Chelsea sale nets Boehly and Walter profit despite lean spell

Todd Boehly and Mark Walter have sold Chelsea and come away with a profit, despite presiding over a period of underwhelming results on the pitch, according to Guardian Football columnist Leander Schaerlaeckens.

Boehly and Walter bought Chelsea in May 2022 from Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who had been placed under sanctions, with Boehly taking direct charge of the club's daily operations from that point, Schaerlaeckens writes.

The purchase came after Chelsea had been Premier League champions as recently as 2017 and 2015, and had lifted the Champions League in 2021 under Abramovich's ownership.

Since Boehly's takeover, Chelsea have finished 12th, sixth, fourth and 10th in the Premier League across four seasons, a run Schaerlaeckens frames as falling well short of the club's traditional standards.

The club qualified for European competition in only two of those four campaigns, according to the piece, which argues that should represent the bare minimum expectation for a club of Chelsea's resources.

Schaerlaeckens also notes that a new, larger stadium was mooted during the Boehly era but never built, listing it among a set of unfulfilled ambitions from what he terms the "Boehly Bungle".

The wider point of the column is that the sale itself proceeded regardless of that underwhelming record, with Boehly and Walter still able to recoup a profit from their exit.

Schaerlaeckens situates that outcome within a pattern he associates with American ownership models in sport, where financial return is not necessarily tied to sporting achievement.

The piece does not detail the identity of the buyer, the sale price or the date the transaction was completed, focusing instead on the disconnect between Chelsea's results since 2022 and the financial outcome for its outgoing owners.