Why Chelsea owners’ smart idea to avoid PSR breach will spell future trouble

Chelsea announced pre-tax profit of £128.4m thanks to decision to sell women’s team to club’s parent company but such tricks cannot be repeated in face of big transfer bills

Chapeau to Chelsea’s money men but there is a limit to the strategy that has seen them cleverly navigate their way around PSR regulations for the past financial year.

On Monday, the club announced a pre-tax profit of £128.4m for the year ending June 2024 despite a significant fall in revenue as a result of their absence from the Champions League. It followed losses of £90.1m a year previous. But by crediting the “disposal of player registrations” worth £152.5m and the “repositioning” of their women’s team, Chelsea have also confirmed that the transfer spending of the owners’ first two years at Stamford Bridge is simply not sustainable.

In particular the “repositioning” – in other words selling the club’s highly-successful women’s side to itself – cannot be repeated. The full accounts are yet to be published but Chelsea said it had “a profit on disposal of subsidiaries of £198.7m” and the bulk of that has come from BlueCo buying the women’s team.

That follows a similar trick a year earlier when two hotels at Stamford Bridge were sold by the football club to BlueCo for £76.5m Those moves have been subjected to additional scrutiny by the Premier League, who have sought to determine whether the deals meet their “fair market value” regulations.

Yet there is a limit to these physical assets and the major drawback to their decision to sign players to long-term contracts is they have several more years to come of amortised repayments to come.

Chelsea have spent more than £1bn on players since the BlueCo consortium replaced Roman Abramovich in 2022. But by having players sign long contracts, in a couple of cases up to eight seasons, it has meant that the repayment of transfer fees is spread across five years.

That means for the current financial year and beyond a significant sum will still need to be repaid – forcing Chelsea to either sell players to balance the books or find fresh ways to move pieces of infrastructure around.

Chairman Todd Boehly recently said that he and majority owners Clearlake Capital could part ways in the future if they disagree on whether to leave Stamford Bridge for a new stadium.

Supporters have also held protests around the ownership in recent weeks.

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