LA Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly is in the hot seat to buy Roman Abramovich's soccer team in the biggest sports team sale in history
- A group led by Todd Boehly, a US investing billionaire, is favored to buy Chelsea FC, the WSJ was first to report.
- Oligarch Roman Abramovich is selling the London team amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A consortium led by US billionaire Todd Boehly is the favorite to acquire Chelsea FC, the London soccer team put up for sale by its Russian oligarch owner Roman Abramovich, the Wall Street Journal first reported Friday.
Boehly's consortium — which includes Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss — has been chosen as the favored bidder to enter into formal talks about buying the current European and World club champions, the Journal said.
It has beaten out competition from a consortium led by British businessman Martin Broughton, which included funding from Lewis Hamilton and Serena Williams, and a group led by Stephen Pagliuca, the co-owner of the Boston Celtics.
All three bidders were told Friday, the Journal reported.
The Journal reported that while Boehly's group is now Chelsea's preferred bidder, and can now enter into exclusive talks with the club and its advisers about a deal, there is no guarantee that a sale will be agreed.
A source close to one of the three main bidders confirmed to Insider the news of the Boehly-led group's preferred status.
The Athletic reported Thursday that the total cost to buy Chelsea will be around £3.5 billion ($4.4 billion). Such a figure would make the deal the most expensive for a sports team in history, outstripping the $2.4 billion that hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen paid for the New York Mets baseball team in 2020.
Roughly £2.5 billion ($3.14 billion) of that money will be committed to a foundation Abramovich is setting up help victims of the war in Ukraine, and the other £1 billion ($1.26 billion) will reportedly be spent investing directly in Chelsea, the Athletic added.
A representative for Eldridge, the company Boehly founded in 2015, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
Even if a sale is agreed, it must then be approved by the UK government, which is currently allowing Chelsea to operate under a special license given Abramovich's assets are frozen in the UK after he was sanctioned in March.
Nadine Dorries, the UK's culture secretary, on Thursday told the BBC that the club is living on "borrowed time" as a sale moves closer.
"There is a very short window left for that sale to take place. It has to happen soon," she continued, adding that the window is only "weeks."
Boehly's status as a preferred bidder could be further complicated by a last-ditch bid for Chelsea by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, a British billionaire businessman, who submitted an offer on Friday which he said totaled more than $5 billion, significantly higher than the offers currently on the table.
It is unclear whether Ratcliffe's bid is even being formally considered given it came substantially after Raine Group, which is handling the sale for Abramovich, closed bidding.