The Chelsea supporters’ group which counts former Blues captain John Terry among its founders is throwing its weight behind the takeover bid for the club spearheaded by Steve Pagliuca, the American private equity billionaire.
Sky News can reveal that the True Blues Consortium, which claims to have amassed more than £150m in demand for Chelsea shares from fans, is backing the consortium led by Mr Pagliuca after holding talks with him in recent days.
The True Blues group is being co-ordinated by Sandford Loudon, a sports industry financier and long-standing Blues fan, and has held talks with all four of the shortlisted bidders.
It remains open to working with the winning party, regardless of their identity, but has decided to give public backing to Mr Pagliuca and Larry Tanenbaum, the Canadian chairman of the National Basketball Association (NBA), who Sky News revealed this week had joined forces.
In a statement, the True Blues Consortium said: “Having engaged and being well received by all the bidders we were recently able to spend some time with Steve and Larry and getting to know their bid we’re again confident that they are aligned with Chelsea fans, and of course have experience in this area of owning sports teams.
“We feel the club are in a fortunate position with the final bidders and look forward to continuing dialogue with them.”
More than 10,000 Chelsea fans have expressed an interest in owning shares as part of the deal that will see Roman Abramovich replaced as the club’s owner.
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Thursday’s deadline for final bids, which are expected to value Chelsea at more than £2.5bn, will come 48 hours after they were knocked out of the Champions League – a competition they won last season – after a dramatic quarter-final second leg against Real Madrid.
Mr Pagliuca’s consortium, which also includes the former Walt Disney chief Bob Iger and Eduardo Saverin, one of the founders of Facebook, is committed to some form of supporter share ownership, according to people close to the offer.
Others have also indicated their support for the principle but have not set out publicly the extent or structure of such a scheme.
The issue of supporter ownership is a sensitive one because the government is due to respond in the coming weeks to the former sports minister Tracy Crouch’s review of football club ownership and governance.
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It has also been thrown into sharp relief amid growing unrest at Manchester United, where the controlling shareholders – the Glazer family – have failed to conclude talks about a fan share scheme more than eight months after they had targeted its launch.
“We continue to think we can introduce a new model for fan ownership within the Premier League which responds to the Tracy Crouch report in as commercial a way as possible,” the True Blues group said.
It added that it was working with PrimaryBid, one of Britain’s leading fintech platforms, about facilitating the launch of a supporter ownership scheme at Chelsea.
Mr Pagliuca’s consortium broke its silence on Tuesday, saying it would lodge a “substantial and credible” offer this week and hinting that he was preparing to relinquish his stake in Serie A side Atalanta if his bid for Chelsea succeeds.
His bidding line-up also includes John Burbank, founder of the San Francisco hedge fund Passport Capital, and Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder who was the first investor in the tech behemoth.
Mr Pagliuca, who chairs the buyout firm Bain Capital, also echoed commitments made by other bidders never to allow Chelsea to join a revived European Super League project.
Raine Group, the merchant bank overseeing Chelsea’s sale, is expected to recommend a preferred offer to the government – which must issue a licence approving the sale – in the coming weeks.
Raine is considering awaiting clearance from the Premier League for all four consortia before presenting a preferred bidder to ministers.
Scrutiny of the four bids by English football’s top flight has already got under way after the remaining consortia submitted details of their key investors to Raine 12 days ago.
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The Premier League is expected to take the remainder of this month to evaluate those involved in the bids – who include a string of US billionaires and pillars of the British corporate establishment – and its work to approve all four consortia means the process may need to be extended.
In addition to Mr Pagliuca’s consortium, the bidders comprise: a group led by Sir Martin Broughton, the former Liverpool and British Airways chairman, which includes the billionaire Crystal Palace shareholders Dave Blitzer and Josh Harris; a bid spearheaded by Todd Boehly, the LA Dodgers part-owner, which includes backing from Clearlake Capital, a US investment firm; and the Chicago Cubs-owning Ricketts family, who have teamed up with Cleveland Cavaliers-owner Dan Gilbert and the hedge fund tycoon Ken Griffin.
They have all been told they must provide legal undertakings that they will guarantee at least £1bn of investment in the club’s infrastructure, its academy and women’s team if they acquire it in the coming weeks.
The sale process has been complicated by the sanctions against Mr Abramovich but has not inhibited interest from a multitude of billionaires who either control or own stakes in a legion of North American teams spanning baseball, basketball and ice hockey.
The cluster of bidders underlines the extent to which the English Premier League has become a magnet for financiers from across the Atlantic during the past 20 years.
Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United have all been acquired by US-based businessmen during that period, and a significant number of other top-flight clubs also have American backing.
Last season’s Champions League-winners have been thrown into disarray by Russia’s war on Ukraine, with Mr Abramovich initially proposing to place the club in the care of its foundation and then formally putting it up for sale.
By the standards of conventional takeover processes, the Chelsea auction has moved at breakneck speed, with executives at other major investment banks suggesting that such a complex sale would typically have taken at least six months.
Prior to being sanctioned, Mr Abramovich had said he intended to write off a £1.5bn loan to the club and hand the net proceeds from the sale to a new charity that he would set up to benefit the victims of the war in Ukraine.
A rapid sale is seen as essential if Chelsea is to avert the uncertainty that would trigger the break-up of one of the top flight’s most valuable playing squads.
Mr Abramovich had initially slapped a £3bn price tag on the Stamford Bridge outfit, with the net proceeds being donated to a charitable foundation set up to benefit the victims of the war in Ukraine.
