(Reuters) – The consortium BlueCo which purchased Chelsea last year has reached an agreement to become shareholders of French club Racing Strasbourg, the Premier League club said on Thursday.
The agreement will see BlueCo invest in Strasbourg’s first teams and academy while Marc Keller will remain the club’s president having been at the helm since 2012 when the club was at risk of being liquidated.
Strasbourg have since moved up from the third tier to Ligue 1 where they have played for the last six seasons and also won the French League Cup in 2019. They finished 15th in Ligue 1 last season.
“This is an important day for Racing (Club de Strasbourg). It’s something my shareholder friends and I have been thinking about for the past two years,” Keller said in a statement.
“We’ve built a club that’s healthy at every level and well managed. Although there was no financial urgency, we were aware that we had reached the ceiling of our model.
“If we wanted to continue driving Racing forward and projecting it into a new dimension, we necessarily needed to be accompanied by a solid structure capable of supporting our development and our ambition.”
Details of the stake were not disclosed but The Guardian reported the consortium will have close to a 100% ownership having paid 75 million euros ($82.13 million).
Chelsea were taken over last year by an investment group led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital after Roman Abramovich was forced to sell the Premier League club.
“BlueCo plans to make an active contribution to the development of the model implemented by Marc Keller,” it said.
“First, financially, by providing capital that will enable investment in the men’s and women’s first teams, the academy and across the club.”
($1 = 0.9132 euros)
(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Davis)
