Todd Boehly and Mark Walter in talks to sell stakes in Chelsea in deal that would value club at over £5bn

Todd Boehly and Mark Walter are in talks to sell their Chelsea shares to majority owners Clearlake Capital, talkSPORT understands.

Discussions, first reported by The Financial Times, have been ongoing for some time and are driven by a lack of strategic alignment, according to sources close to Boehly. Boehly and Walter believe the market enterprise value of Chelsea is north of £5bn.

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Boehly’s vision centres heavily on creating success at Chelsea, generating football and brand value and maximising fan engagement. The appeal of the purchase was also in having an elite club in London.

Clearlake naturally share many of these values, but they are also multi-club focused with Chelsea’s sister club Strasbourg important as both a standalone club and within the wider philosophy of how BlueCo works.

Boehly is set to step down as Chelsea chair at the end of this season as part of a pre-agreed plan when the consortium bought the club for £2.3bn in May 2022.

He was asked at the time by the consortium to become chair, with Clearlake getting to select the next one four years later.

Next summer has always been viewed as a potential parting of ways with Boehly hinting last year he could leave the club.

“We have to think long-term about what we’re trying to accomplish,” Boehly said in an interview with Bloomberg. “We have a big stadium development opportunity that we have to flesh out.

“That’s going to be where we’re either aligned or we ultimately decide to go different ways.”

All parties would ideally like to build a new stadium at Earl’s Court, but the Earls Court Development Company are proceeding with their own development plans which don’t include a football stadium.

With funding and permissions ongoing on that front, Chelsea must explore other options, including building on the Stamford Bridge site, renovating the existing stadium or finding a new site.

Those close to Boehly are less focused on where a new stadium is and more interested in how it benefits Chelsea as both a club and brand, and whether it would result in increased income on both matchdays and non-matchdays.

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The usage of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which has hosted NFL games, is viewed as a model to replicate by both Boehly and Walter.

Clearlake-Boehly paid around £2.3bn to acquire Chelsea from Roman Abamovich in 2022, who was forced to sell due to sanctions imposed when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Tensions between Boehly and Clearlake’s Behdad Eghbali first became apparent in summer 2024 despite being denied at the time.

Boehly and Clearlake relationship

Eghbali has always been hands-on, including in recruitment, while Boehly felt frozen out of key calls and questioned the transfer model.

Clearlake sources at the time stressed billing the fallout as a ‘civil war’ was unfair, adding Boehly had a veto over all key decisions.

Boehly was believed to be against sacking Mauricio Pochettino, but did not use his veto at the time.

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In 2024, Boehly was willing to raise funds to buy out Clearlake’s 61.5 per cent stake in the club and valued Chelsea around £4.5bn.

Clearlake sources stressed at the time there was never any intent to sell, and this remains their position. They will either remain as majority owner with the current status quo or consider adding to their stake for the right offer.

talkSPORT understands Boehly and Walter now value the club at closer to £5bn.

Although an agreement has not been reached yet, and the idea of Boehly and Walter leaving has been on-off for some time, negotiations now have added urgency. Walter is seeking to sell assets with US prosecutors looking into his high-profile insurance companies.

Walter has already agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5bn to Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner, with the latter one of the key investors in Gianni Infantino’s failed FIFA Forward Enterprise plans.

Chelsea, Clearlake and representatives for Boehly and Walter declined to comment when approached.