Chelsea owners want to supercharge £200m pot with ‘pure cash grab’ this summer

On 28 July, Chelsea take on Western Sydney Wanderers at the Accor Stadium in Sydney, Australia, before a friendly against Tottenham at the same stadium three days later. Then, the squad will fly to Hong Kong where, Juventus await at the Kai Tak Stadium on 5 August, before finalising the tour against AC Milan at GBK Stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia on 8 August.

The World Cup final is being played 10,000 miles away in New Jersey, New York eight days before the first friendly. With Chelsea representatives likely to be in England, France, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal and Spain’s squads at the World Cup, it is likely that some players will have only a little over a week’s rest.

Chelsea travel to Australia, Hong Kong and Indonesia for pre-season this summer

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Chelsea are far from alone in placing extreme physical and mental demands on their players over the course of a season, but their triumph in the Club World Cup last summer means that some members of their squad have barely stopped playing for a full year.

Todd Boehly, co-owner and chairman at Stamford Bridge, has previously talked about reducing the size of the football calendar in order to reduce fatigue and preventable injuries – and, by extension, reducing Chelsea’s wage bill, which stood at £359m at the last count.

However, as Maguire, explains these lucrative overseas tours would certainly not be the first on the chopping block if the private equity billionaire was to get his way and trim the fixture list.

How much money Chelsea could make from pre-season in Australia, Hong Kong and Indonesia

These days, all of the so-called ‘Big Six’ clubs can expect revenues of £10m-plus from pre-season tours in lucrative commercial markets like the US or Asia-Pacific.

Not all of that eight-figure sum is profit, mind. There are significant costs associated with transporting probably 100 employees across the world, putting them up in luxury hotels, hiring training facilities, and organising umpteen commercial opportunities, meet-and-greets, sponsorship activations and so on.

However, pre-season tours are often as much about flying the Chelsea flag in these markets as they are about cold, hard cash. Ask any commercial director – it’s about nurturing existing fans, creating new ones, and making supporters in a different hemisphere more likely to engage with the club financially.

Last season, Chelsea’s commercial income was £200m, down from £225m in 2023-24. And with a prohibitive UEFA settlement for breaching spending rules hanging over BlueCo, they feel they need to monetise the club to the nth degree.

That said, given that every place in the Premier League is worth £3m while the price of failing to qualify for the Champions League could be up to £200m, are these glitzy tours worth the risk of overloading players?

“I’m a little bit surprised by Chelsea’s decision to go to Australia and Asia, because the window of opportunity for pre-season following the World Cup is very, very short,” Maguire told The Chelsea Chronicle.

“I imagine some of the players participating in the World Cup won’t go on this tour because they have to be given some time off. Last year, they finished the domestic season and went straight into the Club World Cup.

“Player fatigue and consequent injuries is one of the reasons for their poor form this season. They don’t seem to have learned the lesson that it’s good for players to have downtime and space to decompress.

“But I think the long-haul pre-season tour is further evidence that Clearlake don’t have much concern for player welfare. They see players as short-term inventory.

“That model hasn’t proven itself yet, and this appears to be a rinse-and-repeat strategy which could potentially come back to bite Chelsea. It’s a pure cash grab.”