Clearlake and co care about marketing an undervalued product to 7 billion people: legacy supporters can only get in the way
for travelling fans looks, in isolation, like more of the same. The club have decided to scrap a £10 coach subsidy to domestic away games, taking the view, having twice broken the British transfer record on hugely speculative purchases, that supporting travel for the club’s supporters is “not financially sustainable”.
Of all the latest versions of elite football club ownership – propaganda ploy, cash-raking exercise, soberly tended hedge‑fund asset, Chelsea’s model is unique in that it is trying to do something quite hostile and destructive to its host body. For all the mocking memes and the disastrous attempts to build a team, what Clearlake/Boehly are pushing is the most transformative ownership type yet devised.
The people involved are far from fools when it comes to money. So why would a group of US financiers whose entire existence is predicated on the ruthless pursuit of value, on being the smartest people in some very smart rooms, decide to make Chelsea FC the most expensive sports team in history? The answer is that they genuinely believe European football is undervalued, that this is an open frontier compared with more regulated US sports.
But the violence of this process is already clear. Close to £1bn has been spent on transfer fees. Twenty-two of 32 senior Chelsea players joined the first‑team squad in the past year. Most are under the age of 22. Twenty have six-year contracts or longer. This represents the most intense period of player investment seen in European football.
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