Chelsea aim to build £1 BILLION football team as new investor joins

Tom Weber

• Updated: 14 May 2025 20:02 BST
• 4 min read

News

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has acquired a 10 per cent stake in Chelsea Women, according to a report.

The Times reports that the tech millionaire, and husband of tennis superstar Serena Williams, has acquired £20 million worth of shares in Chelsea's women's team as they continue to build their brand as one of the biggest teams in the sport.

Ohanian's investment, completed via his company Seven Seven Six Capital, thus values Chelsea at over £200m, making it the most valuable women's sports team in the world.

Crucially, from the point of view of Chelsea's owners, Ohanian's acquisition lends credence to their claim that the £200m sale of Chelsea Women from Chelsea FC Holdings to sister company BlueCo represented fair market value.

This deal, as well as additional controversial financial manoeuvring, allowed Chelsea's men's team to avoid breaching the Premier League's Profitability and Sustainability Rules, although they still violated UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations.

Chelsea Women to become worth €1 billion

The report adds that internal projections at Chelsea showcase that the women's team could become worth between £500m and £1 billion over the next decade.

Ohanian's wife, Serena Williams, is expected to be involved at Chelsea in some capacity, too. The Reddit founder previously owned NWSL side Angel City FC, which fetched a handsome £190m last year when the club was sold to Disney chief executive Bob Iger and Willow Bay.

Ohanian believes that women's football's recent boom will continue unabated for the foreseeable future, and it is certainly a welcome piece of news for the WSL after what has been, on the whole, a disappointing season.

Attendance figures were down as Chelsea romped to their sixth consecutive title without losing a single game. Additionally, the WSL's recent rebrand has been met with criticism for papering over much more important and glaring issues in the league and the sport as a whole, such as a lack of overall investment and poor refereeing standards.

Chelsea can't be accused of having failed to invest properly in their team as they have shattered the women's transfer record twice in recent times. In January, they made Naomi Girma the first €1m player in women's football history.

However, this is also a worrying development for the WSL because the gulf between the big teams and the rest is growing.

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