Just 14 months ago, Todd Boehly stood on the MetLife Stadium pitch alongside U.S. President Donald Trump, handing Chelsea's players their winners' medals after they beat Paris Saint-Germain in the FIFA Club World Cup final. It was the high point of the BlueCo ownership era. Sources told The Athletic the plan had actually been for club president Jason Gannon to be the one on stage, only for Boehly to decide in the moment that he should go up instead. People close to Boehly dispute that account entirely, insisting there was no change of plan and that he was always going to represent the club as chairman.
That disputed detail sums up why Boehly's departure from Chelsea's boardroom has felt inevitable for a while. On Wednesday, the club confirmed that Boehly and Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter have agreed to sell their minority stakes, each understood to be 12.8 per cent, to majority shareholder Clearlake Capital. Sources told The Athletic the deal is worth £950million ($1.27bn) and values Chelsea at an enterprise value of £5bn, allowing Boehly and Walter to profit on the investment made when the BlueCo consortium bought the club from Roman Abramovich for £2.3bn in 2022.
Co-investor Hansjorg Wyss has chosen not to sell, instead slightly increasing his stake and bringing it under Clearlake's umbrella. Daniel Finkelstein and Barbara Charone stay on the board, but long-time Boehly associate Jonathan Goldstein, CEO of Cain International, has left. In the club's statement, Boehly spoke of valuing his "partnership" with Clearlake and the "collective decisions" made during his four years at Stamford Bridge, while Clearlake co-founders Behdad Eghbali and Jose E Feliciano called him an "important partner" who "will always be a part of the Chelsea story and family."
From frontman to interim sporting director
Boehly had wanted to own Chelsea for years, having had a £2.2billion bid rejected in 2019. When the BlueCo consortium completed its takeover in May 2022, he became the public face of the new regime, and within a month he was far more than that. After Bruce Buck, Marina Granovskaia and Petr Cech all departed the club, Boehly stepped into the void, formally taking on the role of interim sporting director.
He threw himself into the transfer market that summer, pitching Inter on deals that eventually sent Romelu Lukaku out on loan and meeting agent Jorge Mendes in Portugal. Multiple sources told The Athletic that Boehly came away from that meeting intrigued by the idea of signing Mendes' client Cristiano Ronaldo, who was then unhappy at Manchester United, though head coach Thomas Tuchel repeatedly made clear he was strongly against any deal for the forward. Tensions with Tuchel grew as targets including Matthijs de Ligt, Raphinha, Frenkie de Jong and Presnel Kimpembe all fell through.
Chelsea did land Raheem Sterling from Manchester City for £47.5million, with Boehly personally leading those talks, and completed nine signings that summer including Wesley Fofana, Marc Cucurella, Kalidou Koulibaly and Carney Chukwuemeka. Sky Sports' Gary Neville accused Boehly of "wanting to play Football Manager," though Brighton chief executive Paul Barber praised his approach in the Cucurella negotiation, telling talkSPORT: "Todd was very respectful, tough. This wasn't an easy negotiation. It went on over quite a period of time." Of that summer's arrivals, only Fofana and Gabriel Slonina remain at the club; Cucurella, arguably the most successful signing, was sold to Real Madrid this summer.
Speaking at a fintech event in February, Boehly admitted his approach hadn't been especially scientific: "I was stuck being interim sporting director for the summer, having no idea what made a good football player. But knowing that Marc Cucurella, if Man City wants him, I want him. It was really simple that way."
A fading spotlight and growing friction
Boehly stepped down as interim sporting director in January 2023 as Paul Winstanley, Christopher Vivell, Laurence Stewart and Joe Shields were brought in to build a sporting leadership structure. His influence waned as Clearlake, and Eghbali in particular, took greater control of strategy, from recruitment focus to contract policy, even though Boehly retained veto power as co-controlling owner.
He remained a visible, sometimes awkward, public face of the ownership. In April 2023, approached by Sky Sports on a Madrid street ahead of Chelsea's Champions League quarter-final first leg against Real Madrid, Boehly predicted a 3-0 win. Chelsea lost 2-0 that night and were eliminated 4-0 on aggregate. Days later, following a 2-1 home defeat to Brighton, Boehly and Eghbali went into the dressing room; multiple sources told The Athletic that Boehly's tone towards a substituted Sterling was not well received. He later admitted to bankers and investors that BlueCo had made "mistakes" in its first year, while telling a Milken Institute conference he and his colleagues were confident they would "figure it out."
Behind the scenes, a deeper rift was forming between Boehly and Eghbali. The two men had done business deals with each other before buying Chelsea but had never actually run a company together, and sources say relations soured as communication broke down. Chelsea's decision to sack head coach Mauricio Pochettino in May 2024, after one season and a sixth-place Premier League finish, became a flashpoint. Sources close to Boehly considered Eghbali the driving force behind the sacking, while Clearlake sources accused Boehly of undermining the sporting leadership team by appearing to back Pochettino staying at a Sportico conference, then taking the coach for dinner before the season's final weekend.
Boehly was also frustrated by the lack of progress on a new stadium, whether a rebuild of Stamford Bridge or a move to the former Earls Court site. Clearlake sources maintain the disagreement was over process rather than which plan to pursue, including ensuring the project was fully costed and stakeholders such as Chelsea Pitch Owners were on board. A Bloomberg report that Boehly and Clearlake had agreed to explore buyout options confirmed the scale of the rift publicly. Boehly then sought partners to help him buy out Clearlake, but Clearlake showed no interest in selling and, under ownership agreement terms preventing either side selling to outside investors without the other's permission before 2032, there was no quick way to end the increasingly uncomfortable partnership.
Life beyond Chelsea's boardroom
Asked about the ownership news at a press conference on Thursday, Chelsea's new manager Xabi Alonso revealed how central Eghbali was to his appointment. "I have very good relations with Behdad," Alonso said. "He was the one who came to Madrid to explain the project to me, to convince me, and we are working well together." Eghbali now works closely with the sporting leadership team on major decisions, while Boehly, though still holding technical veto power and attending games from his owner's box, has cut a more distant figure over the past two years.
He has stayed active elsewhere in sport and business. In February 2025 he partnered with Goldstein to buy a 49 per cent share of Trent Rockets in cricket's Hundred competition. His firm Eldridge Industries held talks about investing in Michael Johnson's Grand Slam Track venture before pulling out, and also backed a proposed FIFA Under-15 'World Cup' concept that was shelved before last summer's World Cup and criticised by UEFA; FIFA has since announced a scaled-back U-15 event, without the private-investment element, will take place in Azerbaijan this October.
Boehly's role as a director and investor in ticket resale platform Vivid Seats, which lists Premier League tickets well above face value, also drew scrutiny. The Chelsea Supporters Trust wrote to the league last March flagging a "clear conflict of interest," and while an investigation found no rules were broken, the episode damaged his standing among supporters.
In a Bloomberg interview in March 2025, Boehly first publicly raised the possibility of splitting from Clearlake, saying: "We have a big stadium development opportunity that we have to flesh out. And I think that's going to be where we're either aligned or we ultimately decide to go our different ways." Club sources say infrastructure, including a refreshed Cobham training complex and an eventual new stadium, will be a growing focus for Clearlake going forward.
In the statement confirming his exit, Boehly said: "I am confident that Chelsea is well positioned for continued success under Clearlake's leadership."
