Ken Bates obituary

Former owner and chairman of Chelsea FC who bought the club for a pound and helped restore it to the top rank of English football

For more than 20 years, Ken Bates, who has died aged 94, was synonymous with Chelsea Football Club, which he bought in 1982 from the Mears family, who had lost control after rebuilding the west stand.

Haemorrhaging money, hugely in debt and about to sink into what was then Division Three, the London club cost him £1. Two feuding, financially hectic decades later, it was £97m in debt, but from its sale to the Russian oil tycoon Roman Abramovich Bates nevertheless took £17m for himself.

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