Boehly set to realise his Blues dream
FOR Todd Boehly, the billionaire US businessman heading the consortium buying Chelsea in a £4.25-billion (about R85b) deal, ownership of a Premier League club is a longsought move.
The 46-year-old from Virginia, who grew up a fan of MLB’s Baltimore
Orioles, was a key member of the ownership group that bought the Los Angeles Dodgers from Frank McCourt in 2012 for $2b - then a record for a North American sports team acquisition
In the decade since Guggenheim Baseball Management - the investment group that also includes Mark Walter and Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson - took over a Dodgers team in disarray, the club have become perennial contenders, making the play-offs the past nine seasons.
They reached the World Series three times in four years, coming away empty in 2017 and 2018 before winning the title in 2020.
The turnaround, along with the revitalisation of Dodger Stadium, was fuelled by a multi-million-dollar media deal and, under Boehly and his co-investors, the Dodgers have eclipsed the New York Yankees as the biggest-spending club in MLB.
Boehly and Walter each put up $100-million (about R1.6b) to buy the Dodgers, while more than $1b came from Guggenhiem Partners insurance companies.
“There is only one Dodgers,” Boehly said at the time. “It’s not, ‘Oh well, if you don’t get this one, you can go get that one’.”
Steering the Dodgers out of their post-McCourt malaise hasn’t been Boehly’s only dive into turbulent waters.
In October, he became interim chief executive of the Hollywood
Foreign Press Association, the group that awards the Golden Globes, as it dealt with the fallout from a Los Angeles Times investigation that revealed ethical lapses and a lack of diversity.
Boehly departed Guggenheim Partners in 2015 and co-founded the holding company Eldridge Industries, of which he is the chairman and chief executive.
He is also chairman of Security Benefit, which has a commercial partnership with the Dodgers, and MRC Entertainment.