Todd Boehly appears keen to expand his portfolio of European clubs following the takeover of Chelsea in the summer. The Clearlake Capital consortium won the race to buy the west London outfit in May 2022 for £4.25billion, ending Roman Abramovich's 19-year reign.
Just months after acquiring the Blues, the American billionaire confirmed his vision to build a network of several clubs at the SALT conference. In September, Boehly said: "We’ve talked about having a multi-club model. I would love to continue to build out the footprint.
"There are different countries where there are advantages to having a club. Red Bull does a good job. Manchester City has a big network of clubs.
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"Our goal is to ensure pathways for our young stars to get on to the Chelsea pitch while getting them real game time. To do that is through another club in a really competitive league in Europe."
City Football Group already have a multi-club model in place; Manchester City in England; New York City in the United States; Melbourne City in Australia; Yokohama F. Marinos in Japan; Montevideo City Torque in Uruguay; Girona FC in Spain; Sichuan Jiuniu in China; Mumbai City FC in India; Lommel SK in Belgium; ES Troyes AC in France; Club Bolivar in Bolivia.
Now, after nearly six months, Boehly has finally taken the next step towards launching the consortium's next project. According to L'Equipe, Marc Keller, the president of RC Strasbourg Alsace, has recently had lunch with the Chelsea co-owners, who are 'very interested' in completing a full takeover of the Ligue 1 outfit.
The report states that the Strasbourg president and ten other shareholders met several years ago to discuss the future of the club's ownership. It's said that they were open to 'the arrival of a strong partner who brings investment power'.
L'Equipe add that Bohely and his partners have the German market in their sights as well. In October, Chelsea co-owner Behdad Eghbali revealed what they are looking for when it comes to adding football clubs to their portfolio.
Speaking at the Sportico Invest in Sports conference in New York, he was quizzed on a multi-club ownership and what it could mean for the Blues moving forward. Eghbali said: "There are three different reasons for doing it. One, if done well you can make money on each specific enterprise.
"Two, you can use data and, if thoughtful about this global market for talent that's not effectively done through a draft or extensive college farm system, you can capture, acquire, retain and monetise talent. There is a talent arbitrage opportunity that exists.
"Number three, for Chelsea it is the perfect pathway of developing talent. You don't have to spend crazy money on payroll. There are teams in the Premier League that spend 10% of what the top five or six teams spend on payroll.
"We hired a coach (Graham Potter) from Brighton and we think they are one of the best-run teams in the Premier League. The owner has a sports gaming/data background and spends 10 percent of the payroll and wins almost as much and is a very stable, mid-market, profitable club.
"If you apply some of that IP into developing talent we think it can be a sustainable model. For us, Portugal is an interesting market, the gateway to South America and European visas. The French market is interesting given the quality of the league.
"Africa we think is a big, big market. The [Los Angeles] Dodgers (part-owned by Boehly) have an academy and farm team in Uganda. Looking at Africa as a market, it is an untapped market of talent that is close to Europe, timezones close to Europe. We are all teetering on the surface of where this is going to go."
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