The Ambitious Project: Why Chelsea’s Billion-Dollar Spending Reflects a Strategic Vision

Of all the questions we are entitled to ask about Chelsea, that of the billion spent by the club on the transfer market in the space of a little over a year is not necessarily the most fundamental. It has already been explained here how the American owners of the Blues had structured this colossal investment – greater than that made by Saudi Arabia to transform its national championship – in such a way that they did not violate financial fair play regulations. in force in England as in Europe.

An accounting sleight of hand, the effects of which are sure to be felt later? Maybe. But that is not the crux of the problem. The crux of the matter is that while we can explain the Chelsea method, a financial balancing act based on amortizing transfers over a period of seven years or more, it is much more difficult to understand their motivations and objectives. , especially when the Blues are in fourteenth place in the Premier League after six days, already nine points behind the Top 4.

It’s not that they’re playing that badly, by the way: Chelsea are fifth among the teams having created the most clear chances since the start of the season – fifteen, as many as Manchester City, in believe the Premier League statisticians. Unfortunately for Mauricio Pochettino, who continues to reshape his team in search of a solution

, its attackers, too green, too young or not confident enough, seem incapable of exploiting them. The situation is sufficiently worrying in this regard for the Blues, who lost Christopher Nkunku to injury, loaned Romelu Lukaku to Roma, and are relying as best they can on a Nicolas Jackson whose coach says he “needs to grow”, are still looking for a center forward and could, it is said, try to attract Ivan Toney in the next winter transfer window.

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We have acquired a highly sought-after asset

This was partly predictable. We don’t shake up a squad from A like Azpilicueta to Z like Ziyech [avons souffert] without having to go through a transition phase. Only two of the fourteen players Thomas Tuchel used in the victorious 2021 Champions League final are still at the club: Thiago Silva and Reece James. Whatever one thinks of the merits of this upheaval, there is nothing surprising in the fact that Mauricio Pochettino is still looking for a recipe that harmoniously combines the ingredients that we continue to deliver to him in kitchen. It is not impossible that he will succeed; but it will take time, especially since these clubs which should be Chelsea’s direct rivals are all showing good colors at the start of the season.

However, listening to Jose E. Feliciano, the co-founder of Clearlake, a 60% shareholder in the club, there is no doubt that Chelsea is behind the schedule that its American owners had anticipated. Feliciano, speaking last week at a forum in Paris organized by private equity broker IPEM, acknowledged that “we

a little to begin with”, adding this little sentence, “we have acquired an asset highly coveted by many other potential buyers”, in which we could perhaps read the beginning of an explanation of the amount of the initial investment made: the fear of missing out on a unique shot in a market into which other investors, mostly Americans, have flocked by the dozen in the recent past. A Chelsea is not for sale every day, and too bad if that means paying a significant added value at the start, because, in the eyes of these buyers, the game is worth the candle.

Exactly what this game is can only be understood if we frame the question in the context of American sports. Many of its most powerful players – including Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly – are convinced, and not new, that the growth potential of football, and English football in particular, remains in place. largely unexploited.

Todd Boehly à Stamford Bridge

Credit: Imago

Ticket prices, TV rights and digital data

This applies to stadium revenues: a ticket for a Premier League match is much lower than that of a ticket for an NFL match, which will cost the equivalent of 310 euros on average, only 90 euros less than an annual subscription to Manchester City. You only need to look at the prices charged on secondary markets for PL matches to realize that there is a clientele ready to spend five times, or more, the official price set by the host club to see Arsenal or Liverpool play. ..or Chelsea in their stadiums.

This applies to the Premier League’s collectively negotiated TV rights – for now. For how long?

This especially applies to the ‘oil of the 21st century’: digital data, which Boehly has never hidden his desire to exploit to the maximum, particularly in relation to online sports betting operators, a market worth hundreds of billions and which Boehly knows it very well, being one of the initiators of DraftKings in the United States, a country which has only just opened up fully to bookmakers. Being the owner of a double European champion means finding yourself in pole position to make the most of these opportunities. Boehly and Clearlake don’t intend to stop so quickly along the way.

Until recently, US investors got involved in Old World football by taking control of a prestigious club – just one – as John W. Henry had done at Liverpool and Stan Kroenke at Arsenal, to add him to their US franchise lineup. But this model that could be described as ‘traditional’ is not the one that Boehly and Clearlake intend to follow.

Chelsea as a springboard for a more ambitious project

For them, Chelsea is not an end in itself, but the foundation, the focal point and the springboard of a much more ambitious project: the creation of a group of clubs of which the Blues would be the flagship constituent, sufficiently powerful to have a say on the decisions which will affect European football in the years to come, which the leaders of Chelsea imagine (which they are not necessarily wrong) will have to be dominated by a new super-elite of a few super-owners. They want to be one of them, and are giving themselves the means to achieve it.

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The Strasbourg Racing Club was the first to join this growing family, and other clubs will certainly expand it. It is with this aim that Chelsea recently obtained an injection of 400 million dollars from the ‘alternative’ investment fund Ares Management. Its purpose was not to balance the books or finance the operational costs of the Blues, but to give Clearlake and Boehly the financial basis required to continue their expansion plan.

The ‘sportsman’ in all this? “The best way to give more value to our club is to win” said Feliciano in Paris, which said everything we wanted to know about the reason for the Chelsea operation: to generate more value. All that remains is to win, then. It’s up to you, Mauricio.

2023-09-27 21:55:00
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