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      in Soccer

      Chelsea F.C. Says It Will Sell to Boehly’s U.S.-Led Group

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      Chelsea, the Premier League soccer team whose sale was forced after the Russian oligarch who bankrolled its success was placed under crippling sanctions, will be bought by a consortium led by Todd Boehly, an American billionaire who is a part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the club said on Saturday.The price of 2.5 billion pounds, or $3.1 billion, would be the most ever paid for a team in any sport. The sale, one of the more unusual in modern sports history, still requires the approval of the British government, which imposed the sanctions on the club’s owner, Roman Abramovich, and froze his assets, including Chelsea, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.In a statement posted on its website early Saturday, Chelsea said the proceeds from the sale would be placed into a frozen British bank account, with the intention that all of the funds will eventually go to charitable causes, as Abramovich has promised.In addition to the sale price, Chelsea said, Boehly’s group had pledged to invest 1.75 billion pounds in the club, some of it for much-needed stadium renovations.Boehly’s group is being backed by the American investment firm Clearlake and also includes Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss businessman, and Mark Walter, an American financier who serves as a co-owner and the chairman of the Dodgers.The decision capped two tumultuous months for Chelsea, its fans and Abramovich, who said on March 2 that he had reluctantly agreed to part with the team, just as Britain’s government was moving to impose restrictions on his fortune and his businesses.The sale process was accelerated once the government formally froze Abramovich’s assets, part of a wider set of sanctions imposed on a group of wealthy Russians with ties to Moscow after the war in Ukraine began. The government has called Abramovich a close ally of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.Roman Abramovich has owned Chelsea since 2003.John Sibley/ReutersChelsea has been in a kind of limbo ever since, operating under a special license issued by the government, which comes with strict conditions that have severely affected its business. The team is currently unable to buy or sell players in the summer transfer market, nor can it sell tickets or merchandise to its supporters. Its spending has been severely restricted, affecting everything from the team’s travel to the printing and sale of programs.The restrictions, meant to ensure that no money flows to Abramovich, will only be lifted once the sale is completed.Chelsea, led by Thomas Tuchel, the German coach who secured the Champions League title within months of taking over at Stamford Bridge last year, has endured on-field difficulties as it tries to navigate its new reality. The results have been mixed: While Tuchel’s team currently is in third place in the Premier League, it was eliminated from the lucrative Champions League last month. Several players with expiring contracts have announced that they will leave at the end of the season, and until the sale is completed, Tuchel and the club have no way to replace them.Boehly’s group was given a week to close the deal after being chosen last week as the preferred bidder by the New York-based advisory firm Raine Group and Chelsea’s board members.The sale was nearing a conclusion last week when it seemed to be upended, after one of Britain’s richest men, Jim Ratcliffe, announced a bid that mirrored the offer from Boehly’s consortium, after the deadline had passed. On Wednesday, Ratcliffe, who had emphasized his British credentials when making his offer, said Raine had dismissed his bid but vowed to keep fighting to secure the team.Chelsea’s price tag compares with the £1.8 billion valuation ($2.3 billion) for its London rival Arsenal, in 2018, after its American benefactor, the businessman Stan Kroenke, became the sole owner of the club by buying out the 30 percent stake of another now-sanctioned Russian oligarch, Alisher Usmanov, for more than $700 million. Unlike Chelsea, Arsenal has a modern stadium and its finances have been stable.Britain’s Treasury will have to issue a separate license for the sale to go through, with specific clauses that include a requirement that none of the sale proceeds go to Abramovich.The buyers and Raine have discussed the possibility of the proceeds going to victims of the war in Ukraine, an idea that Abramovich raised when he said he would waive an enormous debt owed to him by the club. But it is unclear how such a transfer would work.Todd Boehly, the American who leads the group that has reached an agreement to buy Chelsea, was at the club’s match against Wolves on Saturday.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAbramovich invested nearly $2 billion of his personal funds during his 19-year tenure as owner, during which he covered losses of about $1 million a week as he recruited some of the best players in the world. The strategy was expensive but successful: Chelsea enjoyed the most successful period in its history, becoming a serial contender for domestic and international honors and winning five Premier League and two European Cups.If Boehly’s deal to buy the team goes through with the required approvals from the government and the Premier League, which also has to give its blessing to the sale, his group will have to figure out a way to maintain that successes while paring losses associated with the on-field success and also committing hundreds of millions of dollars to renovating Chelsea’s aging Stamford Bridge stadium, which with a capacity of just over 40,000 is far smaller than the arenas that play host to the Premier League’s biggest teams.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4Russia’s punishment of Finland. More

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      in Tennis

      At Indian Wells, Ukrainian Tennis Stars Take Their Fight to the Court

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      Playing through fear of the war, Marta Kostyuk said that she must show “what it’s like having a Ukrainian heart” and that it “hurts” to see Russian players at the tournament.INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — The Ukrainian teenager Marta Kostyuk and the Belgian veteran Maryna Zanevska played for more than three hours in the sun and a swirling wind.They played through pain and concern about issues much larger than tennis, and when they met on the same side of the net after Kostyuk’s victory, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (6), 7-5, in the opening round on Thursday, they shared a long, tearful embrace and a similar message.“I told her that everything is going to be all right,” Zanevska said.“I told her that everything is going to be OK, that our parents are going to be OK,” Kostyuk said.Indian Wells is a 10-hour time change and more than 6,000 miles away from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, where Kostyuk was born, and from the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, where Zanevska was born before immigrating to Belgium in her teens and leaving her relatives behind.But Ukraine’s war with Russia, now into its third week, still feels inescapably close to the Ukrainian players competing at the BNP Paribas Open.“It’s just terrifying,” said Kostyuk, 19, one of tennis’s brightest young talents. “Especially in the beginning, the first couple days, my whole family was there. They were all in one house, so if anything was about to happen, I would lose the whole family. So, thinking of it is just you go to sleep and you don’t know if you wake up the next morning having the family.”She continued: “I’m coping the way I’ve been coping. Everyone is different. I chose to fight. I came here. At the beginning, I was feeling guilty that I’m not there. You know, the whole family is there but not me. I was feeling guilty that I’m playing tennis, that I have the sky above me that is blue and bright and very calm and mixed feelings. But you can’t be in this position, because everyone is fighting how they can fight, and my job is to play tennis, and this is the biggest way I can help in the current situation.”Daniil Medvedev of Russia, left, with another Russian player, Karen Khachanov, at Indian Wells this week.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesRussian players are in Indian Wells, too, but while Kostyuk played with Ukraine next to her name in the draw and on the scoreboard, the Russians and the Belarusian athletes, whose country has cooperated with Russia’s attack on Ukraine, are playing without national symbols or identification, as mandated by the men’s and women’s tours.Ukraine’s biggest tennis star, Elina Svitolina, lobbied successfully for that policy before she agreed to play Russia’s Anastasia Potapova in a match at the tournament in Monterrey, Mexico, earlier this month. But Kostyuk believes Russian players should be barred from competing on tour altogether, even as individuals.“I don’t agree with the action that has been taken,” she said. “Look at the other sports. Look at the big sports, what they did.”Russian and Belarusian athletes were banned from the Paralympics in Beijing, and Russian national teams and clubs have been banned from major global sports like soccer and basketball. But though Russian and Belarusian track and field athletes have been barred from major competitions like this year’s world outdoor championships in Eugene, Ore., individual Russian athletes are still allowed to compete internationally for their non-Russian clubs in, for example, European soccer leagues and the N.H.L.Daniil Medvedev, the Russian men’s star who recently displaced Novak Djokovic atop the rankings, acknowledged that “there is always a possibility” that Russian tennis players could be banned altogether.“We never know,” Medvedev said in Indian Wells on Wednesday. “The way the situation is evolving in other sports, some sports made this decision, especially the team sports.”But for now, tennis has taken a comparatively moderate approach, although this year’s men’s and women’s tour events in Moscow have been canceled and Russian teams have been barred from the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup.“I do feel really sorry that the Russian players have to go through this, but the Ukrainian people are going through much worse things,” Maryna Zanevska said.Clive Brunskill/Getty Images“It’s a very tricky thing because I see that all other sports are removing Russians from their competitions,” Zanevska said. “And in the tennis community they did a few steps like removing the flag, and I can imagine it’s tough for the Russian players as well. But really unfortunately, Ukraine needs support as much as possible from all over the world, all the communities, all the types of sports. It counts. I do feel really sorry that the Russian players have to go through this, but the Ukrainian people are going through much worse things.”The Russian star Andrey Rublev wrote “No war please” on the camera in Dubai last month, and others like Medvedev and the Belarusian women’s stars Victoria Azarenka and Aryna Sabalenka have called for “peace.” But Kostyuk, whose yellow-and-blue tennis outfit here matches the colors of Ukraine’s flag, said she did not like such vague appeals.“For me ‘No war’ means a lot of things,” she said. “No war? We can stop the war by giving up, but I know this was never an option.”She added: “These ‘No war’ statements, they hurt me — they hurt me because they have no substance.”Such sentiments are, nonetheless, too strong for the tournament organizers here. On Thursday, as Kostyuk and Zanevska played in Stadium 6, Wilfred Williams and Mary Beth Williams, American fans, held up a homemade banner that featured two Ukrainian flags and two messages written in Russian: the word “war” with a diagonal line through it and “Let’s go!”After the match, a tournament official told the Williamses, who are siblings, that they could not continue to display the banner. The BNP Paribas Open does not allow politically oriented signs, although national flags are permitted, and the tournament, in a show of support, has placed Ukrainian flags in its two main stadiums.“We just love peace and love tennis,” Mary Beth Williams said.Ukraine’s biggest tennis star, Elina Svitolina, at the Monterrey Open last month.Daniel Becerril/ReutersKostyuk said she had been in Kyiv in late 2013 and early 2014 when a series of protests led to the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s pro-Russia president who later fled the country.“I remember how united everyone was and I remember that we changed the government, and the fact that the guy decided that he thought that finally after eight years we would want to join him, I think, is a very big mistake,” Kostyuk said, referring to Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s president.Both Kostyuk and Zanevska, whose parents remain in Odessa, said they were disappointed that Russian players had not expressed regret for the invasion to them directly.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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      in Tennis

      Tennis Suspends Russia and Belarus but Will Allow Their Players to Compete

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      The move will allow stars like Daniil Medvedev of Russia and Victoria Azarenka of Belarus to participate in tournaments but as neutral players with no national identification.The organizations that oversee professional tennis will prohibit Russia and Belarus from competing in team events but will allow players from those countries to participate in tournaments without any national identification.The announcement on Tuesday came one day after the International Olympic Committee recommended that sports organizations bar Russian and Belarusian athletes from events. Other groups, including FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, have also imposed penalties following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a deployment that has been assisted by Belarus.“The International Tennis Federation condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its facilitation by Belarus,” a statement said. “In addition to the cancellation of all I.T.F. events in those countries, the I.T.F. Board has today announced the immediate suspension of the Russian Tennis Federation and Belarus Tennis Federation from I.T.F. membership and from participation in I.T.F. international team competition until further notice. The I.T.F. remains in close contact with the Ukraine Tennis Federation and stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.”In a joint statement from all the governing bodies for the sport, organizers said the events of the past week had caused “distress, shock and sadness.”“We commend the many tennis players who have spoken out and taken action against this unacceptable act of aggression,” the statement continued. “We echo their calls for the violence to end and peace to return.”The men’s and women’s professional tours also suspended a tournament scheduled for Moscow in October.Enforcing penalties on countries is a complicated issue for tennis, especially because seven organizations oversee the sport and its major events. For much of the year, players operate as independent contractors who compete for themselves rather than their countries. Most have only limited interaction with the national federations that run tennis in their homelands and work with private coaches and managers.The initial announcement Tuesday from the I.T.F. amounted to an attempt to separate players born in Russia and Belarus from their nations, a move that Elina Svitolina, Ukraine’s top-ranked professional, had urged her sport to pursue.Svitolina, the top seed this week in a tournament in Mexico, on Monday announced that she would not play her first-round match against Anastasia Potapova of Russia unless Russian and Belarusian players competed only as neutral athletes.In a Twitter post, Svitolina said that her fellow tennis players were not to blame for the Russian invasion, but that the world had to send a message to Russia through every possible channel.In recent years, Russia has become the world’s leading tennis nation. It won the major national team tournaments for both the men and the women last year. Belarus is the home of the third-ranked women’s player, Aryna Sabalenka, and to 16th-ranked Victoria Azarenka.The I.O.C.’s recommendation came on the same day that Daniil Medvedev of Russia took over the No. 1 ranking on the ATP Tour, which oversees the men’s professional game.Medvedev is the first player who is not a member of the game’s so-called Big Four — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray — to become the world No. 1 since 2004. Also on Monday, Andrey Rublev, another top Russian player, rose to No. 6.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4Civilians under fire. More