doesn't seem like many here follow the epl besides me, but chelsea just got hammered with sanctions on their owner, ambromovich, a russian oligarch with ties to putin.
chelsea was frozen by uk gov. the sale of club cannot go through without uk gov intervention making sure ambromovich doesn't profit in any way. basically, he just lost $3b.
they have limited exceptions to being frozen.
things they
can still do:
- pay wages and retirement
- pay accrued dividends to directors aside from ambromovich
- pay upkeep for grounds
- pay reasonable cost of travel but limited to $20,000 (more on this later)
- $500,000 limit on gameday operations
- continue making payments for already established loan/transfers
- sell merch through 3rd parties (nike, etc)
- receive money from broadcast fees and competition fees (cl, pl, etc)
things they
cannot do:
- sell merch themselves
- produce new merch
- sell tickets home/away (only season ticket holders can go, basically)
- pay for stadium improvements/upgrades
- buy, sell, loan, transfer players, including renewing contracts - this is the big one
- sign or contract with new sponsers (just lost their main one too, so this is big for a while)
the travel limit of $20k is a joke and could be a problem. ave travel cost for a epl match is over $30k, and they still have champions league game in europe. curious to see how this is handled.
the transfer ban is big too. if the sale doesn't go through by this summer, wonder if players have clauses to get out of contracts for something like this.
also, if they are in administration by may 9 (technically not in admin yet, but it's not unlikely they get there soon), they lose 9 points. this would currently drop them from 3rd to 7th. probably unlikely, but could be huge.
