Slightly relevant, read somewhere that Chelsea is planning to sell their women's team in order to raise capital to offset their FFP restrictions, in a similar vein to how they sold those two hotels to another one of Boehly's companies or so.
Those reports were incorrect. It is astounding how low the level of understanding and the ability to flesh out the truth of a story is in many modern “news” outlets.
With the hotels, Blueco22 couldn’t “buy” the hotels from Blueco22. That’s a myth. A shareholder that owns a percentage of Blueco22 purchased 100% of the hotels.
With the women’s team we were fielding offers through third party banks for investment in our women’s team. It wasn’t until they were told that wasn’t possible that they gathered more info and decided to act.
Women’s teams in the WSL are considered “property” of the men’s team. That’s why you can credit towards your PSR for women’s investment. It outside investment goes directly to the men.
Blueco then discovered that Lyon was the only women’s team emancipated from their men’s team, and they inquired as to what they needed to do to make that that happen.
On 5/29 Blueco announced that Chelsea women’s FC would have it’s ownership shifted from Chelsea FC to Blueco22; same as the men.
Chelsea men’s FC received nothing toward PSR for this. In fact, it takes away an ability to manipulate investment in the women’s team for additional PSR credits.
The Chelsea Womens FC then received the 11m. Investment stake in THEIR team. Doesn’t go to the men or their PSR at all. The valuation people were throwing around of 150m was the total valuation of just the women’s team for the purposes of determining what kind of stake the 11m would get the investor. This was handled by a third party as well, and actually seemed kind low for a figure derived for those purposes. Angel City women’s team in the US NWSL got a valuation of 144m for similar purposes, and they are nowhere near the brand of the Chelsea Women.
All I saw was actual news outlets spreading “Chelsea selling their women’s team to themselves for 150m and now we know how they made PSR on 6/30” ….. so lame.
I asked my 8 year old, without any hints, if Chelsea bought their own women’s team for a huge amount of money. He came up with pretty close to the exact right explanation with his computer and google in about 10 minutes.
Chelsea values its women’s team greatly. They have been making big moves to ensure they continue to excel, and to let people know that they aren’t just property or a PSR tool.
