Todd Boehly is dialing back his involvement at Chelsea FC, people with knowledge of the matter said, as he refocuses on other ventures after a difficult first season in charge of the football club.
The US businessman is now spending about 20% of his time on day-to-day activities at the west London club, according to the people. That’s down from around 50% in the months following the May 2022 takeover of Chelsea by a consortium including Boehly and private equity firm Clearlake Capital, they said.
A spokesperson for Chelsea declined to comment. Boehly also declined to comment, while a representative for Clearlake couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Boehly has endured a challenging debut season as a club owner in the English Premier League. He’s overseen hundreds of millions of pounds of spending on players, only to watch the men’s team deliver a string of poor performances on the pitch.
The bad run led to the sacking of head coach Graham Potter and means Chelsea will end the season in the bottom half of the league — its worst performance for 29 years — and miss out on qualification for lucrative European competitions.
At a private event at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium in April, Boehly said mistakes had been made. Earlier this month, the club froze the price of its general admission season tickets, saying on its website that “this season has not produced the results that any of us want.”
Things have gone better for the Chelsea women’s team, which is top of the FA Women’s Super League table and this month won the Vitality Women’s FA Cup. Boehly didn’t attend the final at Wembley Stadium for family reasons, according to the people.
Boehly, who stepped down as Chelsea’s interim sporting director in January, planned to relinquish responsibility over time as the club added more expertise behind the scenes, one of the people said. He’s likely to step back further as new arrivals settle, freeing him up to focus more on other businesses, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.
Boehly is co-founder and chief executive officer of Eldridge Industries, an investment firm that’s backed the owner of Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He’s also a co-owner of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball and Los Angeles Dodgers baseball teams. In September last year, Boehly said he was looking to launch a credit manager and was targeting at least $15 billion in assets under management.
Investors Mark Walter and Hansjoerg Wyss were also part of the consortium that acquired Chelsea from previous owner Roman Abramovich in a deal valued at £4.25 billion ($5.3 billion).