Chelsea Football Club has faced several existential crises in its history. So the precarious position the club is currently in is nothing particularly new.
In the 1970s, the building of the East Stand nearly bankrupted the club, leading to the Mears family selling Chelsea to Ken Bates in 1982. However, the freehold of Stamford Bridge was retained by the previous owners who then sold it to property developers Marler Estates plc, (later Cabra Estates plc) in 1984.
Throughout the 1980s, Chelsea supporters lived with the very real possibility of losing Stamford Bridge as their home ground – to be replaced by high-value penthouse flats no doubt – while they would groundshare with Fulham or Queens Park Rangers.
Thankfully for Chelsea supporters, the market crashed and in 1992, Cabra Estates were bankrupted and Bates was able to buy the Stamford Bridge freehold.
Chelsea Pitch Owners was established in 1992 in order to keep Stamford Bridge from the clutches of property developers in the future. In 1997 they were given the option to buy the freehold outright, which they did courtesy of a £10million soft loan from the club.
Ironically, Bates’ financing of Stamford Bridge's redevelopment from 1995 to 2002 through Eurobonds and the club’s inability to repay them in 2003 led directly to Roman Abramovich buying the club.
It is also ironic that all of Chelsea’s existential threats have been due to redeveloping Stamford Bridge – the East Stand in the 1970s and the Stamford Bridge redevelopment under Bates in the 1990s.
It could be argued that even with Abramovich as owner, redeveloping Stamford Bridge has been a thorny issue. This is certainly something to bear in mind with any new owners coming into the club, whether their intention is to attempt to sell the ground or finance a redevelopment they cannot afford.
Having failed to buy out the Chelsea Pitch Owners in 2011, which led to the only real rupture between Abramovich and the supporters, he put forward plans in 2015 for a £500million ground redevelopment.
While these plans were given permission by Hammersmith and Fulham Council in 2017, Abramovich put them on hold indefinitely due to a ‘poor investment climate’ and perhaps due to the changing political climate toward rich Russians in London after the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury and the withdrawal of his visa by the Home Office in 2018.
Putting any existential threat aside for one minute, Chelsea supporters undoubtedly face a period of uncertainty and change before new owners buy the club, but also after they have taken ownership. We won’t know how they will behave and what their real plans are until they have their feet under the desk so to speak.
This is precisely why the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust has been getting in front of the media over the past week to bang the drum as loudly as possible and make it abundantly clear what a new owner needs to address to allay any fears supporters may have.
However, in some respects, Abramovich selling the club provides a great opportunity for a reset in the relationship between Chelsea supporters and those in the boardroom.
The attempt to buy out the Chelsea Pitch Owners in 2011 was the major blot on Abramovich’s copybook as owner of the club, and the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust was formed on the back of the successful ‘Say No CPO’ campaign, which helped to scupper the attempt to buy out the Chelsea Pitch Owner shareholders and many who were at the forefront of ‘Say No CPO’ are still on the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust board.
The relationship between the club and the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust has been effective, cordial and respectful since they were founded in 2012, but was undermined by the underhand way in which the club were involved with the European Super League proposals in April 2021.
The consequence was the protest outside Stamford Bridge and a humiliating climbdown by the club. Bridges needed to be built as a result and some changes were made to placate the supporters such as the election of Supporter Advisors.
However, many supporters viewed this as merely a box-ticking exercise and a sop to calm the waters. The changes did not go far enough.
This was particularly relevant when put into the context of the Fan Led Review of Football Governance in 2021; a government review of football governance that came about as a direct result of the furore over the European Super League, led by Tracey Crouch MP, ex-sport minister at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
The Chelsea Supporters’ Trust statement ‘Trust in Our Future’ put potential new owners on notice of what supporters want to see in terms of supporter engagement, the Chelsea Pitch Owner’s future, Chelsea’s heritage, the Women’s team, and the European Super League drew heavily on the ‘Fan Led Review of Football Governance’ recommendations.
The Trust have insisted a ‘Golden Share’ must be issued by new owners. This would be used to give supporters a veto on decisions by the club’s owners that might affect the ownership of the stadium, the club badge, location and colours and is designed to ensure that the heritage of the club, so important to supporters, is sacrosanct.
Chelsea Supporters’ Trust are also fully behind the fan led review’s recommendations for a Shadow Board – a number of diverse supporter representatives which would discuss the business and strategy of the club in more detail than other forms of engagement, in order to discuss a wide variety of matters in detail with the club.
According to the fan led review, these might include: the club’s strategic vision and objectives; short, medium and long-term business plans; operational matchday issues of concern to supporters; any proposals relating to club heritage items; marketing, merchandising and sponsorship plans and performance; stadium issues and plans; and the club’s plan for broader supporter engagement.
Interestingly, and thanks to the Chelsea Pitch Owners, the club’s supporters already have elements of the fan led review recommendations in place. Ownership of the Stamford Bridge freehold and the name Chelsea FC is similar to the tenet of the ‘Golden Share’ safeguarding the name and the ground.
The review, in some respects, drew from the Chelsea Pitch Owner idea in terms of protecting the club heritage. This is why it is so important that the Chelsea Pitch Owners remains in place, preferably with the loan to the club forgiven.
Of course, if the new owners do anything that negatively impacts the Chelsea Pitch Owners, in a sense they would be going directly against Government led recommendations.
It seems that the fan led review and the change in the ownership of Chelsea are potentially symbiotic and in fact, could make Chelsea a test case for the recommendations.
As a consequence, the Trust are working hard to get support for their case from among the football supporter community including fellow supporter trusts, the Football Supporters Association as well as lobbying key politicians.
Effectively, their point is that it isn’t just about Chelsea, but collectively seizing the opportunity to drive football governance change. If the Trust can make this work with the new owners, then it will create an expectation that it can happen elsewhere.
The author of the fan led review, Tracey Crouch MP, has been emailed a copy of the ‘Trust in Our Future’ statement by the Trust for this very reason.
Notwithstanding the demands by the Trust and the wider implementation of the recommendations of the fan led review’, the existence of the Chelsea Pitch Owners by itself will hopefully deter potential purchasers who want to own the club but with the unstated intention of selling the valuable Stamford Bridge site and moving the club elsewhere.
More importantly, it may well ensure only those potential purchasers with the genuine interests of the club and its heritage at heart will try to take it off the hands of Abramovich (via the government after his sanctioning).
If the new owner is open to dialogue with the supporters and more important implementing the Trust’s recommendations and those of the fan led review then maybe supporters will believe that their intention is to genuinely be a custodian of the club.
If they refuse, then what will that tell us about their true motives for owning Chelsea?
David Chidgey
David Chidgey is on the Board of the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust and presents the award-winning Chelsea FanCast every Monday & Friday available from Acast, ITunes, Spotify or chelseafancast.com .
