Chelsea have used various methods to get around Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) restrictions.
Virtually from day one of the BlueCo era, the new owners showed that they were determined to bring a private equity approach – where rules are often bent or pushed to their limits – to football regulation.
Chelsea have consistently signed players to ultra-long contracts. Before the Premier League and UEFA closed the loophole, that allowed Todd Boehly, Behdad Eghbali and their team of accountants to spread a player’s transfer fee over six, seven or eight years, reducing the short-term impact of big-money signings.
Later on, Chelsea’s owners turned to selling club assets to themselves to book an artificial profit. The women’s team and two hotels at Stamford Bridge inflated the club’s bottom line by hundreds of millions after they were sold from one company in the Chelsea ownership structure to another.
BlueCo have lost over £1bn since Chelsea takeover
Is this sustainable? What's Clearlake's masterplan to claw back these losses?
👇 Join the debate; share your insight. Use the comment button on the bottom left to have your say
As a result, the Blues have avoided sanctions from the Premier League for breaching PSR. However, under UEFA’s equivalent rules, Chelsea have not been so lucky.
A settlement was reached in the summer which will, after this season, require Chelsea to register a positive player trading balance, a record which despite all the churn in their squad has been beyond them so far.
For BlueCo, the aim is that the investment will generate a huge return for their partners in the long term.
Chelsea v Crystal Palace - Premier League
Photo by Robin Jones/Getty Images
And as well as being used as a trading chip in the accounts’ PSR jiggery-pokery, the owners think the women’s team could be key to that grand vision.
Kieran Maguire questions BlueCo’s valuation of Chelsea Women after Deloitte release new financial data
This week, Deloitte released their annual Football Money League, which ranks clubs by revenue.
Chelsea’s Women – whose domestic double last season saw the team win the Women’s Super League for the sixth consecutive season – came 2nd to Arsenal in the women’s edition, with revenue up 90 per cent on 2025 to £21.3m.
In the wider analysis, the wider club itself came 10th, with revenues of £508m.
In football finance, revenue multiples are often used as an entry point into valuing a club. When BlueCo bought Chelsea in 2022, they paid £2.5bn, which equated to a revenue multiple of around 5x based on the financial accounts for 2022-23.
But when BlueCo sold the Women’s team to themselves last year, the transaction valued the club at £199m. Based on Chelsea Women’s 2023-24 accounts, that was a revenue multiple of around 17x.
Chelsea v Crystal Palace - Adobe Women's FA Cup Fourth Round
Photo by Harriet Lander – Chelsea FC/Chelsea FC via Getty Images
A minority investment from Alexis Ohanian was used to justify the value of the deal to the Premier League’s Fair Market Value panel, who are tasked with ensuring deals aren’t artificially inflated with a view to circumventing PSR.
Deloitte revealing Chelsea Women’s 2024-25 turnover means the £199m valuation represents a revenue multiple just short of 10x.
Some analysts were sceptical about the valuation, though many also pointed out the potential of the women’s game which, compared to the men’s is still in a growth phase.
So, is 10x revenue multiple getting closer to the true value of the women’s side of the club? And how will history judge Chelsea’s decision to separate the business of the women’s team from the men’s, a move which BlueCo at the time described as a “strategic growth plan”?
“I still find that valuation difficult to justify,” says University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively to the Chelsea Chronicle.
BlueCo value the Chelsea Women’s team at nearly £200m
What do the owners need to do to take the Women's team to the next level?
Chelsea v Crystal Palace - Adobe Women's FA Cup Fourth Round
Photo by Harriet Lander – Chelsea FC/Chelsea FC via Getty Images
👇 Join the debate; share your insight. Use the comment button on the bottom left to have your say
“You look at where Chelsea are playing and how many people they are playing in front of and the business model looks very reliant on success in European competition. That’s what delivers the international broadcasting revenues.
“The sale was a necessity at the time in order to comply with domestic PSR. It’s very noticeable that because it was excluded from European PSR, they breached.
“The world of business and networking moves in mysterious ways. You get some strange alliances and I think we’ve seen that with how Chelsea have operated at times, including with this deal.”
Join Our Newsletter
Receive a digest of our best Chelsea content each week direct to your mailbox