- Jul 20, 2021
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I'm not sure that is necessarily the case to be honest. Most of the investments that Abramovich made into Chelsea were in the initial years prior to FFP. Since that has come into line Chelsea have operated within those regulations. If you were looking at Chelsea as a private investor, all you would be interested in is the return on your capital. It is perfectly feasible that you could pay £2.5b for Chelsea now, invest the £30m of allowable losses over each 3 year period from your own pocket for (say) 12 years and then sell Chelsea for way more than the total cost of £2.62b of capital costs at that point. If (probably when) a form of the ESL comes about (or perhaps even a WSL) Chelsea's value would be massively bigger than £2.62b and, indeed, it will probably grow far bigger than that over the next decade anyway even without an ESL/WSL, just through organic growth of the Premier League, football and the likely monetising of streaming and social media.Unless they get another sports washer they'll have to cut their cloth accordingly.
I doubt it'll be an immediate mass exodus but they'll have to be more financially prudent fairly quickly, causing them to be part of the chasing pack, rather than a dead set contender.
I hope they fall into midtable obscurity or worse.