SPORT: Football
British tycoon Nick Candy will submit a $3.2 billion bid to buy Chelsea this week, including plans for a $2 billion Stamford Bridge stadium rebuild.

British prop­er­ty devel­op­er Nick Can­dy is work­ing on a £3.2bn bid for Chelsea, which includes plans for a $2bn rebuild of Stam­ford Bridge, to be sub­mit­ted by the end of the week.

The 49-year-old Chelsea fan is in talks with a num­ber of US investors about form­ing a con­sor­tium to launch a for­mal bid for the club.

Can­dy and her poten­tial part­ners are believed to val­ue the club well below Roman Abramovich’s £3billion price tag.

But a $3.2 bil­lion offer would be seen as cred­i­ble under the cir­cum­stances, as the Russ­ian is look­ing for a quick sell giv­en he faces gov­ern­ment sanc­tions as ear­ly as next week.

Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires who have been linked with a bid for Chelsea include Chica­go Cubs chair­man Thomas Rick­etts, New York Jets own­er Woody John­son and Crys­tal Palace share­hold­er Josh Harris.

“Nick Can­dy is active­ly explor­ing a num­ber of options for a poten­tial offer for Chelsea Foot­ball Club,” a Can­dy spokesper­son con­firmed to Sports­mail. “Any offer would be made in con­junc­tion with anoth­er par­ty (or con­sor­tium) and we have seri­ous inter­est from sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al partners.

‘Mr Can­dy has a huge affin­i­ty with Chelsea. His father was invit­ed to play for the club and he has been watch­ing games at Stam­ford Bridge since he was four years old. The club deserves a world-class sta­di­um and infra­struc­ture and Mr. Can­dy’s unique exper­tise and expe­ri­ence in real estate would be an extreme­ly valu­able asset in real­iz­ing this vision.

Can­dy is report­ed­ly putting some of his esti­mat­ed $2 bil­lion for­tune in the takeover bid, but he is also being court­ed by US investors because of his prop­er­ty exper­tise, his West Lon­don head­quar­ters and his his knowl­edge of Chelsea.

One of the keys to the suc­cess of any takeover and the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of Chelsea would be the exe­cu­tion of the planned rede­vel­op­ment of Stam­ford Bridge, which stalled under Abramovich.

Chelsea announced plans to build a 60,000-seater sta­di­um on the same site in 2015 and received plan­ning per­mis­sion after a long bat­tle with local res­i­dents two years lat­er. But the project was scrapped in 2018 after Abramovich’s visa renew­al was blocked by the gov­ern­ment in light of the Sal­is­bury poisonings.

That plan­ning per­mis­sion has since expired and the club’s move options are lim­it­ed by the own­ers of the Chelsea Pitch who have full own­er­ship of the sta­di­um, as well as the right to block any move unless it is approved by 75% of their members.

How­ev­er, Can­dy’s group would be com­mit­ted to rebuild­ing Stam­ford Bridge despite these hur­dles and are con­fi­dent that Chelsea can be run prof­itably with growth poten­tial even after spend­ing around $5.2 billion.

Emerg­ing NFT and cryp­to mar­kets are rel­a­tive­ly untapped by Pre­mier League clubs, while a larg­er sta­di­um would.