Raine Group to announce ‘preferred bidders’ for Chelsea by end of week — report

A shortlist of three or four from “less than 10 serious bids” is expected to be announced by Raine Group this week as the bidding groups for Chelsea Football Club wait to find out their fates. Some have spent the past few days lying low, confident in their submissions. Some have spent them making the media rounds. Some have been trying to engage in conversations with key stakeholders (and Chelsea fans, even).

By “Thursday lunch”, they will all have heard back whether their attempts have had the intended effect, whether they have the right combination of finances, planning, connections, and optics to make Chelsea “comfortable” in choosing them as the next stewards of the club.

The frontrunners seem to be the Boehly-Wyss group, the Ricketts bid, the Saudi Media Group, and the consortium led by Sir Martin Broughton. Nick Candy’s bid appears to be scrambling hard at the very least, though a deleted post on Instagram earlier today from (supposedly) one of financing partners appeared to hint at their bid being unsuccessful already.

The final four shortlist may look very different still. Fortunately, it sounds like we won’t have to wait too long to find out.