Chelsea chairman Todd Boehly and director Mark Walter have explored selling their stakes in the club to majority owner Clearlake Capital.

Multiple sources say talks have begun within Chelsea's ownership group after a rift, first apparent in 2024, led both sides to explore buying each other out.

However, it has since emerged that Clearlake - the club's majority owner with a 61.5% stake and led by co-founders Behdad Eghbali and Jose E. Feliciano - could now buy out their minority partners.

Boehly and Walter each own 12.8% and are reported to value the club at £5bn, meaning they would each receive about £640m from a sale. Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss is also closely aligned with the pair and owns a further 12.8%, although his position remains unclear at this stage.

Walter, the co-owner and chief executive of global finance firm Guggenheim Partners, where Boehly also began his financial career, last week sold the Los Angeles Lakers for a record $12.5bn (£9.23bn) - a year after buying a majority stake in the NBA franchise.

Separately, US federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating companies in Walter's business empire.

Chelsea finished 10th in the Premier League last season and appointed Xabi Alonso as their new manager in the summer.

Boehly currently serves as Chelsea chairman but is due to be replaced at the end of the season by a Clearlake-appointed representative under a pre-agreed arrangement, made when the consortium bought the club from Roman Abramovich for £2.3bn in 2022.

It would represent a further reduction in Boehly's influence, having initially been the public face of the takeover before serving as interim sporting director during the first transfer window under the new ownership.

Since 2023, Eghbali has become the most influential figure at Chelsea and has been heavily involved in transfer dealings, while a number of senior executives have left the club within the first two years of the ownership.

Some sources at Chelsea and in the ownership group play down the rift and highlight pictures of the pair together at key matches, notably at Chelsea's FA Cup final defeat by Manchester City.

But Chelsea's ongoing plans either to redevelop Stamford Bridge or move to a new stadium have been a source of tension.

Although both Boehly's camp and Clearlake are understood to favour a move away from the current site, there are differences over the design and scale of the project, which Boehly hinted at in an interview with Bloomberg last March.

"We have to think long term about what we're trying to accomplish," he said.

"We have a big stadium development opportunity that we have to flesh out. That's going to be where we're either aligned or we ultimately decide to go different ways."

Chelsea and representatives for Boehly, Walter and Clearlake have declined to comment.