Todd Boehly Thread

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33 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Took a while though before they was this good from the moment Todd bought them. 

I follow MLB a bit, the only US sports league I follow, as it is unique and for me, pretty interesting

Boehly came in as part owner in midseason 2012

West Division titles (they have won their division every season since, except for the crazy 2021 season, see below)

2013  92-70

2014  94-68

2015  92-70

2016  91-71

2017  104-58

2018  92-71

2019  106-56

2020 (Covid season, they went 43-17 and were tracking (algorithmically, based off their schedule versus results against other teams that season) to the most wins ever (120) for one season in baseball history, although the 1906 Chicago Cubs won 116 in a 152 game season, 10 fewer games played than now)

2021 2nd place  106- 56 (this was a freak season, as they had the most ever wins (106) of any MLB team that failed to win its division or league, surpassing the 104 wins of the 1909 Chicago Cubs and 1942 Brooklyn Dodgers. The San Francisco Giants won 107 games that season, the only time they won over 100 games in the past 22 seasons, although the Giants did win the World Series in 3 out of 5 seasons from 2010 to 2014, they won it in 2010, 2012, and 2014.)

2022 111-51

2023  100-62

2024 98-64  (if you make 2020 a full season and they had 'only' won 100 games (absolute lock they were tracking to 120), the 8 seasons 2017-2024 were the most wins ever by any team in history over an 8 season span, 817, and 837 (an insane average of almost 105 wins per year (104.625) over 8 years if they had won the projected 120 in 2020)

NL Pennants   

2017 (lost the World Series to the Houston Astros 4-3) this was tainted as the Astros were later proven to be cheating by stealing signals, but MLB refused to take the title away from the Astros, see below)

2018 (lost the World Series 4 games to 1 to the superb Boston Red Sox side who won 108 games in the regular season that year, the most wins ever for Boston in a single season)

2020

2024

World Series titles

2020 (4-2 over the Tampa Bay Rays)

2024 (4-1 over the NY Yankees)

 

 

[milka 3,405]

And you expect these clowns to make us Competitive , Champions haha good luck .

 

 

Edited May 1 by milka

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7 hours ago, milka said:

And you expect these clowns to make us Competitive , Champions haha good luck .

 

 

...............this is what it is now, they don’t know what the club is all about… the DNA is gone”

[ahmedou 206]

[Fulham Broadway 17,458]

Boehly ''KTBFFH'' 💙

 

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Todd Boehly says those who criticise Chelsea 'don't know what they're talking about'

I don't like this at all, not a good look....

https://siphillipstalkschelsea.substack.com/p/todd-boehly-says-fans-who-criticise

 

Yes, Todd Boehly, many of us will agree with what you’ve said this week. Chelsea are doing so much better this season, finally, after a turmoil few seasons under your part-ownership. It’s been truly toxic at times, let’s not forget that.

Things are feeling a lot better of late and I agree, this young squad will continue to grow and evolve. I don’t think many people have ever doubted that. I think what we have all wanted was the massive squad rebuild to have just been done with more balance from the off and get better results and play better football along the way. It has just always seemed a smarter way to do it. None of us mind signing top young talents. I mean, look at us all enjoying Estevao Willian right now! None of us wanted to fill a starting Xl with 30-years-olds. It’s always just been about doing it with more balance and adding more experience to a very young team from the off. Why does it have to be one way or another? Of course a group of young players will mature and get more experience, eventually, but it could have been helped by adding more leaders and experience from the start. It would have just been smarter, surely!?

And you know who else has said that other than fans? John Terry, Frank Lampard, Jody Morris, John Obi Mikel, Frank Leboeuf, and a bunch of other former Chelsea players. As well as top pundits and journalists (I’m talking top and not just your Gary Neville’s and Jamie Carragher’s).

So, does John Terry not know what he’s talking about either?

Does Joe Cole not know what he’s talking about, either? Cole has said this below today and he’s absolutely spot on. How can anyone disagree with this?

“It’s clear the club are working within a business framework. Anyone who’s worked for Brighton seems to be coming in.

“They want to do that model and are trying to apply it. But my problem with that model – the data-driven model – at the very, very top is I think the margins are in the unseen, what data can’t see.

“I think data has a big part to play, but at that very, very top, I think it’s always the human element that makes the difference.

“They’re at where we expected them to be at. Slow improvement, could be quicker with experienced players in it added but that’s not the mandate. That’s not what the club are going to do.”

Careful though Joe, you’ll be in the category of ‘criticising’ soon…

I’m happy to see positive quotes come out from Boehly, I think it’s great to hear him talking like this and it gives us confidence and hope as a fan. But to go on and say that fans who are criticising have no idea what they’re talking about is absolutely ludicrous, rude, and like a smack in the face. You simply cannot say that any fan with concerns, questions, or criticism, does not know what they’re talking about - that is not how the world works and it’s certainly not how a football club and football fandom works.

So, what’s happened?

Basically, Todd Boehly has been speaking at a financial event/talk this week and as always, was asked about Chelsea. He only ever seems to speak about Chelsea at events like this, by the way. Remember, I’ve invited him on my Podcast before and he’s not come on. He would have had countless other opportunities to speak to Chelsea related media as well but has chosen not to.

I had this quote sent to me…

Todd Boehly: “You’re going to watch our team continue to grow and evolve. We’ve got them together for a long time, I am pretty excited about what the future looks like.”

“Criticism? I just find it’s one more person that doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

So on this bit, in context, this is how it was written…

The first bit above is great, no issues with him having that confidence and belief in what they are doing at the club. In fact, I love to hear it.

But the second bit on criticism is just insanity to me. I really don’t understand it. As a club owner, you have to accept and take on board any criticism, whether you agree with it or not. Fans are your paying customers, mate. Show them some respect. I know he’s probably aiming this more at the media than the fans, but us fans have been the ones out here offering the most criticism and asking the most questions - so it’s a dig at the fans too.

Having concerns about anything around Chelsea, like whether the current goalkeeper is good enough or whether the squad has enough leaders in it is NOT a fan not knowing what they are talking about - it’s a genuine concern and a genuine question that we fully have a right to ask. The way he’s reacted to that is bang out of order.

Maybe he can snap back like that when we have won the Premier League or the Champions League again. But we’ve not done anything major yet mate, despite the Club world Cup win being a good achievement that I will always acknowledge as being a successful win. We have a long way to go yet.

You want fans on side? Maybe give them the respect that they deserve. Football is a game of opinions and not everyone is going to agree. Not everyone will agree with what I’m writing here, and that’s fine. But I’m not going to tell those who disagree with me that they don’t know what they’re talking about. Absolute madness.

By the way, I’m not disagreeing with what he has said on Robert Sanchez and Reece James either - that’s not the point. It’s what he has said after this that’s completely out of order and disrespectful to the people who help fill his pockets right now - the Chelsea fans. And guess what? A lot of them certainly do know what they are talking about.

On the other side of this, I get why Boehly might be emotional about it as well. Some sections of the Chelsea fan base have spent years making clown faced pictures of Boehly and really going at him. I’ve always believed that’s been too much. So I can see why he might be annoyed about all of that. But what did he expect when he bought one of the biggest clubs in the land? There’s an expectation at Chelsea and there always will be. Criticism is just all part of the game, and some fans will always take it too far - you cannot ever change that.

I’ll tell Todd the same as what I say to any player who doesn’t like criticism. Deal with it, let your feet (club) do the talking, and be humble. Once you win the Premier League and UCL, come back and boast about it, but be humble whilst you do so and do not disrespect an entire fan base pretty much, because I know that nearly all of us would have had concerns and offered criticism in the last few seasons.

This is all being written by someone who has consistently been a defender of Todd Boehly and supported him through it all. I even went on The Overlap and defended him. But for me, this is a slap in the face and I really don’t like it. It’s changed my views on him a bit, unfortunately. I see a bit of arrogance now that doesn’t sit well with me.

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https://www.afr.com/companies/sport/Chelsea-s-maverick-money-man-is-playing-to-win-20251111-p5nebx

https://archive.ph/5M6DH

The final game of the 2025 World Series baseball playoff was the most dramatic in the history of the sport, statistically speaking.

 

On nine occasions, the probability of victory swung by more than 15 per cent; twice more than the next-most volatile championship game, which was played in 1924.

 

Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly is a numbers man, but amid all the twists and turns he was never in doubt that his team would beat the Toronto Blue Jays and retain the title.

 

“Maybe that was just blind confidence to protect myself, but I felt pretty good the whole game,” Boehly tells AFR Weekend. “The team is really scrappy, and the culture of the team is to never give up,” he says.

 

The 52-year-old American billionaire isn’t afraid of a scrap, either.

 

He has built a business empire and a fortune estimated at $US9 billion ($13.7 billion) by playing the odds and making winning bets.

 

When he led a consortium to buy English Premier League soccer team Chelsea from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in 2022 – which at the time was the biggest deal for a sports team in history – Boehly emerged as a disruptive figure in the most fiercely competitive and lucrative sporting competition in the world.

 

That moment marked a symbolic shift in ownership from petro-dollar-backed sugar daddies to Wall Street trained financial engineers who are putting their reputations, sanity and billions of dollars on the line to achieve commercial and sporting success.

 

“The reality is it’s just about winning,” Boehly says in Sydney this week. “Are you winning or are you not? In the end, there can only be one champion.”

 

Boehly says the competitive streak that has driven his career was instilled in him by his high school wrestling coach in Bethesda, Maryland, and initially, he put it to work pursuing a career on Wall Street.

 

After stints at Credit Suisse and private equity firm Whitney, he oversaw the corporate debt unit at New York-based investment firm Guggenheim Partners. In 2012, the city’s struggling baseball team, the Dodgers, was put up for sale.

 

It was a deal that changed his life.

 

Boehly was part of a Guggenheim consortium that paid $US2.15 billion for the team, an amount criticised as astronomical for a franchise that hadn’t won a National League pennant or a World Series for over two decades.

 

It turned out to be a steal. The stadium value and television rights underwrote most of that price and, a year later, the Dodgers’ broadcast rights for 25-years were sold for $US9 billion.

 

Since Guggenheim took over, the Dodgers have been the most consistently successful Major League baseball team, winning their division 12 of 13 years, the National League five times and the World Series three times since 2020.

Boehly’s investment mantra is to own “what you need and what you want”. But he says too many owners of sports teams haven’t figured out that they’re actually in the entertainment business.

 

To hammer home the point, he references one of his other teams, the Los Angeles Lakers National Basketball Association franchise.

 

“When you think about the Lakers’ brand, what it stands for and what it means, Dr [Jerry] Buss was probably the first one to come to the realisation that this is not a basketball team, this is an entertainment platform,” he says.

 

“He made the Forum [the Lakers stadium] the place to be. He got Jack Nicholson and celebrities to come to games, and he turned it into something very special.”

 

Boehly has been a part owner of the Lakers since 2021, when he joined a consortium to buy a minority stake in a deal that valued the NBA franchise at $US10 billion.

 

He has gone all in on Los Angeles. Aside from the sports teams, he is leading an ambitious luxury development in Beverly Hills under the Aman brand.

 

In 2022 his investment company, Eldridge Industries, took control of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association after a diversity scandal rocked its big annual event, the Golden Globe Awards.

 

And Eldridge is betting on LA’s screen industry, too. The company owns stakes in Oscar-winning production company A24 (Everything Everywhere All At Once, Civil War) and the music back catalogues of Bruce Springsteen and The Killers.

 

Each business has its own strategy, depending on its industry.

 

Boehly’s approach to sports ownership is pretty simple. Pay up to buy fabled teams in big cities, then back them to be consistent winners. The big-city support base means enough bums to fill stadiums and keep seat-prices high.

 

While storied old teams give off a “glow” that attracts fans across global markets, who will pay broadcasters to watch their heroes and might buy the merch, too.

 

It was this strategy that informed the deal that would make Boehly himself a globally recognised name. And his attempt to upend the way soccer business is done made him, for many, a figure of ridicule.

Buy now, pay later soccer

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed many things, and in the world of soccer it forced Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich to sell his prized club.

 

Boehly swooped, seeing off a dozen “credible” bids to land Chelsea, one of the most successful and highest-profile clubs of the 21st century. Big city and fabled? Tick.

 

The price tag was hefty, with £2.5 billion for Abramovich’s stake (which was frozen to be used for Ukrainian humanitarian causes) and a pledge to invest another £1.75 billion into the club.

 

It was an eye-watering sum, more than 20 times the £140 million Abramovich paid in 2003. Was this the Dodgers trade all over again?

 

Boehly believes so. But he acknowledges there have been plenty of doubters, and critics of his methods, if not the overarching strategy.

 

“The English papers remind me every day how smart they are and how stupid I am,” he says wryly.

 

While Boehly was not the first American to buy into the EPL (11 of the 20 teams this season have American owners), his arrival reset the bar for spectacular and controversial.

 

Chelsea embarked on a spending spree unprecedented in top-flight soccer.

 

Within a year, they had made two of the most expensive signings in soccer history, and In the three years since Boehly took over, Chelsea have splashed about £1.5 billion on almost 50, mostly young, players.

 

The strategy appeared like madness. But it soon became apparent there was a method to it that borrowed heavily from the way sports business is done in America. It’s all about accounting arbitrage.

 

To understand Boehly’s radical approach, you need to understand how amortisation works in soccer accounting.

 

When a player is bought, the transfer fee paid to the selling club is not booked as a single expense in one year.

 

Instead, it is treated as an asset and the cost spread evenly over the length of the player’s contract.

 

Typically, a £50 million player on a five-year contract will be accounted at a £10 million a year cost (amortising the transfer fee), plus their wages.

 

Chelsea’s strategy was to sign much more expensive players, such as Moises Caicedo for £100 million, on eight-year contracts, thus getting top-class players at a mid-range price – in Caicedo’s case, £12.5 million a year.

 

The strategy, which was almost exclusively used on young players with potentially long careers ahead of them, allowed the manager to front-load a complete squad overhaul without immediately breaching spending limits under the EPL’s Profit and Sustainability Rules, and European soccer’s Financial Fair Play regulations.

 

Both of these tie spending to each club’s profit. As a bonus, they could lock in relatively modest wages, theoretically avoiding costly contract renegotiations and transfer battles.

This was the part of Boehly’s plan to quickly turn Chelsea into a winning team.

 

“You’re going to continue to watch our team evolve and grow,” he said this week. “We’ve got them together for a long time. I’m pretty excited about what the future looks like.”

 

Long contracts are common in American sport, where there are no transfer fees and spending rules are limited to salary caps. But they are not in soccer because Boehly’s strategy carries risks other clubs found outweighed the short-term gains.

 

The most obvious is the “albatross risk”, where the team is left with a long-term liability because a player underperforms, suffers a major injury or just doesn’t fit the manager’s system – a particular risk at Chelsea where Boehly is onto his fifth manager.

 

Out-of-favour players on big wages and long contracts are hard to sell because other clubs won’t match the wages and there is little incentive for the player to leave.

 

Players who can’t get a run in the first team – of which there are many at Chelsea – can be a drag on morale, too.

 

Chelsea now has a huge and inflexible cost base for most of the next decade, reducing their ability to spend in the future.

 

That means they have to sell before they can buy, but under Boehly’s strategy, selling players for a decent profit has become harder.

 

Profit from a sale is calculated minus the remaining book value.

 

For example, if a £100 million player on an eight-year contract is sold after three years for £70 million, his book value is £62.5 million (£12.5 million amortised per year for three years, leaving five years on the books).

 

The club books only a £7.5 million profit (£70 million minus £62.5 million).

 

All of which means that Boehly’s short-term, debt-fuelled gamble has mortgaged the club’s financial flexibility for years to come.

 

Other clubs don’t have this problem because the amortisation “loophole” was closed as a result of Chelsea’s spending binge, and is now set at a maximum of five years.

 

Still, the jury remains out on whether it will work.

 

After coming 12th in a disappointing first campaign, Chelsea have improved to finish sixth and then fourth last season.

 

With big-money signings like Caicedo leading the way, they are currently third in the EPL.

 

Boehly says he has needed a thick skin to deal with the intensity of opinions that come with owning sports teams because fans have such a deep emotional investment.

 

“Sometimes my wife and my family take it differently than I take it. I just find it’s one more person that doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

 

It’s a sentiment on show at the UBS event, where Boehly slaps down audience questions about the need to find a new goalkeeper and senior players.

 

“Sanchez [the goalkeeper] is doing pretty damn well right now … Reece James has become an unbelievable leader,” he says from the stage.

Don’t stare in the rearview mirror too long

Among pundits, on-field success has led to a softening of views on Boehly’s controversial transfer plan.

 

Whatever the commentary, Boehly gives off the vibe that he doesn’t care, and is totally uninterested in looking back.

 

He refers to a graduation speech given by Roger Federer in which the tennis great explained that while he’d won 20 Grand Slams, he won only 54 per cent of the points he played.

 

“That point is the most important thing at that moment in time, but when it’s over, you got to move on,” Boehly tells AFR Weekend. “If you stare in the rearview mirror too long, right, you’re going to get lost.”

 

As if to prove the point, months after the amortisation loophole was closed in April 2024 he was again getting creative with Chelsea’s financials.

 

By selling assets – including the Chelsea women’s team – to other companies he owns, Boehly was able to report a solid profit and give the club more headroom to keep buying players without breaking the rules.

 

Was it a blatant exploitation of the rules or a smart strategy to compete with state-backed clubs such as Newcastle and Manchester City? Opinion is divided.

 

For his part, Boehly is under no illusions that Chelsea has to win for him to be accepted and for his investment to be maximised.

 

English soccer’s biggest club, Manchester United, is proof that success on and off the field are intertwined.

 

It has been 12 years since they last won the Premier League, and the club has struggled on the field and in the sharemarket.

 

The New York-listed shares have gone nowhere in five years, neatly reflecting a club that has spent up while falling short of expectations.

 

“It’s been a long time since they’ve won,” Boehly says when asked about Manchester United. “Winning is really valuable so figuring out how to get back on the winning ways is important for all teams. You have to be competitive.”

 

Chelsea knows as well as any club that fans love a winner.

 

Five EPL titles and two Champions League wins in the 16 years after Abramovich took over made it a global brand.

 

For Boehly, continuing that growth, rather than squeezing more out of the fans, is the way forward.

 

“We’re trying to grow a global fan base. If your fan base is continuing to grow all around the world that should lead it to naturally believe that your revenue is going to continue to grow.”

A plan to emulate Warren Buffett

Three weeks ago, Boehly was at Chelsea’s home ground of Stamford Bridge to watch his team lose in the last minute to newly promoted Sunderland, whose achievements he describes as “phenomenal”.

 

Ironically, Sunderland’s relegation from the top division in 2017 made it the subject of a Netflix documentary, Sunderland ’Til I Die, which was produced by Fulwell Entertainment, a production company Boehly part owns via Eldridge Industries.

 

For all his shrewd investments in sport, Boehly is absolutely a finance guy. Eldridge owns stakes in over 100 businesses across the world in insurance, real estate, asset management, technology and aviation.

 

Among the investments is a stake in Brisbane-based mining engineering company Ausenco, which specialises in supporting miners of critical minerals.

 

“For us it was a really good way to get a seat at the table in what is an important topic.”

 

Boehly jetted into Australia to appear at the UBS event before heading up to Queensland for the company’s board meeting.

 

His grand vision is to emulate Warren Buffett, not simply by owning undervalued assets, but by amplifying returns in an insurance company structure.

 

“Berkshire Hathaway in 1992 was $US11 billion in market cap. They passed a trillion last year. If I add up all the value of the enterprises that make up the insurance business, they massively dwarf the asset management business.”

 

Boehly is talking about Buffett’s strategy of buying an insurance company to house his investments.

 

This meant he could raise money via insurance policies, and so long as the underwriting was good he could invest in and accumulate assets funded by other people’s money.

 

The result was Berkshire compounding at 15 per cent.

 

“Compounding at 15 per cent is not easy,” says Boehly. “By being able to really understand what it is that you’re invested in, allows you to do that in a differentiated way.”

 

He says he has no problems switching from working out how to avoid bad loans in his insurance book to avoiding injuries among his players.

“In the end, these are the business models. I am trying to figure out how to identify patterns and where the odds are good.”

 

Boehly likes his odds with Chelsea, but he knows risks have to be taken in business and in sport.

 

And the value of business, sport and life is that the unexpected will happen.

 

Like on that memorable evening in Toronto, when an unlikely double play in the second extra innings delivered a comeback for the ages.

 

“Those are the stories you can look back on and embrace. But the experiences that have guided me are when things haven’t worked out, and you get back up and move forward when you’ve been knocked out.”