BlueCo spent £2.5bn to acquire Chelsea in 2022, but their total committed funding is more than double that figure.
Chelsea’s finances have been under the microscope far more than fans would have liked since Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali arrived in West London nearly four years ago.
First of all, there is the raw scale of BlueCo’s expenditure. They have spent several billion on new signings, and even more has been pledged in wages for players on ultra long-term deals. True, they have since started to sell with the same volume, but they are a long way from generating a cash profit here.
On top of that, analysts and commentators alike have been drawn to the left-field, private equity-informed way that the owners are running the club in the background.
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Thoughts?
Simon Jordan on Behdad Eghbali
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Intra-company, PSR-busting asset sales; holding off on signing a front-of-shirt sponsorship deal; commodifying player sales as a revenue stream; accepting a breach of UEFA’s financial rules as a cost of doing business; twin sporting directors; letting the transfer market dictate players’ minutes – there are umpteen examples of BlueCo doing things very, very differently at Stamford Bridge.
Whether their approach is visionary or quixotic, only time will tell.
But what is certain is that it is that Chelsea’s hedge fund approach is coming at a huge short-term cost.
As well as the £1.75bn BlueCo committed to the club as a condition of the takeover from Roman Abramovich, the owners have pledged a further £497m in share capital and £303m in loans.
UEFA’s confirmation that Chelsea recorded a staggering, British-record loss of £355m in 2024-25 means that the full accounts will almost certainly show that BlueCo have increased the loans by £100m-plus. And that’s a conservative estimate.
Todd Boehly co-owner of Chelsea FC with Sporting Director Paul Winstanley and fellow co-owner Behdad Eghbali during the Premier League match between Chelsea and Crystal Palace at Stamford Bridge on August 17, 2025 in London, England.
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With a £2.5bn purchase price, £1.75bn infrastructure commitment and nearly £900m in loans and equity, that means that BlueCo would have to get a price of at least £5.15bn to make even a tiny profit on the club if they sold it tomorrow. And that doesn’t account for inflation, cost of capital or the fact that private equity firms want billions in profit, not just a few quid.
Most analyses put Chelsea’s enterprise value at around the £2.5bn BlueCo paid. So, with operating losses of £200m per season, what needs to happen for the owners to make a profit?
“There is a view taken now in private equity that the traditional three to five-year investments can be mixed with longer-term, more delicate opportunities,” says University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire in exclusive conversation with The Chelsea Chronicle.
“Chelsea fall into that latter definition. It’s going to take a long time before BlueCo get the kind of exit value that they are looking for at Stamford Bridge.
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Wembley Stadium
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“The lack of progress with the stadium will also have an impact on the valuation, especially in an SCR environment where generating revenue from that source is absolutely essential. They don’t use the stadium for non-football events, unlike many of their competitors. They are losing out financially there, and they are starting to lag behind their peer group.
“They managed to paper over the cracks with a front-of-shirt partner with the bizarrely high payments from FIFA for winning the Club World Cup, but there are a lot of strange ways that they have operated so far.”
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