Abramovich rejects lowball offer from LA Dodgers part-owner looking for Chelsea investment opportunity — report

Back in July, reports of a “financier” named Todd Boehly sniffing around Premier League clubs looking for investment opportunities made the rounds, with Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur apparently at the top of his wishlist.

Boehly, who made his fortunes with Guggenheim Partners and is turning those billions into investments in sports (20 per cent stake in the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team), media (online and streaming), and whatever else his new company, Eldridge Industries, may be into, turned those considerations into an actual bid in “recent weeks”, which was swiftly knocked back by a certain Roman Abramovich.

That’s the story from The Washington Post (which is behind a paywall, so you can read about it at the Financial Times instead), who explain that Boehly’s offer “fell short of $3 billion”, which is supposedly Abramovich’s asking price (or is it £3b?) — but that seems like hopeful phrasing for a club that’s supposedly not on the market at all, led by an owner who’s not seeking to sell it (or so says Chairman Bruce Buck). The report does not suggest that Boehly was only looking for a partial stake, which seems ... bold ... though apparently he “remains interested in pursuing a deal”.

When we looked at this budding story in July, we had wondered if Boehly would even have the assets to leverage to make a reasonable bid for the club, and that was before Manchester City sold a roughly 10 per cent stake in their parent company to Silver Lake Partners equity firm, valuing the club at a whopping $4.8b. Chelsea may not fetch a price that high on an open market (not that this is an open market), but after lowballs from the likes of Jim Ratcliffe and Todd Boehly, maybe the open market will get the message. Go big or go home. (Please, go home. We’re fine. Unless you want to finance our new stadium. Then we should talk. But just the stadium!)