How many MG cars is Chelsea Football club worth?

On the 2nd of March, the Khaleej Times reported that Pakistani businessman and owner of Pakistan Super League (PSL) franchise Peshawar Zalmi, Javed Afridi, was in the running to buy Chelsea, one of the biggest football clubs in the world. 

The club, which is up for sale by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich who is selling the club because of pressure on him in the face of the Ukraine crisis, has in the past been valued at $3.2 billion and is expected to sell at a price upwards of $4 billion.  To put that into perspective, in 2015 Javed Afridi bought Peshawar Zalmi for $1.2 million. That would mean that Afridi would be able to buy 3333 more PSL teams in the price that it would take for him to buy all of Chelsea Football Club. And if Afridi was to invest the $1.2 million that he spent on Peshawar Zalmi to put money in a consortium buying the Chelsea Football Club, it would give him exactly a 0.03% stake in the team. 

To further put this into perspective, the current owner of Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, has a personal net worth of around $13 billion. In comparison, Pakistani origins businessman Shahid Khan (reportedly the richest ‘Pakistani origins’ has a net worth of $8.6 billion, and when  he bought the NFL team Jaguars in 2011, he spent $770 million on it - the team is now worth $2.33 billion and the 23rd most expensive team in the NFL. That means to buy Chelsea, Shahid Khan would have to sell the Jacksonville Jaguars and would still only have just over half the amount needed to buy the team. 

This makes the news that Afridi is in the running to buy the club a little suspect. According to the 2020 audited financials for Haier Pakistan, which is owned by Afridi, the assets of the company are worth over Rs 56 billion, which is equivalent to around $313 million. Meanwhile in 2015, Afridi bought the Peshawar Zalmi team for $12 million, which is to be paid in 10 equal instalments over 10 years. Even if Afridi were able to sell both of these and funnel the money into the club, he would not be able to acquire even 10% of the Chelsea Football franchise. To put it further into perspective, the highest variant of the MG HS sells for around $47,000. This means that the Chelsea Football Club is worth nearly 90,00 of these cars - which is almost the amount of cars that were sold in Pakistan overall.