It's 12 years since Fenway Sports Group acquired Liverpool and 20 years since they purchased the Boston Red Sox.
During their tenure at both they have delivered success after a period of drought, with the Reds being crowned champions of England for the first time in 30 years in 2020 as well as winning the Champions League in 2019, while in Boston they brought a first World Series in 86 years, following that up with three further triumphs in 2007, 2013 and 2018.
Among American sports investors they have longed been viewed as being at the vanguard, their implementation of such things as data analytics and their knack of hiring the right people having been the bedrock of their success. They have also been successful in leveraging what has been achieved and turning that into greater revenues, their sporting empire having grown from the $600m acquisition of the Red Sox in 2002 to a $10bn business, of which Liverpool are now valued at around $4bn (£3.3bn) having been bouht for £300m 12 years ago.
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Of late, however, they have faced heat on both sides of the Atlantic, largely for the same thing.
In Liverpool they have taken criticism for not spending at the rate of their rivals, not adding to the squad and spending the money required to make sure that the likes of Manchester City don't create a chasm between them after the Reds have done so well in the Jurgen Klopp era to close despite the open wallet policy that existed on the blue half of Manchester.
FSG, who were revealed last month to be open to selling their Liverpool shareholding should the right offer come along, face an expensive transfer window next summer, their approach of offsetting a significant portion of transfer fees by selling players in the same window having reached something of an impasse with little in the way of saleable assets of note that they would be willing to part with. That means that any moves for the likes of Jude Bellingham or Enzo Fernandez would see them likely with their heaviest transfer net spend of their reign. Then there are the salaries to take into account.
In Boston right now there is some ire towards FSG. Two years on from losing their star man Mookie Betts, a player so crucial to their World Series win in 2018, to the Los Angeles Dodgers, another fan favourite has moved on to pastures new with Xander Bogaerts rejecting the Red Sox's offer of a new deal in favour of an 11-year $280m deal with the San Diego Padres. It was a deal that Boston were unwilling to match and, as with Betts, they made the call not to engage on such terms.
The Red Sox are also faced with losing another key player, Rafael Devers, with reports in the US stating that Devers and the Red Sox are "galaxies apart" on a deal, with Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom telling reporters earlier this week that the ball club would go "beyond reason" to keep him at Fenway Park but that there were "limitations".
When FSG began their sporting odysseys in both Boston and Liverpool, like now, there was no salary cap in place in either competition. The MLB is something of an outlier in that respect, with the NFL, NBA and NHL all having salary caps, something that is seen to create greater parity among teams and something that gives owners a far greater sense of cost certainty.
But payrolls have ballooned in both sports, particularly at teams that are competing at the top level of their respective sports and expected to be in the market for the very best players and to ensure they keep hold of their stars.
Earlier this year the ongoing saga relating to whether Mohamed Salah would pen a new deal at Anfield was finally put to bed, the Reds signing the 30-year-old Egyptian to a new three year deal, one that would see him become the highest paid player in Liverpool history. There was a period when it looked like it was a deal that might not get over the line, the Reds hierarchy understood to be concerned that by simply offering whatever it took they would leave themselves exposed to rapid increases in their wage bill when it came to new additions and also to retaining existing players on new contracts.
Next summer will be no different, and in order to land someone like Bellingham, a player in demand by some of the biggest clubs in Europe, there will have to be a premium paid to secure his services and the wage bill rise at Anfield is one that will grow steeper, as it has done repeatedly since FSG first acquired the club.
Revenues at Liverpool have risen from £184m in 2011 to £490m in 2021, an increase of 166 per cent. Wages over the same period have shot from £129m to £326m, a rise of 153 per cent, the figures presented not including new deals for the likes of Salah.
Wages have ballooned in recent years and the margins have become finer. It is for that reason that the Liverpool owners were one of those initially agitating for Project Big Picture and the European Super League, the former offering greater revenue generation potential through the ability to host more globally focused tournaments and exhibition matches, the latter containing an element of guaranteed competition and a salary cap.
Competing at the highest level with no ceiling (there is a luxury tax in baseball but that is not a hard cap) has become increasingly difficult on both fronts and it has led to the ownership having to find new and inventive ways of revenue generation as well as maximising the value of the teams.
FSG want an NBA expansion franchise in the future, one in Las Vegas that they want FSG partner and basketball icon LeBron James to helm, and following that, when the NFL allows private equity, something that currently excludes FSG from bidding on teams as an ownership group due to minority stakes held by the likes of RedBird Capital and Arctos Sports Partners, they could well make a push for that in the future too. Salary caps would present far less risk that the current arms race that exists within European football and Major League Baseball.
How to meet the growing wage demands and remain competitive year after year is one of their greatest challenges.
Sam Kennedy, one of the key FSG partners who serves as president of the Boston Red Sox told ESPN: "It gets frustrating and irritating when you hear [questions] about your commitment to winning.
"All of our decisions we make are geared towards trying to win. We don't get those questions when we're winning."
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