Todd Boehly has left Chelsea, and the deal that removed him values the club at 5 billion pounds
Four years after fronting the takeover, Todd Boehly has sold his stake and given up the chairmanship. Clearlake Capital paid him and Mark Walter 950 million pounds between them.
Sep 17, 2026
Todd Boehly was the face of the Chelsea takeover. He did the interviews and took the blame for the spending and the churn of managers. On Wednesday he sold up, and the private equity firm that was always the bigger shareholder is now the one that decides things on its own.
Chelsea confirmed that Boehly and Mark Walter have sold their stakes to Clearlake Capital. Boehly is no longer chairman. The two men are being paid a combined 950 million pounds, in a deal that values the club at 5 billion pounds with debt included.
The arithmetic of control
Clearlake already held 61.5 per cent. Boehly and Walter each held 12.83 per cent, and buying both out takes the firm past 87 per cent. Hansjorg Wyss, the Swiss businessman who bought the same size of stake in 2022, is keeping his and staying on as what the club called an important stakeholder and partner.
So “full control” is the accurate phrase rather than full ownership. Clearlake, run by Behdad Eghbali and Jose E. Feliciano, no longer needs anyone’s agreement to do anything.
“Todd has been an important partner throughout our ownership of Chelsea, and we thank him for his time and contribution as Chairman,” Eghbali and Feliciano said.
Boehly’s own line was shorter. “It has been an honour to serve as chairman of Chelsea Football Club,” he said.
What 4.25 billion pounds bought
The consortium completed its purchase in May 2022, after the UK government sanctioned Roman Abramovich following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and forced the sale. The structure was 2.5 billion pounds for the shares, which went into a frozen account, plus a commitment to invest another 1.75 billion over ten years.
Comparing that to Wednesday’s 5 billion figure is not quite fair, because one number is a share price and the other includes debt. But four and a bit years is a short time in football ownership, and the direction is not in doubt.
The football has been stranger than the accounting
Chelsea won the Conference League in 2025, beating Real Betis 4-1, then won the expanded Club World Cup on 13 July with a 3-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain at MetLife Stadium, Cole Palmer scoring twice. Two trophies in the space of a few weeks after three years of being told the project needed patience.
What followed was odder. Chelsea finished 10th in the Premier League in 2025-26 and used three men in the dugout to do it. Enzo Maresca went on New Year’s Day, Liam Rosenior lasted until April, and Calum McFarlane took the interim job twice in the same season. They reached the FA Cup final and lost it.
Xabi Alonso started work on 1 July. He has Chelsea sixth in the Premier League at the moment, and he inherited a squad assembled by an ownership model that buys young players on very long contracts and sorts out the football afterwards.
Nothing changes, says the club
Chelsea were quick to say that there will be no changes to day-to-day operations, leadership or strategy. That is the standard line after any share transfer, and in this case it is probably true, because Clearlake has been setting the strategy since 2022. The recruitment model, the contract lengths, the multi-club structure: none of that was Boehly’s invention alone, and none of it depends on him staying.
What has gone is the public face. Chelsea’s ownership is now a private equity firm and a quiet Swiss stakeholder, with no obvious person for a camera to find when things go wrong at Stamford Bridge. Alonso may come to appreciate that.