Boehly bid adds more funding with Clearlake, targets long-term investment in Chelsea — report

With tonight’s deadline looming, potential investors and owners of Chelsea Football Club are making last-minute moves to jazz up their bids, especially as it sounds like there will not be a second round of bidding due to the compressed timelines, and whatever is submitted by 5pm EDT today, is final.

To that effect, one of the leading candidates, the Boehly-Wyss consortium has reportedly added even more financial muscle to their offer, enlisting the private California-based equity firm Clearlake Capital who have about $60b worth of assets under their management at the moment. (As an aside, Clear Lake, over here in Northern California, is a very nice place to visit.)

That won’t make this bid the same as a football-loving oligarch frivolously spending from a bottomless bag of moneys, but as per Sky News, the Boehly-Wyss bid is now “overfunded”, which means that they not only have the money secured for the bid itself, but presumably for putting into the club, both in the short-term and the long-term.

One of the other bids (Aethel Partners) talked about Chelsea needing an immediate $50m cash injection to resume normal operations, for example, while Boehly-Wyss are among a number of bids specifically talking about stadium development and emphasis on youth and women’s football as well. Good.