Chelsea owner Todd Boehly in talks to buy 169-year-old UK newspaper in £550m deal
TODD BOEHLY is in talks to buy The Daily Telegraph.
The Chelsea co-owner, 51, could help to fund Dovid Efune’s bid to acquire the UK Newspaper.
Efune, 39, already owns The New York Sun and is looking to add the Telegraph to his portfolio.
He has been in exclusive talks for nearly two months to buy the newspaper, but this period of exclusivity is set to end in the coming days.
The Telegraph’s current ownership group, headed by Jeff Zucker, is said to be coveting at least £550million ($700m).
According to the Financial Times, Boehly could step in to help fund Efune’s bid.
Should Efune drop out of the running, however, it’s said that Boehly could try to buy the Telegraph outright.
The American is already a familiar name in the UK having completed a £4.25bn ($5.4bn) deal to buy Chelsea alongside Behdad Eghbali in 2022.
As of the end of 2023, the Telegraph possessed more than one million subscribers.
Zucker is chief executive of the Redbird IMI group, which took control of the Telegraph, as well as sister publication The Spectator, last December having paid off debts of its previous owners the Barclay family.
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Redbird IMI were quickly then forced to take bids for both titles by the UK government, however, due to their Abu Dhabi-backing.
They have agreed a £100m ($127m) deal with British billionaire Paul Marshall to sell The Spectator.
While Efune and now Boehly are exploring a deal to acquire The Telegraph.
Boehly has several other business interests in sport aside from Chelsea.
He owns 20 per cent of MLB franchise the Los Angeles Dodgers, while he and Mark Walter acquired 27 per cent of NBA giants the Los Angeles Lakers in 2021.
The businessman also possesses a stake in the Los Angeles Sparks WNBA franchise, while in June 2023 Boehly’s BlueCo bought Ligue 1 side Strasbourg for around £65m ($83m).
In the summer it was reported that Boehly and Eghbali were at loggerheads and wanted to buy each other out at Chelsea.
But since then it has been claimed that the rift between the two has healed somewhat.