If you were to ask some of the heavy hitters in the US sports investment industry to name the best in class over the past 20 years then the likelihood is that the answer that the overwhelming majority would choose the same name.
Fenway Sports Group, owners of Liverpool, the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Penguins and numerous other sporting and real estate businesses, have for a long time been seen as the 'smartest guys in the room' when it comes to how to own and operate sporting teams.
John W. Henry has had a fascination for the use of data, something described in Seth Mnookin's insider novel 'Feeding the Monster' as an almost 'religious belief'. That belief saw him pursue the 'Moneyball' technique that Billy Beane pioneered at the Oakland Athletics (Henry's attempts to lure Beane to Boston depicted in the 2011 Hollywood film of the same name starring Brad Pitt), as FSG went about transforming a distressed asset that had become something of a museum to baseball history, not winning a World Series since 1918.
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That changed, the approach changed and seeking marginal gains and value others failed to spot helped them end the World Series drought in 2004, ending an 86-year barren spell. That was followed by World Series wins in 2007, 2013 and 2018.
At Liverpool the same approach was taken. They bought a club that was in a complete state of disarray under the ownership of the execrable tenure of George Gillett and Tom Hicks, and they got it at a great price when they cut the £300m cheque. The same tactics that were in play at Boston were implemented at Anfield, where investment was made in the science behind the scenes was given time to bear fruit and FSG handed the data department at the club the time to get in place the practices that would keep them ahead of the curve.
The accusation of late on both sides of the Atlantic when it comes to Liverpool and the Red Sox is that FSG don't care about winning, the focus is on the bottom line. Both fan bases are irate at the lack of commitment to spend on their respective teams when compared to their rivals. In baseball the Red Sox lost their star man, Xander Bogaerts, to a bigger offer in San Diego, while they have missed out on a clutch of targets after being unable to make acceptable offers. All this has been happening against a backdrop of the heaviest spending that Major League Baseball has ever seen, with the Steve Cohen-owned New York Mets going on a $806m (£668m) spending spree in free agency, while reported Boston target Aaron Judge inked a new nine-year $360m deal to remain a New York Yankee for the best years of his career. It is a market where Boston have been continually outspent in recent years and one where it has become harder to win and play smart in the system. Near enough every team has flirted with the idea of data, yet the trend has now gone back to whose wallet is the biggest.
Indeed, frustration among Red Sox fans resulted in Henry being booed during the NHL Winter Classic between the Boston Bruins and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
That can be mirrored with what is happening with Liverpool. The Reds have for some time now been the gold standard when it comes to recruiting well, hiring the right people and having enough checks and balances in place along the way to believe that when they sign a player they are doing it for the best price and with the least amount of risk that they can. The signings of the likes of Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah, Andrew Robertson, Gini Wijnaldum and Luis Diaz over the past few years have all delivered results beyond the outlay.
But where Liverpool led, others have followed. The influx of American capital into the Premier League has seen a data push in that direction, while the likes of Brighton & Hove Albion have adopted a similar model, where they place their faith in recruitment and their meticulous approach to unearth gems. Marc Cucurella's big money move to Chelsea in the summer has been followed by the relentless Liverpool links to Moises Caicedo and, more recently, Alexis Mac Allister.
Chelsea's new owners, the Todd Boehly/Clearlake Capital led consortium that acquired the club at the end of May, have stated publicly that they want to utilise data to a greater extent and place huge focus on getting recruitment right, something that has been evidenced in their revamped recruitment team that includes one of Brighton's key men behind the scenes, Paul Winstanley.
But Chelsea, whose co-owner Behdad Eghbali was one of those to be vocal on his admiration for FSG, have been sending some conflicting messages as to their approach. An ownership group that wants to use data like Liverpool have, who want to be savvy when it comes to recruitment in the long run, are also primed to take their spending to £350m since the May takeover should their £114m deal for Enzo Fernandez get over the line this month. The view among some in the industry is that they have overpaid on some targets, and the view among some in the US financial sector that the ECHO have spoken to is that they also paid over the odds for Chelsea at £2.5bn (with a further £1.75m commitment to infrastructure spend).
Chelsea's new owners are bullish about how they will grow the value of the club, wanting to pursue a multi-club model, a route that FSG looked at in the past but decided against, their focus instead pivoting to growing their $10bn empire with the addition of more North American sports teams, where salary caps and closed leagues mean that there is far greater cost certainty.
But even their approach in the US has now found challenges through the willingness to spend of other teams. New money has arrived, as it has in the Premier League, and owners want to make a mark with heavy spend. Of all the moves to get fans onside when a new team is acquired it is the willingness to write the big cheques and land the biggest names to aid the product on the field that is the quickest way to get a boost in popularity and to endear yourself to the home faithful.
For FSG their popularity, which they have had at times in both Boston and Liverpool, was never born from their willingness to be free spenders in free agency or the transfer market, it was their willingness to bring about cultural change, hiring the right people in the right places and, most crucially, winning. They did it in Boston and they did it in Liverpool.
The problem is that it has become harder and harder to win. When the winning habit takes hold it takes the focus away from the need to continually spend to appease. When the winning stops the flaws are exposed and the the perceived lack of investment to the levels of their rivals who have remained relentless comes to the fore.
There is the notion among some sections of the fan bases on both sides of the Atlantic that FSG simply do not care about winning. The reality is that the success on the pitch has afforded them the chance to pull other levers of commercial growth, and for Liverpool in particular it has been their transformation from sporadic European competitor in the early years of the FSG reign into bonafide Champions League contenders year after year in recent times that has been one of the biggest drivers of revenue.
FSG, as was first revealed by the Athletic at the beginning of November, are willing to listen to offers for their full shareholding in Liverpool, but the ECHO has been informed by US sources that unless someone comes in above and beyond the $4bn (£3.3bn) market value, and significantly so, then there will be little chance of a conversation being started.
In fact, it is a partial sale that is preferred, one with a "strategic partner" who can aid business growth and seek new opportunities for a club with an enormous fan base that very few sports teams can match globally. Such a deal would be able to leave FSG a seat at the table, likely a controlling one, while allowing them to realise some capital for team investment and any other growth plans that they had for the business.
For a long time now there has been a view that the 'bubble' will burst when it comes to the Premier League and it's seemingly ever-increasing broadcast rights, which now stand at around £10bn combined for domestic and international deals.
"I never think that the bubble is going to burst, I think that is a crazy phrase," Stefan Szymanski, the Stephen J. Galetti Professor of Sport Management at the University of Michigan and author of the lauded 'Soccernomics' told the ECHO recently.
"The bubble will burst when people decide they are no longer interested in football. I do, though, think that there is reason to think that asset prices may not continue to rise in quite the way that they have done."
Club valuations are starting to slow in European football at least. One European team owner that the ECHO spoke to believed that they were starting to plateau but that there was still some ceiling left, with the future growth likely to come from the opening up of more opportunities for owners to monetise their own content to a greater extent to a global audience, something potentially aided by a shift towards streaming platforms rather that traditional broadcasters in the coming years, as well as the adoption of new technologies and emerging industries to better monetise fan bases of teams that are several hundred million strong and span the globe.
Liverpool are a profitable business for FSG, with the expectation being that revenues in excess of £600m and profit exceeding £65m will be seen when the 2021/22 accounts are published over the next couple of months. But the driver of that profitability has been success, and while ownership has been able to ride out fallow periods with the Red Sox the situation on British shores is very different, especially with the emergence of teams like Newcastle United and re-emergence of the likes of Arsenal making the top four push even more difficult.
But to leave now would leave money on the table, and Premier League teams are still seen as undervalued when it comes to the view of American investors. Multiple of revenue is usually the yardstick to team valuations, with European teams tending to be around four, five and six times, while in the US it has now moved into the realms of multiples of more than 10. That is despite European clubs like Liverpool boasting fan bases the size of which could never be achieved by most North American sports teams.
FSG failed with their attempts to engineer Project Big Picture to help drive revenues and new opportunities by trimming the domestic calendar to free up space for other competitions or exhibition events. They were then party to the disastrous European Super League project that had attempted a closed league and salary caps that would have created a more Americanised model.
The introduction of a new partner at FSG and Liverpool, if they do press ahead with the preferred route, would likely deliver expertise and scalable capital rather than simply passive investors. There is a need for FSG to find new ways to grow Liverpool, and it is the confidence that inroads can be made on that which makes the Premier League a continued attraction for US investors and private equity. They seen growth and under monetisation, and with a changing sports landscape and generational changes to how sport is consumed, owing the power assets like Liverpool is something that owners won't give up cheaply.
But remaining core to it all, the only way it continues to work, is for the team to keep winning and keep competing for the very biggest honours year after year. That requires more investment, and more investment requires greater revenues to be achieved in the longer term. If FSG are to remain in situ for coming seasons, alongside increased investment they will have to be the 'smartest guys in the room' once more.
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