End in sight for Chelsea bidding game

NEW YORK • Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel said their recruitment plans for next season are running behind schedule due to the uncertainty over the club’s ownership, although the bidding war to own the Blues appears to be entering its endgame.

The German confirmed at the weekend that Antonio Rudiger would leave after his contract expires, with Andreas Christensen also looking likely to depart. 

“You’re never fully sure, but we would have some targets and we would for sure have contacted some players and found out about their situations,” Tuchel said, ahead of their trip to Manchester United yesterday.

“Now our hands are tied, we can still have the talks inside the building but we cannot act. The situation is not ideal. It would be challenging enough with a stable situation. We don’t have that, so everyone is doing it for the first time.”

The Raine Group, the New York merchant bank appointed to sell Chelsea on behalf of Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch whose assets have been frozen by the British government, is poised to name its preferred bidder as soon as this week. 

It will choose one of three groups backed by American investors, each of which has put forth a multi-billion-dollar offer.

In picking a winner, the Chelsea board, Abramovich, 55, and Raine will inch closer to bringing an end to one of the strangest, and richest, takeovers in modern sports history. 

A beauty pageant that brought together European football and American money; Chelsea legends and foreign poseurs; all part of a galaxy of individuals and groups with designs on a team that Abramovich’s billions have turned into a powerhouse during his nearly two-decade reign.

The sale should yield the highest amount ever paid for a sports team, with estimates suggesting a price tag of about US$3 billion (S$4.2 billion). Abramovich is currently not allowed to receive any of the proceeds.

One of the early front runners in the race, a group led by Todd Boehly, a billionaire investor and a part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, remains well-placed to prevail. But his bid is being challenged by a consortium bankrolled by Josh Harris and David Blitzer, members of the ownership group that control National Basketball Association (NBA) side Philadelphia 76ers and who last week added Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton and tennis star Serena Williams to their ranks.

The third finalist is led by Stephen Pagliuca, co-owner of the NBA’s Boston Celtics, and includes Larry Tanenbaum, the chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which owns the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, ice hockey’s Toronto Maple Leafs and Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC.

Representatives of all three consortiums, as well as a group of bankers from Raine – led by one of the firm’s founders, Joe Ravitch – were summoned this week to London, where each group was to make a final pitch.

The surviving bidders navigated a path now littered with failed suitors, some to be taken seriously and others definitely not. A bid by the Ricketts family that owns the Chicago Cubs, for example, had deep pockets but was torpedoed after anti-Muslim e-mails sent by the family patriarch Joe Ricketts – first reported in 2019 – resurfaced.

Former mixed martial arts champion Conor McGregor offered £1.5 billion (S$2.6 billion) for Chelsea on Twitter, then later deleted the post and, presumably, the offer. A mysterious Turkish businessman who claimed to have spoken with Abramovich’s lawyers about a price, and who boasted that “we will fly the Turkish flag in London soon”, later missed the deadline for bids. He claimed his lawyers had sent his offer to the wrong e-mail address.

For Chelsea’s players, staff and fans, a decision cannot come soon enough. The club have been working under highly unusual financial constraints since the sanctions against Abramovich, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, were announced. 

A special government licence that allows the team to operate has left the club holding as many as 10,000 unsold tickets for their home games, and has forced the team to limit their travel budgets and close the team store.

“It would be ideal” to have the situation resolved as soon as possible, Tuchel said on Sunday after a win over West Ham United. “But you cannot pull grass so it grows faster.”

The unique nature of the sale, though, means that whichever group is granted the preferred bidder status will have only cleared the first hurdle. The British government must bless the sale in order for it to go through, and it will insist on strict rules to ensure that none of the proceeds go to Abramovich. 

The Russian has said that any money he is due would be donated to a new charitable foundation “for all victims of the war in Ukraine”, but plans for the charity remain vague.

Sky News reported yesterday that the three consortiums were notified in the last 48 hours to cough up £500 million more, with the request coming directly from Abramovich’s associates. 

One insider said the Russian wanted £1 billion of the proceeds to be donated to charitable causes after the sale, effectively ensuring a minimum headline price for the club of £2.5 billion.

However, an investor involved in the sale told Sky News that Abramovich wanted to see £2.5 billion go to charity and an additional £1-1.5 billion pumped into the club in the form of investment, meaning the next owners’ financial commitment would be between £3.5 billion and £4 billion.

The prospective new owners will also have to be vetted and approved by the Premier League. That could raise a thorny complication for Harris and Blitzer: They co-own Chelsea’s London rivals, Crystal Palace, and would therefore have to divest their stakes before taking control of another Premier League team.

Pagliuca, meanwhile, has an investment in Italian Serie A side Atalanta. 

As deadlines for final offers were extended once, and then again, the process has became subject to numerous leaks in the media, leading some bidders to privately make claims of unequal treatment. Raine has not commented on the process beyond an interview with the Financial Times in which Ravitch made a startling, and unsupported, claim about Chelsea’s value.

“My guess is that Chelsea and all of the top Premier League clubs will probably be worth in excess of US$10 billion in five years,” he said, in what was seen as a bid to drive the sales price even higher.

“So I think whoever buys Chelsea today at the prices we’re talking about is getting it for a steal.” 

Chelsea’s record of success under Abramovich – five Premier League titles and two Champions League crowns – has not come cheaply; his outlay in pursuit of those honours has cost him nearly US$2 billion from his personal fortune.

 NYTIMES, REUTERS