Chelsea valuation doubles under BlueCo to £5bn as Boehly and Walter eye exit
Todd Boehly and Mark Walter’s exit from Chelsea is set to see the business valued at around £5bn in another marked escalation of elite football club valuations.
The valuation is double the £2.5bn price that saw the Boehly and Clearlake consortium beat off competition to buy the London club from Roman Abramovich in 2022.
That surge in value has come despite Chelsea finishing in the Premier League’s top four just once in the four seasons under American ownership and making aggregate operating losses of approaching £500m.
It does, however, include ownership of sister club Strasbourg – also part of the BlueCo network established by Boehly, Walter and Clearlake – and reflect the rising tide of valuations of top-tier sports teams.
It comes just weeks after Liverpool were valued at £5.5bn when Fenway Sports Group sold a 30 per cent stake to a group led by Amit Bhatia and including Jeff Bezos.
In US sports, the NFL, NBA and MLB have all seen teams change hands for league-record sums this year, while team valuations in Formula 1 have soared on the back of its global growth and effective cost controls.
Boehly and Walter sale boosts Clearlake’s Chelsea majority
Long-time business partners Boehly and Walter’s exit from Chelsea will see Clearlake strengthen its majority shareholding in BlueCo to more than 85 per cent.
It comes amid turbulence in Walter’s business interests in the US and his recent sale of the LA Lakers little more than a year after buying the NBA team.
He has insisted that he has no plans to sell the LA Dodgers, of whom Boehly is also a co-owner, or the Cadillac F1 team which entered the sport this year.
A spokesperson for Walter told Bloomberg: “This potential transaction values Mark Walter’s stake in Chelsea Football Club at a premium to his initial investment and is another successful sports investment for him.
“After this exit, Mr Walter intends to make future sports-related investments, where he and TWG Global have a strong track record.
“As a minority investor, Mr Walter did not initiate the proposed transaction to sell his interest, which has been in the works for quite some time.”