Roman Abramovich and the sale of Chelsea: Like a wave of panic

Plan A didn’t work. In announcing last Saturday his intention to transfer the ‘care of watching’ over Chelsea to the club’s charitable foundation, Roman Abramovich hoped to gain enough perspective with one of his most prized possessions – at least in the eyes of the club. opinion and the British authorities – to be able to continue to control it from a distance.

What he perhaps did not expect is that the people in charge of this foundation, at the head of which we find one of his closest allies, the Canadian Bruce Buck, nominal president of the Blues since January 2004, would be reluctant to accept his proposal. The nature of their mission was indeed most ambiguous. They would not own the club, but they would accept responsibility for it. What would their real role be? Serve as a screen, as straw men? What would be the legal and legal consequences for each of them? Mystery. The foundation therefore demanded clarifications which, it seems, were not given to them, and withdrew from the scene.

Abramovich therefore moved on to his Plan B: the sale of the club. It should be specified immediately that this Plan B is not new: long before Putin’s army invaded Ukraine, the oligarch had already commissioned American intermediaries to look for possible buyers. It was in 2018, when the English multi-billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, also boss of the Sky cycling team and already owner of FC Lausanne, was at the forefront of potential buyers. In the end, Ratcliffe had opted for a club with a more modest profile: OGC Nice, which had the advantage of being a few kilometers from Monaco, where he had chosen to protect himself from the attentions of the British tax collector.

A goal that has become an absolute priority

Chelsea was therefore for sale. But what was a goal has become an absolute priority by force of circumstance. Even if the British government drags its feet in imposing sanctions on the oligarchs for whom Londongrad has become another Moscow or Saint Petersburg, the time will come when it will finally go beyond the symbolic freezing of a few bank accounts. Abramovich fully intends to have taken his clicks and slaps by then – but not with empty hands and pockets.

The press release he had published on the club’s website could lead people to believe that the oligarch, “acting for the good of the club”, had made the choice to sell Chelsea at a discount, in order to speed things up, but also to heal a reputation to which he is very attached, even though he hardly ever speaks in public or to the media. He had loaned the club £1.5 billion (€1.8 billion) since acquiring it from Ken Bates for 140 million in June 2003; but he would not ask for reimbursement from the buyer. Great lord, he would also donate the “net proceeds” of the sale to a new foundation responsible for helping the victims of the war in Ukraine.

The communication operation was superbly carried out. The British media, immediately picked up by the international press, reproduced the terms of the press release in full, and it is only now, two days later, that we are finally beginning to examine them more closely, to realize, once again, that all is not as it seems.

That hasn’t stopped an unlikely ally, Amanda Staveley, partner and “face” of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund that bought Newcastle, from claiming Abramovich was treated “unfairly”. What she meant by this remains a mystery: none of the assets of the former governor, then senator of the Province of Chukotka, have yet been seized, and the only “sanction” to have affected it so far is to have been nominated by a member of the House of Commons among the oligarchs linked to the Putin regime.

What is Chelsea worth?

We have since learned that the famous “foundation”, which does not yet exist, would also help Russian soldiers injured during the invasion. And the club’s debt might be erased in the literal sense, but – judging by the indiscretions of a potential buyer, the Swiss billionaire Hansyorg Wyss – would de facto be integrated into the purchase price of the club, closer to four billion euros than three (and would be deducted from the “net proceeds” of the sale, moreover). An offer of two and a half billion would have been refused last week.

But is Chelsea really worth three and a half, or four? Specialists in this very particular market answer “no” – unless they integrate the billion and a half of debts that Abramovich says he does not want to claim. As an indication, in April 2021, the financial magazine Forbes had placed Chelsea in the 7th place of the football clubs worth the most expensive (3 billion euros, including the debt of the club).

This may come as a surprise, considering that Joe Lewis and Daniel Lévy turned down a bigger offer for Tottenham not so long ago. Chelsea, with its nineteen major titles since 2003 (against a League Cup for Spurs), reigning European and world champion, would be worth less than that? Yes.

The reason is his stadium. Stamford Bridge, which can hold fewer than 42,000 spectators, 33,000 less than Old Trafford, 20,000 less than Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and 10,000 less than St James’ Park, cracked at the knuckles, but, placed that it is in a very high density residential area, has no more space to grow. The impossibility of significant expansion even meant that in 2012 club officials tried to buy the former Battersea thermal power station – immortalized in a famous Pink Floyd cover – and turn it into a 60,000-capacity stadium. squares. Without success.

The Stamford Bridge problem

The problem is also that Chelsea FC does not own the ground on which its stadium is built. Ken Bates, at the time of the transfer to Abramovich, had insisted that the property not be included in the transaction, but that it became the property of a not-for-profit company, Chelsea Pitch Owners Plc, which owns also the rights of “naming” of the stadium. Moreover, the club, should it decide to move, would only be able to use the name ‘Chelsea FC’ with the consent of three-quarters of the company’s shareholders, many of whom are simple supporters of the club. In 2011, Abramovich offered to buy the land for them; they had said no; and if they had said ‘no’ to the man who had totally transformed their club’s fortunes, what would they say to an investor totally unfamiliar with its history?

This investor undoubtedly exists, but the leads suggested in the media are not entirely convincing. Ratcliffe, among the first mentioned, made it clear that he did not intend to return to racing. Wyss could be interested, but on the condition of finding partners that he has not yet identified. There is the American Todd Boehly, who would try to bring together a consortium whose outlines are still very vague. But that’s – for now – about all. The Chinese mirage has vanished. All the Gulf countries that can afford to buy a ‘super club’ already have one in their panoply. Another Russian oligarch is obviously out of the question. In short, potential buyers do not jostle at the gate, which will not lead to the sale price of the club upwards.

On the Chelsea side, however, we want to be optimistic. The sale could take place”in the next few days“, we heard here and there, even if it contradicts the words of Joe Ravitch, the co-founder of the American investment bank Raine Group LLC, one of the intermediaries to whom Abramovich turned. to handle the case, who said: “we don’t mean to rush“.

Hurry slowly, then? While the bombs fall every day more numerous and more deadly on Kyiv and Kharkiv, it is not said that Vladimir Putin leaves the leisure to the oligarch. Because this is not a sale Abramovich intends to make. It’s a leak.