Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly and, inset, Newcastle United chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan
Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly and, inset, Newcastle United chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan
The sale of Chelsea's women's side to a parent company for a nine-figure sum is all the more staggering considering Newcastle United were bought for £305m.
That is the view of football finance expert Kieran Maguire after Chelsea made a £198.7m profit from the sale of their women's team and other subsidiaries to the club's sister company. Having already banked £75.6m from the disposal of two hotels to BlueCo 22 in their previous set of accounts, to comply with PSR rules, Chelsea confirmed the club had since 'benefited' from the 'repositioning' of the women's side.
Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly once declared that the club's women's team was going to be worth 'hundreds of millions of dollars' - it is believed the side were valued at considerably more than £150million - but Maguire has been left scratching his head.
"Let's put things into context," he told the Price of Football. "When the PIF bought Newcastle United in 2021, Newcastle had a ground with a capacity of 52,000, which is full every week, and they're doing spectacularly well. Even non-Newcastle fans would have to be moved by the joy in terms of the celebrations that we saw last weekend.
"So they have got a 52,000-capacity stadium, they've got a squad which is worth hundreds of millions, they are in the Premier League. When they were sold, they were sold for £305m and they were making £150m-a-year in revenue. So, for every £1 coming into the club, they were valued at £2.
"You look at Chelsea's accounts. Their most recent accounts said that Chelsea Women made £9m worth of revenue. They are playing at Kingsmeadow. They have an average attendance of 4,000, which is still pretty decent - I'm not denying that - and Chelsea's women's team are a fantastic team.
"But to say that they are worth [up to] two-thirds of the value of Newcastle United in the Premier League? How they managed to justify those figures is beyond me."