In certain corners of the media and rival fanbases, Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly is seen as a figure of fund. In sports investment circles, however, he is among the most respected operators around.
His high-rolling approach to running Chelsea, where he will remain chairman until at least 2027 amid his ongoing boardroom row with Clearlake, has provoked some charges that he doesn’t understand football.
But his track record with the Los Angeles Dodgers, MLB’s reigning World Series champions, and the NBA’s LA Lakers suggests he is more than capable of turning his hand to multiple different sports.
More recently, Boehly bid to buy the Hundred cricket franchise London Spirit, while the private equity titan has his finger in hundreds of pies across the sports business ecosystem.
Admittedly, Premier League football is a different ball game – literally and financially. The closed-shop, franchise league systems that the Lakers and Dodgers operate in mean profit is all but guaranteed.
At Chelsea meanwhile his investment has lost an astonishing £364m over the last three financial years, although that deficit has so far not led to a Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) breach.
However, complying with the the Premier League and UEFA’s spending rules in future seasons will require a major increase in revenue, and commercial income is one area Chelsea’s owners have zeroed in on.
The Blues’ annual commercial income, which stood at £210m at the last count, is the smallest of any of the so-called Big Six clubs besides Arsenal, who after several good seasons are catching up fast.
It therefore seemed like a major oversight when Chelsea began 2023-24 without a front-of-shirt sponsor, which in any given season is likely to be worth at least 10 per cent of the club’s annual revenue
The same has happened this season, although unlike 2023-24, when Todd Boehly eventually struck a £40m-a-year deal with Infinite Athlete, the club is still yet to do a deal.
Now, new details have emerged about the Premier League’s investigation into Infinite Athlete and the company’s connections with Boehly himself.
Infinite Athlete founder CEO explains truth about Infinite Athlete deal
The co-founder and CEO of Infinite Athlete, Charlie Ebersol, has close enough links with Todd Boehly that the Premier League considered the front-of-shirt deal to be an ‘Associated Party Transaction’ or ‘APT’.
Under the league’s rules, which Manchester City’s recent legal challenge saw partly revised, clubs must have sponsorship deals with owner-linked entities assessed for fair market value.
The aim of the rules? The ensure that clubs aren’t gaming the system by essentially disguising equity funding through commercial partnerships.
The exact nature of Boehly’s association with the sports tech firm is not known, but Ebersol has now shone some light on his links with Boehly and the Premier League’s investigation of Infinite Athlete.
“It certainly accomplished out goals,” he told the Unofficial Partner podcast.
“We set pretty rigid KPIs for our company and we set a pretty clear goal on what the deal need to do to validate the amount of money we were spending.
“I have a pretty seasoned board and involved board based on the investors that we have. Things aren’t taken lightly in the company. We had a lot riding on the deal but we felt pretty confident that we could hit the metrics it needed to hit – and it did.
“One of the ultimate downsides is my head or revenue now takes a lot of inbound calls from teams trying to get us to do marketing deals, which is no part of our business model traditionally.”
At this point in the conversation, Unofficial Partner host Richard Gillis raised the APT issue, observing that – because Boehly is an investor – some people likened the Chelsea deal to Abu Dhabi’s relationship with Man City. He went on to ask about the APT review process.
“We had to go through a thorough examination,” said Ebersol.
“What I think is a nuance that is really important to understand is that the associated transfers that have been at the centre of the Premier League stories, you’re talking about companies that are either wholly or fully owned on both sides. You have a club that is majority-owned and then a front-of-shirt sponsor that is wholly-owned.
“Assuming that all of the numbers were corrected – which they aren’t, but let’s assume – and that investment had been made, one of the key indicators is that they would be a minority, minority, minority invested. Nobody on the [Chelsea] side has a board seat, majority investor rights, held equity in the company.
“We went through this in detail with the Premier League, an independent board and several external law firms. A lot of people made a lot of money over the course of a short investigation.
“We were happy to do it because ultimately the Premier League or international bodies are organisations we think can benefit from our technology.
“I jokingly said when the investigation ended that my best time to spend a lot of time inside Premier League headquarters and explaining our differentiating factors to all of the leadership, not just of the Premier League but of other clubs.
“The clubs thought something fishy was going on based on what they are reading in the press. They came in and we ended up doing a variety of work for a lot of those partners.
“I was quoted in the press as saying that the investigation might have been the best part of our front-of-shirt deal, which is obviously me being cheeky. But ultimately, it wasn’t a bad thing for us.
“I don’t pretend to understand financial fair play by any stretch of the imagination, although through some odd quirk, I have a number of investors who own significant Premier League teams across our various investments. I’ve spent many occasions trying to understand it because it’s such a foreign concept in the United States.
“I have a lot of empathy for everyone involved, from Richard Masters to team owners and various groups. I can’t imagine playing the three-dimensional chess required in international football, where the Premier League – a national organisation – interacts with UEFA, the Saudi Pro League, leagues across Central and South America, and FIFA.
“The complexity has been an interesting education, one I wish I had started a decade earlier before diving in.”
In other news, it was reported in later January that Chelsea are in talks with the Premier League about a potential financial settlement relating to historic PSR/FFP breaches dating back to the Roman Abramovich era.
The breaches, which were discovered by Boehly and Clearlake in their due diligence before they bought the club, have been self-reported to the Premier League.
Interestingly, the current regime reserved £100m in funds from that £2.25bn deal because of the possibility that they would be hit with a fine because of the breaches, which pre-date their time at the Bride.
For that reason, a modest financial settlement would be seen as a big win for Boehly, Behdad Eghbali and their peers in the Chelsea boardroom, especially given that a points deduction was on the cards at one stage.
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2025-02-06 17:30:00