Serena Williams, Lewis Hamilton join hands to fund £20m for Chelsea FC’s takeover bid: Reports

The sale of Chelsea football club has been a major talking point in the past couple of weeks. Ever since Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK government, owing to his close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the former has been criticised continuously. 

Subsequently, Abramovich stepped aside as the Chelsea FC owner, while the club was put up for sale. With some of the biggest names in sports around the world fighting to win the bid for Chelsea, it seems F1 star Lewis Hamilton and Tennis ace Serena Williams have also joined the bandwagon. 

As per the latest reports, Hamilton, a seven-time Formula One champion is likely to join hands with 23-time Grand Slam winner Serena Williams, and together they will fund a reported sum of £20m in the consortium led by Sir Martin Broughton. 

READ| Russia Ukraine crisis: Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich sanctioned, club sale on hold, transfers frozen

Both Williams and Hamilton will contribute 50% of the reported figure to the group of investors, currently led by Broughton, who has been the chairman of Liverpool FC and had a similar post with British Airways. 

For the unversed, both Lewis Hamilton and Serena Williams have been actively investing in multiple ventures of late. 

While the Formula One champs recently backed London-based rapid grocery delivery app Zapp, Williams, a well-renowned global Tennis star owns a venture capital fund, known by the name of Serena Ventures, which recently invested in Britain based sports technology start-up named Opensponsorship. 

READ| Champions League 2022: Real Madrid survive Chelsea comeback to reach semi-finals

The consortium led by Sir Martin Broughton, which Williams and Hamilton have reportedly joined also has the backing of American private equity billionaires Josh Harris and Dave Blitzer, and as per the reports, the latter would be the majority stakeholders, should their bid for Chelsea succeed. 

While the club put up for sale, these off-field issues also seem to be taking on toil on Chelsea’s on-field performances as they recently bowed out of the Champions League, beaten by Real Madrid, whilst also suffering a demoralising 2-4 defeat to local rivals Arsenal in the Premier League on Wednesday.