IronsideKozuch
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 23 Aug 2022
- Messages
- 478
Everyone is rushing to call Boehly a fool, but maybe the business model is interesting.I respect how Chelsea do their business. They don’t fuck about, just slap down the cash and take a new player home, I love that.
He bought Chelsea well (or whoever's money is behind it), £2.3 billion is a great price, especially as about a billion of Chelsea's debt to Abramovic has been written off.
Interesting idea with the players' contracts, although risky (injuries, drops in for, troublemakers etc.).
The 800 million is de facto spread over 8 years of contracts with players, so it acquires assets for a longer period – depreciation works (reduced to 5 years from the current season).
He invests in the best youngsters (you can laugh, but Enzo, Caicedo, Mudryk, Jackson are a lot of quality and potential), he hopes their development will be great and constant. A lot of disappointments ahead of him, but investments in players are made by everyone and for the top 10/15 clubs in the world there is no other way but to blow money on the best. You arguably may be smarter about this, true, many of those deals should have been done at much better terms. On the other hand Chelsea ain’t Real, Barcelona, Bayern or – lately – City. They need to throw money at the problem, otherwise probably Caicedo and Lavia would have ended up at LFC.
Boehly’s bet is there is a lot of new revenue streams and generally more money around football and Chelsea. The FPP will catch him if Chelsea don't deliver, especially the UCL will be necessary, because if not - selling out. And that can also affect the consistency of the team, the mood, etc. But his main assumption is correct.
Moreover, he has a fair margin for error, as Chelsea alone is valued at min. 2,7bn (the big downside being the lack of title to Stamford Bridge, which belongs to supporter’s association). The wider picture is Arabia is coming big, reputable sources strongly project huge growth in USA football fan base and around the world. Football as an industry is growing all the time. It is no coincidence that Arabia, Qatar, UAE, formerly China (in a different formula, but they are working on getting back to investing in football very seriously) are investing as much as they can. They are not fools.
And I have a big problem with calling Todd Boehly that, because he might just be having a good time in life. Nobody knows actually, but maybe football side of things will turn out to work out in the end too.