Boehly consortium final bid for Chelsea ‘in excess of £4 billion’ in total — report

The consortium led by Todd Boehly have been reportedly selected as the “preferred” bidders, which should mean that they will indeed become our next owners. An official announcement isn’t expected until Monday at the earliest, though some reports have already claimed the Boehly bid have become “exclusive”, which should rule out any more late silliness like the publicity stunt from Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

Some reports, like The Athletic, continue to entertain that late bid as something more than just a bit of showboating, but surely Raine Group or Chelsea doing the same would be some tremendous bad faith acting on our part. All’s fair in love and war and business, I suppose, but the Boehly bid have jumped through all the hoops of this process and passed all the tests, public or private, by making the most realistically compelling and grounded pitch. Starting that over with Ratcliffe (or worse, skipping it or rushing through it) would surely not benefit the club.

And as per the report, the total final bid from Boehly was “in excess of £4b” (£2.5b of which is the charitable part, as requested by Abramovich), which puts it essentially on equal footing of Ratcliffe’s £4.25b total offer. The bid was said to be “overfunded” way back when already, and that certainly seems to remain the case, with the non-charitable portion well in excess of the minimum £1b that’s supposed to be intended for stadium development.

It remains imperative that we get this done as soon as possible, ideally before the end of the season and well before our operating licence expires at the end of the month.