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3 months ago
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Chelsea are a laughing stock.
Since buying the club for £2.5bn and pledging another £1.75bn in further club investment, Todd Boehly and friends have presided over a total shambles.
Since the takeover in 2022, it has taken them only two years to reach spending of £1.5bn+ on signing players, including another quarter of a billion (so far!) in this current summer window.
They have also managed to go through numerous managers in this brief time, managing to go from Champions League winning Thomas Tuchel, to Championship winning Enzo Maresca (apart from last season, his only managerial experience was in the Italian second tier where he lasted only a large handful of matches before getting the sack).
The news of the laughable Chelsea shambles has now reached over the pond, with a special Bloomberg report (see below) now detailing how American investors have seen what’s happened at the Stamford Bridge circus and are now seeing Premier League clubs as not such a good idea.
So many American ‘investors’ already in play in England, with around half the Premier League clubs and some 30+ overall of the 92 clubs in the four divisions having significant USA ownership/control.
However, reality is that only four of the Premier League clubs in the 2022/23 season (the most recent available figures for all clubs) made a profit.
You can see why our friends across the pond might be getting cold feet, when over in the United States, their major sports are arranged with the specific aim of everybody making as much money as possible. Things such as the threat of relegation a very foreign concept.
The Bloomberg report also notes the ever increasing competition at the top end of the Premier League, with the reality now being that whilst there are only four automatic places for Champions League qualification, there are arguably now at least twice as many teams as there are places, vying for those positions.
David Hellier reporting for Bloomberg – 21 August 2024:
The Premier League has been a rich hunting ground for Americans over the past two decades, with almost half the 20 clubs under their control as it started a new season. The interest was turbocharged when a group led by billionaire Todd Boehly acquired Chelsea two years ago.
But they’re now souring on English football, according to seven people involved in buying and selling teams. And interest has particularly waned amid Chelsea’s struggles, some of those familiar with the market said. That’s despite spending more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) on players.
The group — a mix of advisers and investors in the US and UK — said financial losses and little progress on limiting overspending on squads has turned US investors off what’s often considered the world’s most popular sports league. There’s also the risk of not qualifying for lucrative European competitions or, even worse, getting relegated to the second tier.
Meanwhile, putting money into US sports is becoming more attractive, the people said. They asked not to be identified in order to speak freely.
“There’s no cost control, and you have irrational competitors like Todd Boehly who distort the market,” said Roger Mitchell, who runs Albachiara Group, a consultancy focusing on the value of sports investment. The English Premier League has a “great product, but it’s not a business,” he said.
Boehly said that there’s “nothing irrational” about Chelsea’s approach, which he described as “laying a long-term foundation, establishing a great leadership team and responding to the environment.” The brand power of big clubs, such as Chelsea, also can’t be replicated, giving them potential to grow globally, he said.
‘Adam Sommerfeld of Certus Capital, who advises high net worth individuals on investment in sports, says many of these assets (Premier League clubs) have been over-marketed and over-priced.’
‘One representative for a large American sports fund said that the Premier League had become so competitive it was hard to contain costs.’
‘Collectively, the Premier League’s revenues, boosted by packed stadiums and the most lucrative television deals in Europe, have jumped to almost £7 billion a year. Yet the most recent set of filed accounts showed that only four out of 20 teams made an operating profit in the 2022-23 season.’

 
