’t seem to have negatively affected things at this point.
Charone is also included because of her love for Chelsea. She is from Chicago but people that know her talk about an individual who is one of the most passionate Chelsea fans you will ever meet.
She has been going to games since the 1970s when she was writing a book about the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. He lived very close to Stamford Bridge, so she just ended up going.
Now she pays several thousand pounds to attend as a VIP in the Canalettos Suite in the East Stand, where she is regularly spotted with others who have made their name in the music business. Her involvement is another indication of how Boehly wants fans represented.
Charone made her name in the music industry (Photo: Simon Young)
The addition of Clearlake Capital, which is thought to manage assets worth around £45 billion, to the team is seen as very significant. The size of the wealth behind them ensured their pockets ran at least as deep as any other bid. It is understood Clearlake will be providing the majority of the funds, with Boehly having a minority share but acting as the face of the board.
No one can doubt Boehly’s ambition. When asked by Yahoo Finance why he invests in sports, he replied: “Because it is intellectually stimulating. There are no guarantees.
“I like the ones who have significant momentum already behind them. That’s my preference. They are more expensive but they are generally of better value.
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“So the fact that the Lakers have 17 world titles and you walk into their facility and they have them all — it is awesome — over the court reminding everyone why they’re there. The Dodgers have seven and hopefully growing. Those two brands mean more than just baseball and basketball. They mean showtime.”
Chelsea won every major trophy under Abramovich. Boehly feels he can help them continue to do the same.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)