COMMENT: Well, he was honest. You can't argue with that. There were no platitudes here. Jose E. Feliciano, of Clearlake Capital, laid it all out. Their plans for Chelsea. Their purchase. And what Chelsea's stakeholders... ahem fans... can expect from the club's new owners...
Feliciano spoke at length this week about their first foray into the world of sport investment. Clearlake's co-owner admitting Chelsea was an opportunity too good to pass up.
But the upshot is that Chelsea are officially now FC Corporate. At least as far as this conglomerate of owners are concerned. You could say stakeholders, but such a moniker is now reserved for the average Blues fan.
As we say, he was honest, was Feliciano. Straightforward. He didn't try to claim any Robbie Keane-type allegiance. Indeed, he didn't claim any love of football or sport at all. Instead, it was sober, perhaps a little cynical. He talked about "live content", ie the streaming potential of the Premier League we've discussed here. The further monetising of Chelsea's global support. And transforming this 117 year-old football club into a business.
Indeed, while perhaps in his position he felt he was running down Roman Abramovich, Feliciano - in football terms - actually gave his predecessor the ultimate compliment.
Speaking at the Bloomberg Invest event, Feliciano touched on why they chose to join Todd Boehly's group in buying the club: "Forget it's Chelsea Football Club and the Premier League. We are talking about situation where we had a forced seller, a very unusual situation where basically the government of the UK was forcing the sale of the asset.
"You had an asset that even though people would consider it a prize asset it was not really run as a business, it was run for other purposes. Profit was not the ultimate goal, or one of the more significant goals of the business. At the same time, it was a business that most people would call a beachfront property, one of the best properties in that sector, in that league in this case."
As he says, Abramovich ran Chelsea not as a business. But as a football club. A club to win things. To entertain. To offer experiences. Moments. All the intangibles of sport. And he and his team managed to achieve that all the while transforming Chelsea into a "beachfront property".
It was compliment. For the football fan. The ultimate compliment. Abramovich ran the club as it should be. But now, if we're to take Feliciano at his word, things will change for Chelsea. Now it's about bottom line. Profits. Dividends. Indeed, the warnings of rival bidder Sir Jim Ratcliffe about the motivations of Clearlake were all but confirmed.
The Nice owner, in the aftermath of Chelsea's sale to Boehly and co, stating: "What I do know is I spent quite a few years of my life working in the world of venture capital and private equity. Your focus is always on how I invest and make that money grow, and it's typically a five-year time horizon - and their main funder is private equity and venture capital.
"If we want to make money, we make money on chemicals, oil and gas and that sort of thing. We're not interested in making money out of Chelsea. The investment in Chelsea is a long term thing - can we run that club really well and turn it into one of the finest clubs in the world?"
This column has said it before, Ratcliffe, as a sportsman, you can understand the ambition, the desire to compete. Just as we can connect to Abramovich's motivations. A fan can get his arms around such an approach and relate. But foreign investment funds? Groups that need to answer to shareholders? Is there anyother driving factor beyond money?
Feliciano again: "Ultimately what we're trying to build is a long term, sustainable business that can increase in value significantly and that means a lot more than winning or losing on the pitch. That's important as a brand, as a media property, as a team, as a club but we're also trying to establish and build and put in place the right building blocks to have a great business in three years, five years, seven years and a lot of work we are doing behind the scenes trying to do just that."
As a football fan, you have to separate what Feliciano is saying here. When he talks about a great "three years, five years, seven years", it's not about winning silverware, achieving glory and producing great football moments. He's talking about profit. Earnings. Dividends for Clearlake's investors.
And it has to be said, as Feliciano went on and on about his ambitions for this investment, it did smack of naivety. That everything would fall into place, "We think there's a lot of opportunities embedded in the company that we bought, it just happens to be Chelsea Football Club". Regardless of performance on the pitch. The competitiveness of rivals. Champions League qualification. Financial Fair Play (which is looking lopsided after Boehly's first summer market). Apparently, win or lose, the interest will remain. The stakeholder will continue to consume. Only football isn't like that. The Premier League isn't like that. And Feliciano would do well to hit the books and do more homework on his new investment. He even mentioned "betting" as a big earning opportunity amid the current battle that industry now faces remaining connected to English clubs. There was also the claim of the womens team becoming a "billion dollar-plus media property" with average crowds of barely 3,000.
You get the point. It has to be questioned whether Clearlake have entered this investment with eyes wide open. And beyond their financial ambitions, is there anyone pulling the levers with the experience of navigating the sheer uncertainty of sport - particularly Premier League football?
For the Chelsea fan, or should we say stakeholder, Feliciano's honesty can be appreciated. No emotional connection. No ties. Just pure bottomline. From Chelsea FC to Corporate FC. At least everyone knows where they stand.
