The bids to buy the club have landed, but with $30 million in wages due in two weeks, the pressure is on to get the deal done before the Premier League team runs out of money.
Inside the Premier League’s rather modest headquarters in Gloucester Place, London, the league’s soccer-obsessed staffers are busy preparing for the forced sale of Chelsea FC, a process expected to kick-off today despite the U.K. bank holiday weekend. Over the coming weeks an army of London suits will pass through the stuffy offices of soccer’s richest league to push through the sale of one of the country’s most famous clubs, a consequence of sanctions imposed on club owner Roman Abramovich following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February. Thursday night, as the deadline came and went, bids arrived on the desk of Bruce Buck, Chelsea’s chairman, from all-star clusters of billionaires and business leaders that include a Facebook cofounder, a ex-Disney CEO, a beer tycoon and famous names from the NBA and NFL. Missing from the list: the Ricketts family, owners of MLB’s Chicago Cubs, who pulled what many thought was the most promising bid, but also the one least loved by Chelsea fans. The family said it decided not to make the offer because of “certain issues” and “unusual dynamics around the sales process,” while a source close to the bid told Forbes that it failed because an agreement couldn’t be reached within the consortium itself, which included billionaires Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, and Cleveland Cavaliers owner and mortgage tycoon Dan Gilbert. For the three groups now left in the game, the hard part is over. One of them is headed to London, sources say, but two are laying low, their phones silent for now, while Premier League and government workers scurry to finalize the sale before the end of the month, when the club runs out of money. What we’re waiting for now is the completion of a due diligence process that involves sanctions, billionaires, government departments and a soccer club supported by millions around the world. It’s a process that even insiders say is too weak, too ineffectual and just not fit for purpose in 2022, even in normal circumstances. The circumstances around the sale of Chelsea are anything but normal. The price of around $4 billion will be the biggest acquisition of a sports team ever, but current owner Abramovich will be waving goodbye to the club after 19 years under a cloud. Because of the sanctions, Chelsea is caught in the U.K. government’s headlock, and its future as a competitive sporting force is in real jeopardy. The race is now on to get the club sold, a process that the U.K. government has designed to prevent Abramovich from pocketing a penny of the money paid, or collect any of the $2 billion owed to him by the club. Next up is due diligence. The league’s job as the first port of call in the sale process is to vet the buyers, who all hail from the U.S. or U.K. business establishment. That should ease the burden on Premier League executives, who don’t have the auditing expertise of firms like EY or PWC that would normally be used in a transaction of this size. The league’s Owner’s & Directors’ test is a famously relaxed process that typically entails asking prospective owners if they are rich enough to own a Premier League club and if they have a criminal past, a qualification easily met by most wealthy buyers, even those with connections to an oil-financed regime or one with a questionable record on human rights.
