Ever since the reveal back at the start of November that Fenway Sports Group were open to the possibility of selling Liverpool there has been as much focus placed off the field as there has on it.
The poor season being endured thus far by Jurgen Klopp's men has done little to quell the anxiety among some Reds fans around the direction of the football club just months on from them coming within a whisker of an unprecedented quadruple having won both the FA Cup and Carabao Cup last season, reached the Champions League final and come within 15 minutes of winning the Premier League title on a nail-biting final day of the season.
But a lack of investment into key areas, most notably midfield, has been seen as the key reason why there has been such a drop off for Klopp's men this season, and with the social rumour mill having been sent into overdrive with the possibility of new owners with extremely deep pockets being able to address such issues it has made a potential change at the top the source of great attention.
READ MORE: Liverpool may end up facing Qatar question as history repeats itself for FSG
When FSG were revealed to be open to a sale of the club the language that was used in their statement was non-committal.
"There have been a number of recent changes of ownership and rumours of changes in ownership at EPL clubs and inevitably we are asked regularly about Fenway Sports Group’s ownership in Liverpool," the November statement read.
"FSG has frequently received expressions of interest from third parties seeking to become shareholders in Liverpool. FSG has said before that under the right terms and conditions we would consider new shareholders if it was in the best interests of Liverpool as a club.
"FSG remains fully committed to the success of Liverpool, both on and off the pitch."
In the weeks that followed the stance of the Liverpool owners that they would be open to a sale was confirmed by Reds chairman Tom Werner as well as FSG partner Sam Kennedy, although the line that remained was one where there was little urgency around any kind of sale, partial or otherwise.
After the defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion there was a significant buzz around the possibility of bids from Qatar incoming, some going as far as suggesting that talks were at an advanced stage. Following the 0-0 draw with Chelsea at the weekend there was further chatter after a paragraph in a Daily Mail article claimed that the the Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, was in talks with FSG, although stressing that no bid had been made.
The ECHO spent considerable time in the US last year with dealmakers in New York. Sources in the US with intimate knowledge of the process have maintained to the ECHO that the stance remains that there has been no bids for the club or any high level talks as yet, and that a partial sale of the football club that would provide them with the capital for reinvestment would be the preferred outcome, with a "strategic partner" that FSG could be bedfellows with who could also bring expertise to scale the business and the opportunities that Liverpool have to release some latent value in a rapidly changing, and increasingly valuable marketplace.
Sources say that there has been no "real" interest to this point, pertaining to bids for the club or high level talks with FSG chiefs, but there will be interest in Liverpool as an asset from various people in various markets and for various reasons.
THE QATAR LINKS & THE MIDDLE EAST
Qatari interest has been a thread that has run through the ownership talk at Liverpool.
Fresh from hosting the World Cup, Qatar wants to expand its interests in football and make sure they build on the legacy of 2022 and strike while the iron's hot.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, QIA CEO Mansoor bin Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud spoke of the sovereign wealth fund's desire to embed themselves in football at a time when digitalisation and commercialisation of the game were coming increasingly prevalent.
He said: "Football, the clubs and the sport is becoming very commercialised in a way, especially now fans are looking into this as an experience, so they would like to and experience and entertain themselves.
"At the same time digitalisation is becoming very important for this. So, the business model of these institutions is becoming very commercialised and very investment friendly. You will not be surprised if we invest in this.
"We have not made our mind yet but this is a very commercially driven decision that we go through. And again, sports is becoming a very important theme as well, people are engaged more in a sport and digitalisation is making it more attractive to investors."
There is the money and there is the interest, but the idea of simply purchasing clubs as trophy assets is something that is no longer as cut and dried as it may have seemed at one stage. While the QIA is a fund worth more than $400bn it is one that is responsible for aiding the improvement of Qatar, and that isn't simply through laundering reputations, it is through diversifying income streams away from the traditional oil and gas that will aid Qatar and the MENA region as it seeks to assert itself to a greater extent on the global stage. It won't be a 'buy at any price' kind of power play.
Speaking to the ECHO last week, Professor Simon Chadwick, Professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy at SKEMA Business School in Paris, said: "It is important to note that for the likes of the Qataris there is a carefully curated strategy for national development.
"They don't buy football clubs or other such assets unless it serves a purpose for a broader industrial and national development strategy.
"Look at Abu Dhabi with Manchester City. They bought a lot of real estate in Manchester and a lot of that was down to using their ownership of Manchester City to diversify revenue streams for a country, like Qatar, that is so dependent on oil and gas. It accounts for some 70 per cent of the Qatari economy and when oil prices fall they all take a hit. For Abu Dhabi all that real estate gives them an income stream in perpetuity.
"The Liverpool Freeport decision (taken earlier this month that sees Liverpool's port exempt from certain taxes and customs charges to encourage trade and investment) is potentially impactful. Saudi Arabia have a very well developed port strategy where they acquire assets in port cities that allows them to connect the dots with revenue generating income. The PIF (Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund) takeover of Newcastle United wasn't done just by picking any old team. PIF have invested £1bn in a local chemical plant in the North East (SABIC).
"They aren't just trophy assets, that is not the case here. Countries in the Middle East are trying to build global networks of trade and influence and having the anchor of ownership of football clubs in the local area helps in that respect. If someone takes either a controlling or minority stake in Liverpool then you have a local asset that will aid what happens with other local decisions and investments."
The QIA could have an interest in Liverpool moving forward and it is hard to see, for all the reasons above, that they wouldn't find it an interesting asset, however it would be price and the other opportunities that exist in the market at present, some that may better suit their longer term goals and for a lesser price tag, that may serve them better. It is reiterated that no high-level talks have taken place that have warranted the situation to have progressed from where it was back in November.
Qatar Sports Investments, owners of Paris Saint-Germain, are on the lookout for further investment opportunities relating a minority stake purchase but have only so far held tentative talks with Tottenham Hotspur. Like Liverpool owners FSG, QSI are seeking to sell a portion of their own club to aid re-investment, in the case of QSI it is the building of a new stadium.
US INSTITUTIONAL INVESTMENT AND 'STRATEGIC PARTNERS'
The ECHO was told back in December that it was not the preference of FSG principal John W. Henry to sell a controlling stake in Liverpool, nor was it the preference of some of the other partners within FSG, some with significant shareholdings, who had yet to see investments made mature as they had hoped and expected for them and their own investors.
The view in the US is that the Premier League is a long way behind the major North American sports leagues when it comes to being sophisticated and monetising both content and commercial operations. The Premier League has major global brands, of which Liverpool is certainly one, where fan bases stretch well into the hundreds of millions. Investors in the US look at European football, particularly the Premier League, and its trajectory over the past decade, a decade when the 'bubble' was predicted to burst several times over. Even a pandemic saw club valuations prove resilient, and while there will be a point where they plateau and start to decrease, there is seen to be a fair way to go yet until that point is reached, and that is why there are now a raft of sports-specific investment funds ready to deploy capital.
Liverpool's market value has risen from its £330m purchase price in 2010 to £3.4bn in 2023; a rise of 930 per cent. It has become an asset class all of its own, offering the potential for huge returns. Basketball star LeBron James took a £4.5m two-per cent stake in Liverpool back in 2011, when the RedBird Capital $750m investment into FSG for 11 per cent of the company was closed in 2020 he accreted that stake into one per cent of FSG. That one per cent is now worth almost $100m of FSG's overall $10bn empire.
Behdad Eghbali, co-founder of US investment fund Clearlake Capital along with José E. Feliciano, was part of the consortium that acquired Chelsea last year in a £2.5bn deal. When speaking at the Sportico Invest in Sports conference in New York in October, where the ECHO were present, Eghbali shared why the Chelsea investment was attractive, pointing as to why someone will find Liverpool just as, if not more, enticing.
Eghbali said: "For us it was about looking at the macro.
"Look at the NFL, it has a $20bn revenue and 150m to 200m fan base, media rights and all intellectual property (IP) is really shared where in soccer you have the English Premier League which has a massive global audience. You share broadcast revenue but you have a big disparity otherwise in terms of your IP.
"Sports is religion. These are institutions that have a wide generational following that thanks to digital technology and streaming are in the early innings of global audiences. They are public/private partnerships but your asset is the play, and the opportunity to make it a platform is very much there but some of these are not optimised and not well managed. Aside from Fenway at Liverpool and Abu Dhabi at Manchester City these things are not optimised."
It won't just be private equity and institutional investment that will be looking at FSG and Liverpool, and any play would likely want FSG to be able to have a partner who would bring something to the table when it comes to growing the business and increasing revenues. Tech or media companies could be in play as a smart investment, one that would allow the club to partner with rights holders and utilise new ways of reaching their global legion of fans. That kind of "strategic partner" would allow capital to arrive into the business to aid the here and now while offering the greater chance of growing the value of the football club beyond where it is now.
EAST ASIA GEARING UP TO MAKE A PLAY
One of the first names linked with the Reds when it was revealed FSG were open to a sale was that of one of the world's richest men, Indian multi-billionaire Mukesh Ambani.
That interest was swiftly denied by spokespeople for Ambani's firm, Reliance Industries, although with the Indian economy leading the way when it comes to emerging markets, and with a sports-loving population of 1.4bn it offers huge upside if investors are able to harness that potential and align it with a globally recognised club like Liverpool.
Speaking to the ECHO in November, Stefan Szymanski, the Stephen J. Galetti Professor of Sport Management at the University of Michigan and author of the lauded 'Soccernomics' said: "Liverpool is such a big name in East Asia and there are billionaire Indonesians, Malaysians and Singaporeans, it would certainly sell well in that part of the world. It would be reasonable to think there would be a lot of interest."
NEED FOR LIVERPOOL TO REMAIN COMPETITIVE
There has been a narrative emerge that FSG don't care about winning when it comes to their sporting investments, purely the profit that can be driven.
In Boston, where FSG own the Boston Red Sox Major League Baseball team, there has been an element of boom or bust. Having not won a World Series for 86 years prior to FSG delivering the first under their tenure in 2004, they have won it a further three times since then, the most recent being in 2018.
But in between the success there has largely been periods of misery, where the team has fallen flat and been unable to sustain their position or strengthen their hand. That can happen in baseball and with every win the Red Sox have achieved there has been an element of a rebuild to follow, one that has led on more than one occasion to competitive decline.
With Liverpool they acquired a distressed asset. They nursed it back to health and delivered a Premier League, Champions League and numerous other cup wins, as well as making them consistent challengers at the summit. But success underpins Liverpool's value more than it does at the Red Sox, and it is the ability to make Liverpool a force on the greatest stages of all at a time when football became more globalised and technology allowed for clubs to reach more fans in more areas that has allowed them to leverage on-pitch success into financial success.
Manchester United's former vice-chairman Ed Woodward once quipped to investors that the team didn't need to be successful to deliver strong financial performance through commercial income. Liverpool have now outstripped Manchester United when it comes to commercial revenues after a decade of decay and decline at Old Trafford, although the Erik ten Hag era offers some green shoots of recovery.
FSG will know that they can't allow Liverpool to drift at a time when the top six is becoming the top seven through the arrival of Newcastle United on the scene, and investing in aiding on-pitch success will have to happen to avoid being left behind.
In leaning toward a partial sale there will almost certainly be a commitment to doing that to a degree, although the modus operandi of FSG will likely have to pivot in a slightly different direction given how the football landscape has changed in the 12 years of their Anfield tenure.
There will likely be more concrete interest to formulate in the next six weeks with those who hold interest privately but have not yet shown their hand potentially coming to the fore with proposals. As thing stand, however, there is nothing that has had to be given serious consideration by FSG chiefs as yet.
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