The Board

[NikkiCFC 8,286]

6 hours ago, Vesper said:

Strasbourg only 2 points off a European football place now 😃

4 clean sheets in a row. Sarr looks promising. 

[Vytis33 1,261]

 

[Vesper 30,083]

Chelsea report £128.4m profit after selling women’s side to themselves

• Club turn last year’s pre-tax loss into pre-tax profit
• Move scrutinised over rules around fair market value

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/mar/31/premier-league-psr-Chelsea-sell-women-team-loophole

Chelsea appear to have complied with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) through player sales by selling the women’s team to the club’s parent company. Chelsea announced they had turned last year’s pre-tax loss of £90.1m into a pre-tax profit of £128.4m for the financial year ending 30 June 2024.

The results were filed at Companies House by Chelsea FC Holdings Limited and represent a significant shift after heavy losses under the ownership of Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly in previous years.

Although Chelsea’s revenue dipped to £468.5m after another season out of the Champions League for the men’s team, they said their financial picture “benefited from increased profit on disposal of player registrations and repositioning of Chelsea Football Club Women Ltd”. The club added that “profits on disposal of player registrations of £152.5m and a profit on disposal of subsidiaries of £198.7m led to an overall net profit of £129.6m after tax”.

It was predicted at the time of last year’s takeover of the women’s team by Chelsea’s parent company, BlueCo 22, that the deal would help Chelsea comply with PSR. The move has faced scrutiny from the Premier League in relation to rules around fair market value and associated-party transactions. The league passed Chelsea selling two hotels at Stamford Bridge to BlueCo 22 for £76.5m last year.

Chelsea said the team’s sale would ensure “CFCW has dedicated resources, management and commercial leadership solely focused on the growth and success of the women’s team”. The club are on course to win a sixth straight Women’s Super League title.

It has been turbulent for the men’s team under Clearlake, the majority shareholder, and Boehly. Chelsea have not been in the Champions League since the 2022-23 season and have been hugely active in the transfer market. They have spent more than £1bn on signings but have also looked to raise funds through outgoings. The sale of homegrown talent helps because money received for academy products goes down as pure profit. Among the players sold in the most recent financial year were Mason Mount, Ian Maatsen and Christian Pulisic.

Chelsea acknowledged that not competing in Europe’s premier competition had affected their revenue. However, their broadcasting income rose thanks to a sixth-placed finish in the Premier League and appearances in the Carabao Cup final and the FA Cup semi-finals last season. Operational costs decreased to offset the fall in revenue.

There was also an increase to £80.1m in match-day revenue, although Chelsea continue to explore a possible deal to leave Stamford Bridge and move to Earl’s Court. Boehly has suggested that divisions over stadium redevelopment plans could lead to the end of his uneasy partnership with Clearlake.

 

Edited April 1 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,083]

Chelsea’s accounts explained: Women’s team sold for £200m, profit posted, UEFA spending limit breached

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6257167/2025/04/06/Chelsea-accounts-womens-team-200m-uefa-breach/

Chelsea’s accounts have become essential reading since Behdad Eghbali’s Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly bought the club in May 2022 — and the most recent filings are no different.

The full figures for 2023-24 were released on Saturday morning and confirm that Chelsea valued their women’s team at £200million ($258m) when selling it to Blueco 22 Midco Limited — a company within the club’s broader legal structure.

The £198.7m profit Chelsea generated from the sale enabled them to post a pre-tax profit of £128.4m for the year ended June 30, 2024, and meant they complied with the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR).

Chelsea’s sale of its women’s team to a sister company, however, is still being assessed by the Premier League from a fair market value standpoint.

The club acknowledged that “the conclusion of this process may result in a material change to the gain recognised” in last season’s accounts.

UEFA takes a different approach from the Premier League. European football’s governing body does not allow for the sale of tangible assets to sister companies to count towards its financial fair play (FFP) calculations. UEFA is in talks with Chelsea over a financial settlement after its spending limits were breached.

Through a Premier League lens, Chelsea’s £128.4m pre-tax profit meant the club’s combined result across the 2022-24 PSR cycle was an £83.1m loss, which is allowed within their £105m PSR loss limit even before any deductions for allowable expenditure are made.

Without selling their assets to themselves — including two hotels in 2022-23 — Chelsea’s pre-tax loss over the last three years would have been £358.3m, more than three times the amount permitted by the Premier League, albeit their PSR loss reduces from that level once allowable costs are deducted.

---

What do these accounts tell us?

Although Chelsea posted a significant profit compared to their £90.1m loss in 2022-23, there was little change in the underlying numbers. Chelsea’s operating loss remained at more than £200m, improving marginally to £213.3m (2022-23: £218.0m).

Nearly all Premier League clubs lose money at the operating level, but Chelsea’s deficit is far and away the worst. Only Aston Villa’s losses (£145.3m) surpassed £100m, let alone £200m.

 

Boehly, left, and Eghbali bought Chelsea in May 2022 (Crystal Pix/MB Media/Getty Images)

That operating loss held steady despite revenue falling £44m (nine per cent) to £468.5m, driven by no European football for the first time since 2016-17. Broadcast income fell 28 per cent as a result, though that was partially offset by increases in gate receipts — up £3.6m to £80.1m — and commercial income, which increased by £15.2m to £225.3m.

Offsetting the reduced income were savings in the overall wage bill and a drop in player amortisation costs, though both of those come with caveats.

Chelsea’s wage bill fell £66m to £338m, but 2022-23’s figure included an estimated £45m in termination payments.

The fall in the underlying wage bill was, therefore, less, albeit the cost of sacking Mauricio Pochettino and his coaching staff in May is undisclosed.

Chelsea’s wages to revenue sat at 72 per cent, a seven per cent reduction in a year but still the highest of the ‘Big Six’ by nearly 10 per cent. Liverpool, the next highest, are on 63 per cent.

What about the women’s team sale?

The accounts confirm that Chelsea valued their women’s team at £200m, which is £105m shy of what Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, PCP Capital Partners and Reuben Brothers paid for Newcastle United in 2021.

Also worth noting when considering the £200m sale price is that Chelsea Women posted an operating loss of just under £9m on revenues of more than £11m in 2023-24.

The Premier League is still assessing the fair market value of this transaction, with Chelsea FC Holdings Ltd’s accounts warning that “the sale agreement contains a clause requiring an adjustment to the consideration receivable if the Premier League’s determination of fair market value differs from the £200m recognised”.

What happened with the hotels they sold in 2022-23?

The Athletic reported how the Premier League had adjusted the value of the two hotels — the Copthorne and Millennium — Chelsea sold to another intra-group company, Blueco 22 Properties Limited, in 2022-23.

At the time, neither Chelsea nor the Premier League confirmed how much had been knocked off the club’s £76.5m sale.

The latest set of accounts show that — in July 2024 — the Premier League reduced the profit by £6m, the impact of which will be seen in the 2024-25 accounts.

 

Chelsea sold one of their two hotels to another intra-group company (John Walton/PA Images via Getty Images)

Is there anything to know about the owners’ loans?

Alongside Chelsea’s accounts, those of other entities in their group structure also landed on Saturday.

They laid bare the underlying performance of the multi-club organisation Clearlake and Boehly head, as well as the extent of the borrowing required to fund it in its first two years.

As per the accounts of 22 Holdco Limited, the group held bank loans at the end of last June totaling £1.165bn, of which £755.2m is repayable by July 2027 and £410.2m by August 2033.

The former attracts interest at 7.5-8 per cent based on current rates, while the latter is serviced via payment in kind (PIK) interest that accrues year-on-year up to the point the loan is due for repayment.

The PIKs accrue at around 12 per cent currently; a rough estimate based on those rates and the August 2033 repayment date gives a total cost of servicing the loan of over £850m (if no repayments are made between now and then) — more than double the loan itself.

A total of £58.9m was paid out by 22 Holdco in cash interest in the year to June 30 2024, a figure that would have been higher if the PIK interest was paid as cash instead.

To date, those interest costs have been borne by Boehly and Clearlake — there is no evidence of Chelsea stumping up the sums to service the parent company loans.

While the PIKs aren’t impacting cash at the moment, they are accounted for in 22 Holdco’s income statement, where net interest payable last year was more than £100m. That contributed to a pre-tax loss for the group of £473.2m, taking losses over the last 28 months beyond £1bn.

What do these numbers tell us about their ability to spend big in the summer?

Since Clearlake Capital and Boehly bought Chelsea from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich — following a forced sale by the UK government — for £2.3bn in May 2022, their tenure has been defined by heavy spending in the transfer market, totalling more than £1bn across three seasons.

In 2023-24, Chelsea splashed out £552.7m on new players — the second-highest single-season spend ever, only trailing their own £745.2m a year earlier.

This included the signings of Moises Caicedo from Brighton & Hove Albion for £115m, Romeo Lavia’s £53m switch from Southampton to Stamford Bridge, Cole Palmer’s £42.5m transfer from Manchester City and Christopher Nkunku’s £52.7m arrival from RB Leipzig.

 

Caicedo joined from Brighton for £115m in the summer of 2023 (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)

Chelsea can now boast four of the top five one-year spends by English clubs, with only Manchester City (£328.1m in 2017-18) getting in their way.

The upshot of that activity is Chelsea’s squad is now the most richly assembled in world football, by a long way. The club’s squad cost sat at £1.437billion at the end of June 2024; in second, Manchester City are over £300m behind.

The spending hasn’t stopped there, though.

The accounts disclose Chelsea spent £167.8m in this season’s summer window, and they’ve since committed to spend more than £60m on Geovany Quenda and Dario Essugo.

Although they have spent big in recent windows, Clearlake and Boehly have proven adept at making money on the players they sell.

The 2023-24 accounts show that Chelsea sold players, including Mason Mount, Ian Maatsen and Omari Hutchinson, for a combined £186.8m last season, a profit of £152.5m, the highest recorded in English football. Chelsea had set the previous mark of £142.6m in 2019-20. Across the last decade, Chelsea have sold players for a total of £1.197bn, generating £842.8m in profit.

As for whether they can embark on another round of spending in the summer, there is nothing — at least from a Premier League PSR perspective — to suggest they can’t. It will likely be a different story from a UEFA standpoint.

Is there anything else you should know?

Player amortisation costs fell by £13.1m to £190.1m, which could be viewed as a surprise given how Chelsea have continued to spend heavily in the transfer market.

The fall reflects their policy of handing out lengthy contracts, meaning their spending is spread out over a longer term than would usually be seen elsewhere. Premier League clubs voted in December 2023 to limit transfer fee amortisation to five years, though the limit was not backdated.

Even so, going forward, it means Chelsea’s amortisation figure per their accounts is likely to differ from the one they have to include in their PSR calculations.

UEFA has limited player amortisation to five years, and its limit crucially applies to post-June 2023 signings (the Premier League’s limit is only for signings made after December 12, 2023), meaning the fees paid for Caicedo, Lavia and Nkunku, among others, can be amortised across their contract lengths for Premier League PSR but only over five years for UEFA.

[Vesper 30,083]

Chelsea winning the Conference League would give them a financial and footballing safety net

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6263960/2025/04/09/Chelsea-conference-league-importance/

The final stretch of Chelsea’s season is here and, in contrast to their extremely challenging Premier League run-in, the road to Wroclaw for the Conference League final on May 28 continues to look highly favourable.

Chelsea’s massive financial advantage over the rest of the Conference League field has been well documented, and it is readily translatable to the strength of quality on the pitch.

Quarter-final opponents Legia Warsaw lie fifth in the Polish Ekstraklasa this season and sit 71st in UEFA’s club coefficient rankings. Overcoming them would set up a semi-final date with either Rapid Vienna (fifth in the Austrian league and 69th in UEFA’s club rankings) or Djurgarden of Sweden (68th). Fiorentina are the only other club in the competition ranked as one of UEFA’s top 40 clubs (36th), and Chelsea (ninth) cannot meet them until the final.

Winning this competition would therefore occupy a strange place in the Chelsea psyche.

Becoming the first club (again) to complete the set of major domestic and European trophies has real meaning to many supporters. Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly are eager to lift their first silverware since purchasing the club from Roman Abramovich three years ago, and it would also be an important milestone for head coach Enzo Maresca and his young squad.

 

Maresca could win the Conference League in his first season (Warren Little/Getty Images)

All that said, it is difficult to imagine much appetite inside or outside Chelsea for an open-top bus parade from Stamford Bridge to Eel Brook Common if Maresca’s team go all the way, and anything less would be widely regarded as a significant embarrassment as well as a failure.

Regardless of how it ends, Chelsea’s maiden run in UEFA’s third-tier competition will not move the needle financially, relative to their all-important pursuit of Champions League qualification, which will be decided no later than three days before the Conference League final when Maresca’s team wrap up their 2024-25 Premier League campaign away at Nottingham Forest.

Champions League football was worth around £80million ($102m) to Chelsea in 2021-22 and 2022-23; the financial rewards of the Conference League are paltry in comparison.

“If we take a look at West Ham, when they won it in 2022-23, they got €22million (£18.8million) in prize money,” football finance expert Kieran Maguire tells The Athletic. “Plus they had the benefit of seven home games. They wouldn’t have been able to charge full price because of the quality of the opposition, but they probably grossed €30m (£25.7m).

“Then you factor in spending to improve the quality of the squad (to cope with more games). You’ve also got transportation costs, accommodation costs. You could also argue that it cost them as far as their league position was concerned (West Ham finished 14th in 2022-23), and that’s worth £3m per place.

“Then the players would have had bonuses for winning the competition. So by the time you factor in all your costs, you’re talking, in my view, low single millions of profit (at best).”

Chelsea are not quite in the same position. Their relentlessly high transfer spend always accounts for regular European football to a degree that other Premier League clubs do not. Their squad has not been stressed by this Conference League run — Maresca was able to employ wholesale rotation for the league phase — and, at least to date, their domestic league position has not suffered as a result of progressing to the knockout rounds.

But the most tangible benefit to Chelsea of winning the Conference League would be the automatic passage it carries into next season’s Europa League. That will not matter if Maresca delivers the top-five finish in the Premier League that is almost certain to be enough to bring Champions League football back to Stamford Bridge in 2025-26, but it will be a valuable insurance policy if they end up missing out.

Opta currently projects Chelsea as having a 43.4 per cent chance of finishing this season somewhere in the Premier League’s top five, but their likeliest final league position is sixth (27.2 per cent chance). If they were to slip even further to seventh (19 per cent chance), it opens up the nightmare potential scenario of Aston Villa or Crystal Palace winning the FA Cup and bumping them back into the Conference League, as Manchester United did to them last season.

Europa League participation in 2025-26 would not be a thrilling prospect either, but it would be a clear and important step up for Chelsea in financial terms.

 

Chelsea want to qualify for the Champions League (Clive Rose/Getty Images)

“Manchester United grossed €32m (£27.4m) in 2022-23 and they were knocked out in the quarter-finals, so by the time you factor in the additional matches, the additional prize money, for winning it, you’re likely to be somewhere in the region of €45m (£38.6m) to €50m (£42.8m) as a big Premier League club,” Maguire adds.

“Plus you’ve got your home matches, so if you add six of those in, you’re probably looking in the region of €60m (£51.4m). You’ve got additional operating costs, but the net benefit from a good year in the Europa League for a club with the status of Chelsea is around €25m (£21.4m) to €30m (£25.7m).”

The significance of that increase in revenue is underlined by the last two years of Chelsea’s published accounts, in which the controversial internal sales of the two hotels outside Stamford Bridge and Chelsea Women were required to offset huge operating losses and keep the club on the right side of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules. A punishment for failing to stay within UEFA’s financial limits — which do not allow such transactions to be factored into compliance calculations — is currently being discussed.

That is more likely to be a fine than a sporting penalty, allowing Chelsea to embark on a new European adventure next season. Ownership and supporters would very much like it to be back in the Champions League, but lifting the Conference League in May would at least guarantee Europa League football and prevent them from being a giant among relative minnows again.

[Vesper 30,083]

Chelsea Finances 2023/24

https://swissramble.substack.com/p/Chelsea-finances-202324

Chelsea’s 2023/24 accounts cover the second full season under the ownership of the consortium led by Behdad Eghbali’s Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly. It’s fair to say that this has been a rollercoaster period, especially off the pitch, where the club’s finances have attracted attention left, right and centre.

On the pitch, Chelsea improved their position in the Premier League from 12th to 6th, while also reaching the final of the Carabao Cup, losing to Liverpool after extra time, and the FA Cup semi-finals, where they lost out to Manchester City.

However, the season was blighted by not playing in Europe, the first time that the Blues had missed out since 2016/17.

Despite the improvement in form, head coach Mauricio Pochettino left the club by mutual consent at the end of the season after just one year in charge. He was replaced by Italian coach, Enzo Maresca, who had led Leicester City to the EFL Championship title.

Chelsea’s women’s team (more of them later) won the Women’s Super League for the fifth time in a row, while they also reached the semi-finals of the Women’s Champions League for the second consecutive year.

Profit/(Loss) 2023/24

 

Chelsea reported a £128m pre-tax profit, which represented an enormous £218m improvement over the previous year’s £90m loss, despite revenue falling £44m (9%) from £512m to £468m and other operating income dropping from £31m to just £1m.

The revenue fall was covered by a steep reduction in operating expenses, which were cut £79m (10%) from £761m to £682m, but that still led to a huge £213m operating loss.

However, this was offset by profit from player sales, which more than doubled from £63m to an English record of £152m, while there was once again significant benefit from asset sales, as the women’s football team was sold to another group company for £200m.

The net £198m profit from the disposal of the subsidiary was actually £121m more than the prior year’s £77m gain from the inter-company sale of hotel buildings.

 

 

The main reason for Chelsea’s revenue decline was the lack of European football, which led to broadcasting falling £63m (28%) from £226m to £163m.

This was partially offset by growth in the other two revenue streams, as commercial rose £15m (7%) from £210m to £225m, while match day was up £4m (5%) from £76m to £80m. Both of these established new club records.

 

 

In response to the lower revenue, Chelsea reduced staff costs with large cuts in wages, down £66m (16%) from £404m to £338m, and player amortisation, down £13m (6%) from £203m to £190m.

Other operating expenses were flat at £139m, though net interest payable fell £2.0m from £11.5m to £9.5m.

Chelsea’s reported £128m profit before tax is the best result in last season’s Premier League by some distance, though a few other clubs also generated sizeable profits, especially Brighton £75m, Manchester City £74m, West Ham £57m and Luton Town £49m.

In contrast, five clubs lost more than £50m, led by Manchester United £131m, Aston Villa £86m and Bournemouth £66m.

 

 

However, this picture is a little misleading, as Chelsea’s huge profit in the books was only thanks to the £198m gain on asset disposals. If this once-off factor were excluded, they would actually have lost £70m, which would be the third worst performance in the top flight.

 

snip

[Vesper 30,083]

Premier League’s failure to prevent Chelsea’s latest accounting tricks shows it can’t regulate its clubs

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6269885/2025/04/11/premier-league-Chelsea-regulator/

At various points over the past few years, people have stopped and asked how on earth Chelsea could afford to spend such enormous sums in the transfer market without falling foul to the Premier League’s financial regulations.

The responses at the time, gleaned from people inside Stamford Bridge as well as various financial experts, usually pointed to the way the club had structured many of these deals: not just spreading transfer payments over several years, but protecting players’ value on the balance sheet by signing them to eight-, nine- or even 10-year contracts.

Chelsea, it was always stated, were confident they would comply with the league’s profit and sustainability regulations (PSR), even if some of us struggled to see how a staggering — and, as it transpired, staggeringly ineffective — £745.2million ($967m) transfer outlay over the course of the 2022-23 season could be accounted for.

In the event, PSR compliance was met in the summer of 2023 thanks to a series of sales just before the PSR deadline at the end of June: Edouard Mendy and Kalidou Koulibaly to Al Ahli for a combined £33m, Mateo Kovacic to Manchester City for £25m, Ruben Loftus-Cheek to Milan for £15m, Kai Havertz to Arsenal for £65m and… a couple of hotels adjacent to Stamford Bridge, plus car parking, to BlueCo 22 Properties Ltd, a subsidiary of the club’s holding company, for £76.5m.

The hotel sale caused anger among some of Chelsea’s rivals amid questions about both the valuation and its legitimacy within the context of PSR. The Premier League analysed the hotel sales for fair market value, making a slight adjustment to Chelsea’s profit in terms of the PSR calculation. But no rules had been broken.

Significantly, though, the league agreed to hold a vote to decide whether to remove clubs’ ability to include asset sales — stadiums, training grounds, hotels, office buildings etc — in future PSR calculations. The loophole, it seemed, was about to be closed.

 

Chelsea’s highly successful women’s team has been sold within the existing ownership (Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)

But when it came to a vote at the Premier League’s annual meeting in Harrogate last June, only 11 of the 20 clubs backed the motion, well short of the two-thirds majority required for rule changes.

There followed another period of frantic trading just before last summer’s PSR deadline (Ian Maatsen to Aston Villa for £37.5m, Omari Hutchinson to Ipswich Town for £20m), which went a long way towards a huge £152m transfer profit for the season.

But Chelsea still needed another lever to pull. Sure enough, their latest accounts, released last week, detailed the “repositioning” sale of their women’s team to BlueCo 22 Midco Limited, another subsidiary of BlueCo 22 Limited, for £200m. Another big loss became a pre-tax profit of £128.4m and, at a stroke, another PSR headache seemed to be cured.

Once again, there is consternation among some of their rivals, asking how on earth Chelsea’s WSL team, which declared revenues of just over £11m last season, could be valued at £200m. The Premier League are still to assess that deal for fair market value, but internally there is a feeling that — unlike UEFA, European football’s governing body, who do not allow such asset sales to sister companies to count towards their financial fair play (FFP) calculations — their authority on the matter was effectively eliminated by that lost vote in Harrogate last June.

Among the clubs who voted against closing the loophole, or abstained, some felt the wording of the proposed change was too vague, failing to distinguish between the type of non-football revenues they felt they should be allowed to exploit (such as building hotels or entertainment venues) and apparent tricks of accountancy.

Others felt that even if they disagreed with the principle, they would be wrong to vote for something that might constrain them if they needed to address a cash shortfall at a later date.

That sums up the whole mess. You have financial regulations designed to keep spending under control, but from the start, they have been less stringent than their UEFA equivalent. You have clubs racking up huge losses but nonetheless able to comply with spending regulations after finding and exploiting loopholes in the rulebook. You have a league that does not have the authority to regulate itself because the rulebook is determined by the clubs. You have clubs that instinctively object to a certain loophole but feel unable to vote against it because self-interest tells them they might just need it in future.

This week, The Athletic revealed that Bournemouth would have been in breach of PSR in at least one of the past two seasons had the Premier League not approved a £71.4m loan write-off when Bill Foley’s Black Knight Football Club bought the club from Maxim Demin in December 2022.

In normal circumstances, a shareholder loan would not be allowed to be written off from a PSR perspective. The Premier League allowed it in the Bournemouth case because it was linked to the takeover rather than “ordinary business”.

But without that write-off, the club would have recorded pre-tax losses of £148.6m over a three-year cycle, against a permitted PSR limit of £83m  — and, if you support Everton or Nottingham Forest, both of whom were hit with points deduction last season, it might reopen old wounds and frustrations regarding the fairness or otherwise of the PSR regime.

Shareholder loans have become a big issue in the PSR debate, with Everton, Arsenal and Brighton & Hove Albion all benefiting from interest-free loans in excess of £250m. Manchester City’s latest challenge to the PSR rules suggested that, if certain commercial deals with “related parties” can be scrutinised or even vetoed by the Premier League if they are felt to be at more favourable rates than market value, then the benefits derived from interest-free loans from a shareholder should fall into the same category.

 

Manchester City’s stance on that issue seems entirely reasonable. But there will be no crackdown on interest-free loans unless a) there is a vote on the matter and b) at least 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs side with them. Once again, self-interest would be likely to hold sway.

The Premier League is going from one regulatory crisis to another. Any hopes of possible “closure” after the eventual resolution of their case against Manchester City — relating to more than 100 alleged breaches of the competition’s financial rules between 2009 and 2016, which the club deny — have been replaced by concerns of further legal actions and further attacks on the league’s attempts to regulate itself and its member clubs.

It is a grim situation and it divides opinion hugely between those who feel the league has got involved in things it shouldn’t have done and those who feel the league should have been far more stringent far earlier to stop things spiralling so far beyond its control.

Equally, the very notion of financial regulation divides opinion between those who consider the rules too restrictive (the ones who feel Everton and Forest were punished for “showing ambition” last season) and those who consider the rules too permissive (those of us who feel that the Merseyside club would have been far better served had the Premier League stepped in much earlier and much more assertively to avert the threat of financial meltdown under Farhad Moshiri’s ownership).

Chelsea’s is a different situation, but it comes back to the same concern about the dangers — both to the competition and to the club itself — of unsustainable spending. Concerns about the impact on the competition have been quelled by the fact that the two biggest single-season transfer outlays in football history have so far brought mediocre results on the pitch, but that is hardly the point when they are playing against clubs who stay well within the very loose spending limits that the regulations allow.

Among some top-flight clubs, there is an admiration for the way Chelsea have operated under the ownership of a consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital: the amortisation trick with those staggeringly long contracts; the vast accumulation of younger players with resale value in mind; the willingness to exploit loopholes by selling the hotels and the women’s team to ensure that they remain PSR-compliant even while running up another huge operating loss.

But the difficulty in praising Chelsea’s owners for their ingenuity is that, just as signing Mykhailo Mudryk and numerous others on eight-year contracts looks rather less than inspired two years in, selling assets to a sister company is the type of move that tends to set alarm bells ringing in English football.

Derby County turned a loss into a profit when they sold their stadium to a company owned by their then-owner, Mel Morris, two days before their accounting deadline in June 2018; Sheffield Wednesday did likewise by selling their Hillsborough stadium to their owner, Dejphon Chansiri, a year later.

 

Stamford Bridge is protected from sale by the CPO (Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

In these cases and others, such as at Reading and the previous ownership regime at Birmingham City, these are looked back upon as regrettable moves, born of desperation, rather than a template for sensible club ownership. The EFL, feeling their rulebook was being abused and that heritage and vital assets were being traded with little consideration for long-term consequences, closed that loophole.

Aston Villa sold Villa Park to NSWE Stadium Limited, a company controlled by their co-owners, Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens — again at a time of financial difficulty in the final weeks before an accounting deadline at the end of the 2018-19 season. Without that sale, Villa would have been in breach of the EFL’s financial regulations in the season that brought promotion.

There are no regrets in Villa’s case given the heights they have reached since, but perhaps there has also been a recognition, amid the club’s continuing PSR challenges of the past few seasons, that you can only sell the family silver once.

But should it ever be an option to sell a stadium, a training ground or even one of the club’s teams — in Chelsea’s case, the women’s team — to address a headache brought about by wild spending?

It is the type of action that would be discouraged, if not totally outlawed, under the UK government’s plans for an independent regulator for English football. One proposal in the Football Government Bill is that the regulator would listen to supporters’ views before deciding whether to approve any plan to sell a club’s key assets, such as a stadium or, presumably, a team.

The very notion of an independent regulator is anathema to those at Premier League HQ as well as to most of the clubs. One of the phrases we keep hearing is about the danger of “unintended consequences”.

But the story of English football in the 21st century has been full of unintended consequences, unsuitable owners and unforeseen problems. A laissez-faire approach led to a climate in which nothing was off-limits. The more the Premier League has tried to address its regulatory challenges over the past few years, the harder its life has become.

The repercussions of the Manchester City case, whatever the verdict, will inevitably be resounding and damaging one way or the other. And yet, as the league’s chief executive Richard Masters said in an interview with the Financial Times last month, “there is no happy alternative to enforcing the rules” — or at least trying to.

In an ideal world, self-regulation would preclude self-interest. But the interests of the game have been overtaken by the financial, commercial or indeed political objectives of club owners. The Premier League, as a body, has been powerless to stop that. The Football Association, still commonly described as English football’s governing body, has become content to be a mere bystander. But battles are raging left, right and centre. Every week seems to throw up another question of what is — or should be — permissible.

By coincidence, one of the few stadiums in English football that is already protected is Stamford Bridge, the freehold for which has been owned since 1997 by Chelsea Pitch Owners (CPO) plc, a group of more than 13,000 shareholders that, as well as supporters, includes former players such as John Terry, Frank Lampard and Marcel Desailly.

The purpose behind the venture was to ensure that Stamford Bridge could not be sold to property developers, as very nearly happened during the 1980s. In the early 2010s, then-owner Roman Abramovich tried to buy the freehold back from CPO to facilitate a move to a new stadium. Despite the widespread goodwill towards Abramovich’s ownership, he fell some way short of the 75 per cent threshold he needed.

At some point in future, once their future plans have become clearer, Chelsea’s current ownership are likely to go back to CPO with a new proposal to buy the leasehold, whether with a view to redeveloping Stamford Bridge or relocating to a new stadium. What Chelsea cannot do is sell the stadium to a sister company simply to resolve a PSR headache.

If that option had been available to them, you suspect they might have done it by now.

Edited April 11 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,083]

The BookKeeper – Exploring Chelsea’s remarkable finances and why they can keep spending

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6131046/2025/04/22/bookkeeper-Chelsea-finances-transfers/

Conjure up memories of Chelsea’s most notable moments over the past couple of years and, chances are, actual football will be thin on the ground. Their first Premier League season in the post-Roman Abramovich era was notable only for how poor it was, a 12th-place finish in 2023 marking their worst league position in 29 years.

Last season was improved, with Cole Palmer showing his class and Mauricio Pochettino guiding the club to sixth and a return to European football, even if it came in the guise of the Conference League. A goal two minutes from the end of extra time resigned them to a Carabao Cup runners-up spot. Yet it still seemed a distinctly underwhelming season on the pitch.

More likely to spring to mind are events off the field. Abramovich’s 19 years at the helm came to an abrupt end in the spring of 2022, a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – with Abramovich sanctioned for his close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chelsea forced to operate under special measures. The arrival of new owners brought an apparent departure from the past. Out with the oligarch, in with private equity.

Into Stamford Bridge came a consortium fronted by Todd Boehly, a minority shareholder in Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers, alongside Clearlake Capital Group L.P., a private equity firm also based out of LA. The price for taking Chelsea from Abramovich’s sanctioned hands was a cool £2.536billion — alongside a commitment to invest a further £1.75billion in the club’s infrastructure in the future.

snip

[ZAPHOD2319 4,799]

I put this here instead of the Women’s thread as it is more about meeting PSR and UEFA approval. 

[TheHulk 2,401]

We got CL, let's see what sponsor they guys get now.

[Vesper 30,083]

we made Pot 1 for the CL

POT 1

Real Madrid
Manchester City
Bayern Munich
Liverpool
Paris Saint-Germain
Internazionale
Chelsea
Borussia Dortmund
Barcelona

[NikkiCFC 8,286]

Mark Walter just bought Lakers as majority shareholder for $10 billions.