NotAProjectCFC

Dear @ebehdad RE: The Conflict of Perverse Incentives I want to be fair to you. You had less than a month to structure a complex billion pound transaction, so some mistakes were always going to happen. But the mistake I’m describing isn’t an execution error. It’s a conceptual flaw baked into the deal from day one, and it has permanently poisoned your strategic position. You built a structure with three stakeholder groups, and you only have a fiduciary duty to one of them. That was always going to end badly. Let me explain why. A man came to you and said he had £300m and wanted to buy a business for £4.2bn. Two of his mates would chip in £300m each. You lent him the rest. To their credit, they’ve been matching cash calls ever since. But here is what you actually agreed to: you needed Boehly’s money, which meant Boehly got something in return. What he got was influence over the sporting operation. And the first thing he did with it was sack Thomas Tuchel so he could have his dressing room access. That decision, made to protect your financial relationship with a co-investor who couldn’t actually afford the asset, is what set everything else in motion. Roman left you a blueprint. He won trophies, built a global brand, and maintained a fair value that always exceeded his cost basis. Central to that was Cobham. Fans across England sing “he’s one of our own” for a reason. That bond between a club and its homegrown players is not sentiment. It is enterprise value. You dismantled it. You sold the graduates and killed the pipeline, not because it made sporting sense, but because your financial model required short term asset monetisation over long term brand construction. You have now spent more on transfers than any ownership group in the history of football. Chelsea are currently 9th. Below Brentford. Below Brighton. That is the sporting output of your model, and those fans who sang “he’s one of our own” have noticed. Here is where your conceptual flaw becomes permanent. Boehly has £100m of interest accrued and payable to Ares. You have at least £600m sitting in the Cayman Islands, accruing and payable to COP III. Across the group the interest bill is approaching £400m this year. That means you have no choice but to run this club for one purpose: to make debt service payments. Managing a football club to pay interest has never worked in the history of this game unless you’re Manchester United. Your problem is that you don’t have their revenues. So you are flipping players to fund cash flow. There will be no properly experienced signings. No manager with real authority. No trophies. You’re caught in a sell-to-buy death spiral and fans have worked out exactly what is happening. If you’ve made it this far in my letter, this is the part I’d encourage you to sit up and focus on. You need the fans more than they need you. Every day more of them are learning what this structure actually means for the club they love, and they are making a rational decision: do not buy the brand of an owner who is just here to pay interest. Your perverse incentive is to balance the books, manage the asset, and extract the best possible valuation before the debt matures. Their perverse incentive is to make sure you never get there, because the only exit that actually serves their interests is Ares foreclosing and forcing a sale to someone who can run this club properly. Think about what that means. The fans who generate the revenue you need to service your debt are now rationally incentivised to undermine that revenue. You created a structure where your key stakeholder group is rooting for your creditor to take the club from you. That is not a communication problem or a PR problem. It is a structural conflict with no resolution inside your current ownership model. I’m not sure what the long term prognosis is for a business in that position. But I think you already know. Yours truly, bf

BlueCoOUT van spotted in Wembley @NotAProjectCFC

Really enjoyed sharing a small snippet of my thoughts on @talkSPORT yesterday. There’s so much more to say about how our club is being run. Three minutes barely scratches the surface. One thing I’m really proud of is how united the fanbase was on Saturday. The reaction to the protest march has been incredible. Thanks to @andygoldstein05 and @DarrenBent for letting me ramble on 👍

“We’re not going to stop. We’re going to keep going until these unworthy custodians are out of this football club.” Hundreds of Chelsea supporters protested against BlueCo before their side's 1-0 loss to Manchester United on Saturday. They were joined by around 30 Strasbourg fans, who have demonstrated against BlueCo on multiple occasions. It sounds as though changes are coming. But will it be enough for supporters to feel they have their club back? David Cook from NotAProjectCFC, the organisers of Saturday evening’s protest: “The best way to unify (the fanbase), really, I think at this point, is to push the message of BlueCo out. I don’t have any faith in them at this point, and I think we’re left with no other option.” 📝 @reallycerys bit.ly/4cA2Shw