A consortium led by Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly was yesterday selected as the preferred bidder for Chelsea, but the most significant twist in the Premier League club’s pursuit came from a dramatically delayed bid from British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
The Athletic understand Boehly’s group, which also includes Dodgers co-owner Mark Walters and Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, has yet to strike an exclusivity deal and while they theoretically have a week to finalize a deal, the Process completed completely redesigned.
Boehly’s consortium competed with two other groups to buy Chelsea from Roman Abramovich, who put it up for sale shortly before being sanctioned for its alleged ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin following the invasion of Ukraine. The total offer from the Boehly consortium is believed to have been in excess of £4bn. That includes a pledge to spend £1.5billion to develop the club and Stamford Bridge, in addition to meeting Raine’s estimate of around £2.5billion.
But now another credible offer has surfaced that hasn’t followed the lengthy process.
Ratcliffe, the owner of petrochemical giant Ineos, held talks with Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck on Thursday before making his bid.
“We made an offer (on Friday) tomorrow,” Ratcliffe told the Times. “We are the only British offer. Our motives are simply trying to start a very good club in London. We have no profit motive because we make our money in other ways.”
Here we explain what happened on another extraordinary day for Chelsea and what it means for future ownership of the club.
Ratcliffe’s Chelsea bid came too late, but is it too late?
Put it this way: if you verbally agree to sell your house to someone who has contacted your real estate agent, done a few searches and has met your asking price, then ignore someone who comes knocking on your door and says, ” I will pay more and I can do it tomorrow”?
Fine for you if you’re big enough to honor that original agreement, but not many do. Staring is annoying if it happens to you, but it’s not illegal.
The Chelsea sale process was carried out by the American bank Raine Group. In unprecedented circumstances, it has successfully marketed the club, weeded out time wasters and set up a three-horse race between syndicates made up of mega-wealthy investors, most of whom have considerable experience running sports teams. While distress sales are going on, it was calm and considered.
In fact, Raine clearly felt it had done its bit by Friday when it contacted the two unsuccessful offers – the group backed by Crystal Palace co-owners David Blitzer and Josh Harris and the group backed by Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca – and told them it would go with the gang led by Boehly.
We’re assuming the conversation went something like “played well folks but we’re going with the guy who’s been trying to buy Chelsea for years and didn’t blink this week as we asked you all for more To guarantee £500m for Roman’s charity fund’.
But as America woke up, Ratcliffe told The Times he was willing to put £2.5bn into Abramovich’s charity and set aside £1.75bn to help rebuild the stadium and subsidize the club over the next 10 years. As stated in his subsequent press release: “This is a British offer for a British club.”
The athlete understands that this offer went directly to Chelsea, not Raine. Hours after the US financial papers crowned Boehly champion, the bank seemed ignorant of the details of Ratcliffe’s offer. To be fair, there aren’t many details in Ratcliffe’s statement – it’s more of a mission statement than a fully funded offer – but there’s little doubt they didn’t see this coming.
We know Ratcliffe only decided this week to get in the fray but acted quickly to put himself in a position to make what he felt was the most compelling offer. For example, he spoke to the British government, which has vetoed this sale.
He is said to have been in London this week and believed to have spoken to his bankers. However, he has not found time to speak to fan groups.
“Ratcliffe can win if he really wants to because he’s backed by Ineos and he could just increase corporate credit lines to finance this purchase,” says a source who has previously dealt with the British businessman. “Boehly and the others have to contend with the members of their syndicates.”
Ineos posted £1.7 billion of after-tax profit last year. There’s little doubt Ratcliffe can afford Chelsea and it’s believed he’s confident he can close that deal within days. After all, time is short. Chelsea only fulfill their games because they have received a special operating license. It expires at the end of May.
So he has time, but only if Raine is willing to tell Boehly, Blitzer, Harris, Pagliuca and all the other billionaires who have stuck to his schedule that it’s not personal, it’s £4.25bn from Britain’s wealthiest sports fan – whoever happened to be a Brexit-supporting, flag-waving patriot despite residing in Monaco – is slapping £4billion from a collection of American-based businessmen and private equity funds.
So Ratcliffe means business?
Can you build a global petrochemical giant, amass a fortune in excess of £12 billion and vacation to the North and South Poles without meaning business?
Yes, we think it’s safe to say that a man who started life in a council house in Oldham but now splits his time between Monaco and luxury real estate on the Hampshire coast and the shores of Lake Geneva means business Purchase of companies. He built Ineos, the world’s fourth-largest chemical producer, by buying more than 20 companies, plants and refineries in a decade. The 69-year-old Brit is good at that.
Ratcliffe has stayed out of the limelight for most of his career. But the often controversial nature of his business, his tussles with unions and governments and, it must be said, his phenomenal success have attracted increasing attention. He has started spending his money on projects that require an exam, namely sports.
He bought FC Lausanne-Sport in 2017, not long after local authorities committed to building them a new stadium, and then teamed up with Olympic sailing champion Sir Ben Ainslie to compete for the America’s Cup, a patriotic tub which cost him more than £100 million.
In 2019 he bought the most successful cycling team in the world, Team Sky, and renamed it Team Ineos. The name change didn’t seem to slow down the UK-based team, they won the Tour de France that summer and he won another French prize later that year when he bought Ligue 1 Nice.
Ratcliffe’s financial backing helped Egan Bernal win the 2019 Tour de France for Team Ineos (Photo by Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
He has since funded Eliud Kipchoge’s successful attempt to run a marathon in under two hours, became a principal partner of F1 team Mercedes and began sponsoring rugby union’s All Blacks.
And now he’s back for Chelsea. Because just before Ratcliffe settled on Nice’s cheaper option – also more favorable for his official tax base – he politely inquired about Chelsea’s availability.
A Manchester United fan as a boy, the tycoon was a season ticket holder at Stamford Bridge as an adult. But he and Abramovich, another who made his fortune from fossils, couldn’t agree on a price in 2019. The Russian wanted £2.5bn but that was before anyone talked about charitable foundations, asset freezes or 10-year infrastructure commitments. Ratcliffe told him that was too much and he spent £80m on Nice instead.
Three years later, with Abramovich’s time in London on the clock, Ratcliffe seems to think £2.5billion up front is about right for the world and European champions. timing is everything.
Does this mean that we should expect more last gasp offers?
Well, we didn’t expect that, so it would be silly to say another is impossible. But it’s hard to see where they would come from.
The Raine trial appears to have rocked all US-based sports entrepreneurs now looking to add a Premier League team to their portfolio, and controversial bids from Africa, Asia and the Middle East didn’t get far beyond Twitter.
We suppose it’s now possible that time is running out and everyone is talking about a figure in the region of £2.5bn for the club/charity, plus around £1.5bn to keep Chelsea like this , how they did. Get used to it, there are all the ingredients for someone to dive in and be masterful. Someone like Elon Musk, for example, but he seems stuck on Twitter.
Perhaps the bidding consortiums that have agreed to participate in Raine’s process could realign themselves. After all, they are all syndicates of like-minded people, some of whom have done business together before.
But how much drama does a club takeover saga need? There’s more than enough for fly-on-the-wall documentation here.
What does this mean for Ratcliffe’s participation in Nice?
Ah, finally easy.
Nothing for now. It means Harris and Blitzer’s stakes in Crystal Palace, or Pagliuca’s stakes in Italian club Atalanta – a bridge we may have to cross, but let’s not overtake.
But for the sake of that exercise, if Ratcliffe buys Chelsea he won’t be able to keep Nice. Unless he wants to turn one or the other into a farm team with no ambitions to play in European club competition. Nice for what it’s worth is fifth in Ligue 1 and playing Nantes in the French Cup final next month. They’re having a good season.
Lausanne-Sport, on the other hand, has a stinker. Relegation to Switzerland’s second division is certain. He can keep her.
(Picture above: Getty Images)