Chelsea, from English men's soccer's top-tier Premier League (EPL), made a pre-tax profit of £128.4 million ($165.5 million) in 2023-24 after selling its women's team to another company run by its owners for as much as £198.7 million.
The club published a summary of its accounts for the 12 months up to June 30, 2024, with the profit coming as a contrast to Chelsea’s 2022-23 financials, in which the club’s first year of ownership by Todd Boehly and the Clearlake Capital private equity group resulted in a £90 million pre-tax loss.
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The profit also came despite overall Chelsea revenue actually falling year-on-year, from £512.5 million (a record for the West London club) to £468.5 million last season, which the club attributed to not being involved in the lucrative pan-European UEFA Champions League (as the men’s team was in 2022-23).
In terms of the various specific revenue sectors, matchday revenue increased to £80.1 million, while commercial income rose to £225.3 million from £210.1 million. The club's short-term front-of-shirt sponsorship deal for 2023-24 was agreed with Infinite Athlete, which has not been replaced for 2024-25.
The club has attributed the overall profit last season to “disposal of player registrations and [the] repositioning of Chelsea Football Club Women Ltd.”
The sale of Chelsea Women – to Blueco, the separate holding company owned by Boehly and Clearlake Capital – was disclosed on June 28 last year via a Companies House filing.
The timing, before the June 30 deadline for 2023-24 accounts, thereby enabled Chelsea to turn a profit last season and in doing so, make significant progress towards keeping the right side of the EPL’s Profit and Sustainability Regulations for 2023-24. Those rules permit clubs to only lose £105 as an aggregate over a rolling three-year period – Chelsea would have found it difficult to comply with this last season without the loophole of selling their women’s team.
The club’s women’s team won the Women’s Super League (WSL) for the fifth consecutive season in 2023-24.
Chelsea had originally considered selling a stake in their women’s team, as reported in May last year. However, in the end, selling the asset to BlueCo, which is entirely legal within EPL rules, as long as the market price is not inflated, proved more expedient to all parties.
When the Clearlake Capital consortium bought Chelsea in May 2022, investing in the women’s side was stated as being one of its key commitments.
Conrad Wiacek, head of analysis at GlobalData Sport, has commented on the Chelsea financial figures, saying: “Chelsea's financial results highlight some of the prevailing issues the Premier League has in administering PSR regulations in an age of multi-club ownership. While Chelsea technically have not broken any rules – thanks in part to other Premier League clubs voting against a change – the fact that they have generated a profit by effectively selling assets to their ownership group, or in other words, selling themselves to themselves, circumvents the rules the Premier League has against owners simply bankrolling a club.
"While one might applaud Chelsea for finding a loophole in the regulations, any punishment laid down against Manchester City [who currently face around 130 EPL charges, some of them concerning false accounting] will look targeted, while rich owners at clubs such as Newcastle United and Manchester United will be wondering why they can't use similar loopholes to benefit their clubs."
It should also be noted that the loss of £90 million in 2022-23 took into account the sale of two hotels next to Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge home stadium to BlueCo, in that case banking £76.5 million for Chelsea.
Without that sum being included as 2022-23 revenue, therefore, the club would have lost £166.4 million that season.
Elsewhere in its summary of the 2023-24 accounts, meanwhile, Chelsea also noted that “the club’s broadcasting receipts benefitted from an improved sixth-place finish in the Premier League” and that there was also “a decrease in operational costs … to offset the fall in revenue.”
Boehly and Clearlake completed their purchase of Chelsea in May 2022, following the sanctioning of former owner Roman Abramovich by the UK government, and since then, the club have spent multiple billions on player signings. They currently sit fourth in the 2024-25 EPL.
