Clearlake boss Jose E. Feliciano has detailed why they went into partnership with Todd Boehly to buy Chelsea.
Feliciano admits they saw the business opportunity to buy the club after the British government forced Roman Abramovich to sell after 19 successful years.
Speaking at Bloomberg's Bloomberg Invest event, he said: "Forget it's Chelsea Football Club and the Premier League. We are talking about situation where we had a forced seller, a very unusual situation where basically the government of the UK was forcing the sale of the asset. You had an asset that even though people would consider it a prize asset it was not really run as a business, it was run for other purposes. Profit was not the ultimate goal, or one of the more significant goals of the business. At the same time, it was a business that most people would call a beachfront property, one of the best properties in that sector, in that league in this case.
"Again when you think about sports, what are we really talking about? We're talking about live content, media and how to monetise that media depends on some of the things we've talked about - technology, data, trying to understand consumer behaviour.
"Now go back to Chelsea, we thought we had a really interesting opportunity to buy a business in a very unique situation where there was a forced seller, significant parts of the buyer market were not able to access the transaction. We felt all the core competencies of Clearlake came into play. On top of that we were able to partner with Todd Boehly and his group, a group that has a lot of experience in other significant leagues and significant teams, the Dodgers and the Lakers etc. In many ways, it was again the prototypical Clearlake type of transaction where we had a great partner, a really interesting situation, we were buying at what we thought was a great, very interesting price and a significant opportunity to transform the business and create a lot of value.
"Then, if you add on top of that the overlay that the English Premier League in our opinion is one of the better leagues to invest, one of the ones with the most significant upside on a long-term basis, we got pretty excited about it."
Feliciano admits owning a football club is new ground for him given Chelsea's global profile.
"It's been fascinating. In the past 24 months we've probably done a dozen transactions, six or seven which had an interprice value greater than the value of Chelsea. Most people in this room will have no idea about the, IPG, Cornerstone, nobody has a clue but Chelsea everybody has an opinion, a lot of people have an opinion, particularly in Europe.
"We knew this was a transaction that was going to be a lot more visible, a lot more high profile. We have purposefully not been front and centre in many ways in the transaction and our partner Todd Boehly is chairman of the business and he has done a great job so far of leading us through what was a very difficult transition, owner transition and more recently coach transition, which was interesting.
"There have been some plusses and minuses to be honest with you. It has definitely increased our profile, significantly in Europe, Middle East, Asia, here in the US a little bit as well, though obviously football or soccer is a little bit less popular here than other places in the world. We're comfortable with it because we think it fits very well with our investment strategy.
"We think the potential for value creation is very significant and it fits very well with what we do, so we're very comfortable with it. It definitely is unique, when you get to watch every week and kind of get a feeling for how well or badly you are doing, that's a unique perspective. Normally you wait until the end of the month to get the report from the CEO and the CFO, here you get to watch it on TV.
Ultimately what we're trying to build is a long term, sustainable business that can increase in value significantly and that means a lot more than winning or losing on the pitch. That's important as a brand, as a media property, as a team, as a club but we're also trying to establish and build and put in place the right building blocks to have a great business in three years, five years, seven years and a lot of work we are doing behind the scenes trying to do just that."
