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Football London
Football London
Sport
Tom Coley

Every word Todd Boehly said on Chelsea, LA Lakers and LA Dodgers at Milken Institute talk

Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly spoke to the Milken Institute in the US about the club's season so far on Wednesday.

Here's every word he had to say...

How do you allocate your time with so many businesses?

The first thing that you taught me is you have to have great people. Hire great people. When you have a good reputation of doing what you say or closing or saying no quickly, don't give me maybes, they're among the worst. My Dad used to give maybes.

I learned that maybe is not a good answer and if you're too busy, say you're too busy. The network compounds on itself so if you try to grow your network finding things to do seems to get easier and easier.

How do you decide who your CEOs and hires are going to be?

The first thing we look at is people that are willing to say they don't know. The quicker you can admit you don't know something, I don't think anyone can predict everything and it's all about probabilities and knowledge and experience.

Cable stakes are knowledge and experience and probabilities. Then you try to work out if you can work well with someone.

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Are they going to interact with you the way you want? Are they going to call you when they have a problem or are you calling them and finding the problem? Every business has problems from time-to-time, the quicker that you're told about the problem then the less likely it is to be life-threatening.

We want to know that stuff as soon as possible and I also want my team to present things that are bent towards why it's not working as opposed to a lot of happy talk.

Why have you entered into the leading brand of sports rather than trying to build up a smaller one?

I think it's pretty simple. It might be a higher price but it's a better value. When you look at the top, top brands they're hard to replace and they're super hard to build. These things, the sports teams, they're driven by the city that they're in and I think the city is really important.

Obviously with the Lakers and the Dodgers, the Lakers have sold more jerseys than all the other teams in the NBA put together. When you think about the power of the Laker brand and the global recognition, Dr Buss started that a long time ago.

He insisted on having superstars and the superstars really built the teams so he was way ahead of his time. The Dodgers have another storied history, break the colour barrier, move to LA, won seven World Series now, the Dodgers Stadium is one of the greatest stadiums in the US.

Cut to Boehly pre-recorded speaking about owning sports sides. Why be involved when you can do everything right and still not win?

Generally that's pretty much a rule, there's no guarantees. It's also very humbling when you do everything right and you still don't win. It's a component of it that makes me continue to strive to do the best that I can do every day.

Ultimately you start, you figure it out, you put the best people in place, you build the right foundations and then you let it run.

What is the feeling like as an owner compared to a fan, especially when you win?

Winning is just the best feeling there is and whether you're a fan who has supported a team for a really long time or an owner who is clearly a fan because of the fact that you're committing energy, effort, time. It's an immaculate experience.

The thing that was so impressive after that [2020 World Series] was all the YouTube videos of all the fans and you can see how they've responded to winning. All the screams, all the joy and all the cries. People are crying, it had been a long time since the Dodgers had won a World Series.

We have more fans coming to Dodgers Stadium than any ground in the US. We draw more on the road than any other club. We've got people all around and people that yell at me for moving from Brooklyn. I didn't really have a lot to do with it but there are people that are still angry that the Dodgers left Brooklyn.

What's the difference between fans in England and fans in USA? It was a good year for the Dodgers and Lakers but not for Chelsea, has anything suprised you?

It's such a global sport and unlike in the U.S there are no unions. So there's a market for top players in every country in the world and each one of those markets is different. You've got the Portuguese market and the French market and the English market.

Then of course obviously you have to build a team and your coach is the conductor of the team, so I think there's a lot that we've learned about the different markets. The global aspect of it all and, as you said, the fans are demanding.

You know they want to win and we get that, we want to win so you know I think our view though was that this is a long-term project and you know we're committed to the long-term.

We very much believe that we're going to figure it out. We've got the best league in the world, we've got what I think is the top city in the world and we've got an unbelievable location in the top city in the world.

Being in London? No, you're in LA, are we going to wake up tomorrow and hear that you think London is the best city in the world?

That's what I think. It's the most strategically placed city in the world, you can get anywhere from London quickly.

Have you got the whole family involved with the sports?

They're passionate about all of it. It doesn't matter how mad they are about anything with me, they want to talk Dodgers and Lakers with me. There was the gretaest icebreaker. It's an easy way to connect.

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