The political interests of Chelsea’s owner, Todd Boehly

At Stamford Bridge, you can change the manager, sell a centre-forward, or spend a hundred million on a twenty-year-old. But there is one match that does not feature on the Premier League fixture list, and which tells us far more than any transfer window about what contemporary football has become. It is played far from the pitch, without referees and without fans. The ball is money. And Todd Boehly has made another move.

Last May, in fact, Eldridge Capital Management Services – a company linked to the financial network founded and led by Chelsea’s co-owner – donated 75,000 pounds to Reform UK. The donation appears in the quarter in which Nigel Farage’s party raised 5.3 million pounds, more than Labour and the Conservatives, according to figures published by the Electoral Commission. The Financial Times has traced the link to Boehly and highlighted that the company had no record of previous donations to British political parties.

Seventy-five thousand pounds, for a man who moves billions, is almost a mere blip, but it is the significance of the bank transfer that deserves attention. Reform UK is not a politically neutral recipient: it is the right-wing populist movement led by Farage, which has made immigration control, British sovereignty and a break with part of the European institutional architecture some of its core principles. Its current manifesto promises to stop boat landings, withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and deport irregular migrants.

Boehly, however, did not enter politics via London. He comes from much further afield. In the United States, Federal Election Commission records document contributions in his name to the Republican camp, including a payment of one million dollars to MAGA Inc., the super PAC that supports Donald Trump’s political agenda. It is this detail that gives the British donation a broader significance: the support for Reform UK does not appear to be an isolated incident, but forms part of a pattern of political funding that has long crossed the Atlantic.

When, in 2022, the consortium led by him and Clearlake Capital bought Chelsea, the club announced an investment of 2.5 billion pounds for the takeover and a further 1.75 billion earmarked for development. Boehly and Clearlake were to share control and governance. It was the new frontier of the Premier League: no longer the traditional 20th-century tycoon owner, but a capital platform.

Eldridge, an insurance and asset management holding company with over $70 billion in assets, helps to illustrate the scale of the phenomenon. Boehly is its co-founder, chairman and chief executive; the group reports more than 5,000 employees and investments in over 100 companies. Its portfolio includes companies in the cinema, finance and media sectors, ranging from A24 to Penske Media, which controls publications such as Variety, Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter. Boehly also has stakes in the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Lakers and the Sparks, whilst through BlueCo his influence in European football extends from Chelsea to Racing Club de Strasbourg.

For a century, a team owner was simply the person who paid the wages and perhaps chose the centre-forward. Today, they may simultaneously own football clubs, financial assets, technology companies, film production companies and media holdings, whilst funding political figures on both sides of the Atlantic.

Football remains the most visible face of the empire, because every Saturday it brings the brand to the attention of millions of people. But it risks being nothing more than a showcase.

And perhaps this is the question Stamford Bridge should start asking itself. No longer just ‘who owns Chelsea?’, but: ‘What else, apart from Chelsea, does the owner of Chelsea own?’