US billionaire Todd Boehly primed to raise stakes in bid to buy Chelsea, despite club insisting Roman Abramovich will not sell
Ref:dailytelegraph.co.uk
The American billionaire who wants to buy Chelsea is considering making a fresh approach, despite the club’s insistence that owner Roman Abramovich will not consider a sale.
Todd Boehly, who is part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is keen to purchase a Premier League club and has made Chelsea his No 1 target.
Senior Chelsea sources are adamant that the club is not for sale and that Abramovich is not interested in entering into any negotiations, in spite of reports that his valuation of Chelsea has now rocketed to £3 billion.
But Boehly, who was part of the group who tried to purchase Tottenham Hotspur in 2014, is understood to be weighing up a new offer after having an initial approach turned down.
Boehly is not thought to be working to any timescale, which means he could wait for what he believes is the right moment before trying again.
But one deadline approaching for Abramovich is the Mar 31, 2020 date that marks the expiration of the planning permission for Chelsea’s £1 billion stadium project that was shelved in May last year.
There is no prospect of the demolition work the club had agreed to being started by that date, but Chelsea are hopeful that the planning process would not prove as complex as the first time around if Abramovich decided to give the green light to the project again.
An allowance to let the planning deadline pass without any indication whether the project would be resurrected would only encourage those, including Boehly, who still hope to tempt Abramovich into a sale.
Abramovich has turned down at least four enquiries, the latest of which was from Boehly, to purchase the club in the past 18 months, even though he is still unable to work in the United Kingdom because of his visa stand-off that has kept him away from Stamford Bridge for that period.
Experts believe Abramovich’s valuation of Chelsea has been inflated by the recent 10 per cent investment in Manchester City that valued the club at £3.74 billion, but Boehly is yet to be scared off.
Boehly’s spokeswoman has refused to comment on her client’s interest in Chelsea, but the man worth almost £5 billion confirmed his desire to buy a Premier League club in September during an interview with Bloomberg.
“Football’s the biggest sport in the world, the passion the fans have for the sport and the teams is unparalleled,” Boehly said. “So what you are trying to build with these teams, you are really trying to a) win and b) be part of the community.
“The opportunity we had with the Dodgers was really about part-ownership with Los Angeles, how are we going to win, how are we going to drive championships and how are we going to build passion. If you look at what the Premier League offers, it’s all of those things.”
Asked how confident he was about his chances of buying a club in the near future, Boehly said: “You can never predict these things. One of the nice things about football clubs is that they’re relationship-driven and team driven, and therefore it’s unlikely one just gets put up and sold by auction. So you develop long-term relationships and get to know them, but ultimately whether or not something happens I don’t know. But what I do know is I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned a lot about the fan-base, the global opportunity. It’s the best product in the world.” Boehly appeared to confirm he would be willing to pay a premium for the right club when he added: “The billion-pound question is the price. It’s hard to buy quality and not have to pay up. Then it’s a question of can you continue to build on what you’ve acquired at that price? That’s the question. I continue to believe there is a global opportunity for the best clubs. Ultimately, it comes down to can something get done that both sides think makes sense?” It is understood Boehly, the chairman, chief executive officer and controlling member of Eldridge Industries, a US private investment firm, regularly watches Premier League football from America, and his long-standing interest is underlined by his attempt to buy Tottenham five years ago. Boehly founded the Cain Hoy enterprise that launched a takeover bid for Spurs, but an agreement could not be reached after chairman Daniel Levy put a £1 billion valuation on the club and placed a number of conditions on any potential sale – one of which was that he would have to stay on. Having delivered the new stadium, Levy is now said to value Tottenham at closer to £2 billion and would still want to retain a large part of his control as a condition of any sale, which has so far proved unattractive to prospective buyers. But Boehly may be prepared to increase his first bid for Chelsea significantly, given the club’s global reach and the potential to take full control and put them back at the top of English and European football. Boehly was part of the group that paid £1.3 billion for the LA Dodgers in 2012, outbidding Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke in the process. Under his part-ownership, the Dodgers have won seven successive Western Division titles and two National League pennants, twice losing in the World Series final, in 2017 and 2018.
Comments