6 hours ago, Jangz said:

Was it I remember reading at the time TT saying he just needed a little more time to turn it around.

Nuh. It came to a head on the pre-season tour of the States. He was not in a good place personally, his marriage was breaking up. He recognised that the new owners knew f**k all about football and they saw a potentially difficult person to deal with. He decided he was better off out. They hired Potter, first step on the road to yes men. And the rest, as they say, is ... disaster.

4 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

The collective PL TV rights is deal is actually why the PL is so far ahead of every other league economically - if you wanted to show Man U games you also had to broadcast Spurs, and the total revenue is split evenly. It's an anchor effect that still benefits big teams because it allows for smaller teams to pay big wages, creating a better economy. The NFL has the same model, whereas baseball and basketball have a slightly different model that allows teams to also source "local broadcasting revenue" from state- or city-based local broadcasters.

Now there is a big problem in that advertising revenues have dropped and TV companies are no longer as willing to pay big money for sports broadcasting. Adjusting for inflation and increased player commitments included in the new contract (ie. players have to do more things for the broadcaster), the new PL deal is at best stagnated, at worst a decrease on the previous broadcasting deal. That is really going to f**k with any PE investment plans. Seen some talk about the PL developing in-house streaming, maybe the solution is for the PL to cut out the middle-man and pocket all the proceeds.

The other potential crisis facing BlueCo is, with FIFA adopting confirmed changes to the RSTP on June 10, there is now a situation where auditors/accountants will need to re-think the valuation of players going forward. It's unlikely the current method of treating a player's registration as an intangible asset subject to amortisation is going to apply the same way, since the fees paid for those players are no longer enforceable/recoverable. Forensic accountant Paul Quinn puts it best: "For clubs whose financial model depends heavily on player trading as an income stream (common in Portuguese, French, Brazilian and smaller European leagues), this is a direct threat to revenue sustainability."

One of the big knobs at Raine, the merchant bankers who brokered the Chelsea sale, had a more optimistic view at the time:

Q. What gives you the confidence to say the top EPL clubs will be worth more than US$10 billion in five years?

A: People don't look at sports teams based upon their profit and loss. There's an intrinsic value.

If you look at Chelsea, we probably had more than 250 enquiries, we ended up with 26 strong bids, and we picked four finalists. And that was in a process where we had war, sanctions, government licences to deal with and two weeks to get this all done.

The fact is, the big important clubs do not come up for sale very often. And I can assure you, if this had been a normal process, and we had six months to get a deal done, I could have doubled the price.

So it's not a big leap forward to say that a global club like Chelsea, which comes up for sale once every 25 years, will easily be worth double in five years.

28 minutes ago, dermott said:

Nuh. It came to a head on the pre-season tour of the States. He was not in a good place personally, his marriage was breaking up. He recognised that the new owners knew f**k all about football and they saw a potentially difficult person to deal with. He decided he was better off out. They hired Potter, first step on the road to yes men. And the rest, as they say, is ... disaster.

TT is one of the last manager you want if you are thinking about building through kids.

3 hours ago, dermott said:

Nuh. It came to a head on the pre-season tour of the States. He was not in a good place personally, his marriage was breaking up. He recognised that the new owners knew f**k all about football and they saw a potentially difficult person to deal with. He decided he was better off out. They hired Potter, first step on the road to yes men. And the rest, as they say, is ... disaster.

I think also the loss of Cech didn't help, provided that link between TT and player recruitment. A relationship between the two that TT reportedly really enjoyed and just added to the negatives when TT more or less forced into what was a more involved role with that side of things, with the ticket tout basically taking on the role of SD/player recruitment after his lack of an immediate plan B after being turned down by Edwards on takeover. Arrogance or naivety in maybe underestimating the immediate importance of that role ? but imo Down hill from that moment on.

On 21/06/2026 at 09:53, bluelightening said:

Big up to Sparky and his fam...

Not nice for any parent to deal with. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cm2j0x3zgego

Got to say, looking back, Gullit signed for us on the basis he would play with Furlong, spencer, wise and peakcock... 1996 feels liks an eternity ago. lovely to look back.

7 hours ago, dermott said:

One of the big knobs at Raine, the merchant bankers who brokered the Chelsea sale, had a more optimistic view at the time:

Q. What gives you the confidence to say the top EPL clubs will be worth more than US$10 billion in five years?

A: People don't look at sports teams based upon their profit and loss. There's an intrinsic value.

If you look at Chelsea, we probably had more than 250 enquiries, we ended up with 26 strong bids, and we picked four finalists. And that was in a process where we had war, sanctions, government licences to deal with and two weeks to get this all done.

The fact is, the big important clubs do not come up for sale very often. And I can assure you, if this had been a normal process, and we had six months to get a deal done, I could have doubled the price.

So it's not a big leap forward to say that a global club like Chelsea, which comes up for sale once every 25 years, will easily be worth double in five years.

You have to wonder exactly how incompetent the other 25 strong bidders were if this mob was the pick of the bunch?

22 minutes ago, C3blue said:

You have to wonder exactly how incompetent the other 25 strong bidders were if this mob was the pick of the bunch?

Even Lewis Hamilton and Serena Williams are looking like the better option at this point

On 19/06/2026 at 10:04, The Rising Sun said:

By now I've read loads of stuff about how they will profit.

PL clubs usually end up making a loss every year . The owners have bet on the fact that clubs increase in value regardless. And Todd was talking at a Bloomberg event about individual club TV streaming and broadcasting rights from global streaming giants being the way to increase income once the current broadcasting deals run out.. I think he did something similar with his baseball team..

Mind you, Brighton were one of only a couple of clubs who posted a profit a few season ago without any trophies to their name, and we all know the owners are obsessed with their business model!!

Pretty sure we can also guess which other club contributed ~£300m revenue to their books to make said profit.

On 22/06/2026 at 08:46, dermott said:

One of the big knobs at Raine, the merchant bankers who brokered the Chelsea sale, had a more optimistic view at the time:

Q. What gives you the confidence to say the top EPL clubs will be worth more than US$10 billion in five years?

A: People don't look at sports teams based upon their profit and loss. There's an intrinsic value.

If you look at Chelsea, we probably had more than 250 enquiries, we ended up with 26 strong bids, and we picked four finalists. And that was in a process where we had war, sanctions, government licences to deal with and two weeks to get this all done.

The fact is, the big important clubs do not come up for sale very often. And I can assure you, if this had been a normal process, and we had six months to get a deal done, I could have doubled the price.

So it's not a big leap forward to say that a global club like Chelsea, which comes up for sale once every 25 years, will easily be worth double in five years.

That Raine banker obviously talked up the future value to get those Private Equity investors salivating at the prospect of big profit within 5 years !! .

On 22/06/2026 at 04:22, SydneyChelsea said:

The collective PL TV rights is deal is actually why the PL is so far ahead of every other league economically - if you wanted to show Man U games you also had to broadcast Spurs, and the total revenue is split evenly. It's an anchor effect that still benefits big teams because it allows for smaller teams to pay big wages, creating a better economy. The NFL has the same model, whereas baseball and basketball have a slightly different model that allows teams to also source "local broadcasting revenue" from state- or city-based local broadcasters.

Now there is a big problem in that advertising revenues have dropped and TV companies are no longer as willing to pay big money for sports broadcasting. Adjusting for inflation and increased player commitments included in the new contract (ie. players have to do more things for the broadcaster), the new PL deal is at best stagnated, at worst a decrease on the previous broadcasting deal. That is really going to f**k with any PE investment plans. Seen some talk about the PL developing in-house streaming, maybe the solution is for the PL to cut out the middle-man and pocket all the proceeds.

The other potential crisis facing BlueCo is, with FIFA adopting confirmed changes to the RSTP on June 10, there is now a situation where auditors/accountants will need to re-think the valuation of players going forward. It's unlikely the current method of treating a player's registration as an intangible asset subject to amortisation is going to apply the same way, since the fees paid for those players are no longer enforceable/recoverable. Forensic accountant Paul Quinn puts it best: "For clubs whose financial model depends heavily on player trading as an income stream (common in Portuguese, French, Brazilian and smaller European leagues), this is a direct threat to revenue sustainability."

As usual, a very informative post Sydney.

Thanks 👍