Chelsea set to appoint a new CEO — reports

According to multiple reports over the past couple days, Chelsea are set to appoint a new Chief Executive, someone named Chris Jurasek. The Times claim Jurasek is a trusted “ally” for co-owner Todd Boehly, though it’s more likely that he’s a trusted ally for co-owner Behdad Eghbali, given that Jurasek works at Clearlake Capital, Eghbali’s firm.

In addition to his role as an “operating executive” at Clearlake, Jurasek has also held the role of CEO at EagleView, one of the companies that Clearlake have made a significant investment in, for the past few years. It’s fairly standard practice for equity firms to install their own people at companies that they take over, so in that sense this is not surprising. However, Jurasek seems to have no football- or sports-related experience, which might not matter or might be disastrous, depending on what his purview will be.

For what it’s worth, our last CEO, Guy Laurence, also came from the corporate world, though with notable sports-entertainment background as well. In the four years under Laurence, from 2018 to 2022, Chelsea did very well in increasing our commercial revenue, though the new ownership has claimed repeatedly to have all sort of new ideas to further increase that significantly.

Chelsea did hire Tom Glick from City Football Group last summer, but appointed him as “President of Business”. As per The Athletic, he will be expected to report to Jurasek, who may actually be called a CEO, or perhaps we’ll come up with some other fancy title. Hiring Jurasek could also be the first move of yet another “broader management restructure” at the club.