Take a short walk from the vibrant and bustling Times Square in New York City, down to the corner of West 50th Street, look up... and Liverpool fans will see a familiar face.
A mural of Mohamed Salah dominates the side of a Manhattan building, the 'Egyptian King' wearing his international colours. Underneath a colourful image of Salah, unveiled in 2018 by artist Brandan Odums, reads the tagline 'Larger than Life'. It is a striking piece of art among the seemingly endless flashing billboards and the ceaseless honking of New York traffic, and one that shows the truly global reach that Salah has. There is, however, no reference to Liverpool on the mural.
While Liverpool icons The Beatles managed to break America in 1964, some 58 years later and the football club that shares the city's name is still trying to make its mark across the pond.
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For some years now, ever since the true globalisation of domestic leagues, particularly the English Premier League, clubs have been trying to find ways to tap into what they saw as a potentially bountiful market that existed in the US, trying to bank on the rise of 'soccer' in the country and that it would find its way to sit alongside the traditional major American sports such as baseball, basketball and American football. The growth hasn't arrived as quickly as they had hoped or expected, it has been more of a slow burner, but with a $2bn TV deal in the bag for Premier League rights for the next cycle, and with US capital now increasingly prevalent in English football, the growth that clubs had been seeking to tap into now seems well positioned to surge.
Premier League clubs have been engaging in pre-season tours abroad for some years now. From America to the Far East, clubs have attempted to bring their brand to a new fan base, something that they hoped would open them up to new markets and new commercial possibilities. It has worked to an extent.
Manchester United were one of the first to harness the power of the pre-season tour, particularly to the US, something that is now worth more than £10m to them per season and opens up more opportunities through growing the brand in different markets. Liverpool, too, have made the journey across the pond to bring the club to a new audience, the last being a pre-pandemic trip that took in South Bend, Boston and New York in 2019.
Having US owners in Fenway Sports Group, the American market is something that Liverpool's hierarchy knows intimately. It is something they have witnessed the growth in and something that they will be seeking to make the most of. They have a key member of their commercial team, head of global partnership sales Kate Pratt, based in New York, and with the remit of supporting growth of commercial revenues on that side of the Atlantic.
A walk down New York's famous Fifth Avenue, a shopper's haven, and it is where the biggest leagues in America position themselves with their flagship stores, with the NBA based their while the MLB occupies considerable space at a unit next to the Rockefeller Center on Sixth Avenue. Lying along the Fifth Avenue stretch is a rather fancy flagship store for Paris Saint-Germain, with the French side building on their lifestyle brand push with Nike subsidiary Air Jordan to bring the brand to a new audience. In the US, despite American ownership and a global brand worth billions, Liverpool are without any physical retail presence in the country. Reaching the point when that becomes a requirement will mark a milestone for the club, and given the movement that is occurring in the US with a move towards 'soccer', it could arrive sooner rather than later.
But what is Liverpool's standing in the US? Do they register on the scale with sports fans in the country? Is it really a market that has growth opportunities that would deliver greater revenues for the club and, ultimately, help them deliver success on the pitch and aid transfer spending?
Individual superstar athletes like Salah, one of the most prominent Muslim sportspeople, transcend their sports break through, but the challenge to get the same kind of traction for the clubs that they represent is something that owners are trying to find the answer to. The willingness for NBC to pay $2bn to keep the Premier League as part of their premium live content suggests the answer might not be too far away, especially given that club owners in England had been expecting as much as $900m less than the deal that was eventually struck with NBC to show games on linear television and their subscription streaming platform Peacock.
Scott Rosner, Professor of Sports Management at Columbia University in New York has watched the growth of the game with interest in the US. A football fan, Rosner was part of the team to deliver the USA '94 World Cup, something he believes kick started the real growth of the game stateside.
Speaking to the ECHO, Rosner explained: "If you think about Manchester United they have a history of touring here, but I don't think that has a whole lot to do with the strength of their brand here, it is their history as a club. They have fallen on hard times, no doubt, and there is no immediate prospect of returning to 'glory, glory, Man United', but the appeal of having someone like Cristiano Ronaldo keeps them at least a bit more relevant than they otherwise would be.
"Chelsea has Christian Pulisic, perceived to be the best American player, so there is an interest there. I have friends and neighbours who are solely fans of Chelsea because of Pulisic. Manchester City have obviously been extremely successful on the pitch, but the New York City link through City Football Group ownership isn't really a driver of interest over here, it is more Pep Guardiola and the quality of play.
"Liverpool have that through Jurgen Klopp but they are historically more successful. They have built up a pretty significant brand recognition among US soccer fans. It is the style with which they play under Klopp has been really attractive for US fans. Eventually you get down to things like ownership and having LeBron James as a part of that. Now, I'm not sure whether it is net positive or net negative but I know New York Yankees fans who root against Liverpool because of the Boston Red Sox connection.
"The maturation of the US football market has been steady over the past 25 years. The genesis of it was hosting the World Cup in '94, the launching of our own domestic league, the MLS in '96, and it staying around past the first 10 years which some people questioned as it has established itself among the US sports firmament. With that has come increased investment in broadcasting from a number of different providers; Fox, ESPN and NBC Sports.
"For NBC it has been the basis of them launching their subscription streaming service Peacock and driving subscribers towards that. My sense is that couldn't have pleased the powers that be in the Premier League.
"You come to the US and on the final day you can watch all of the games simultaneously on different channels. It is a wonderful viewing experience for the American football fan, but a number of those matches are on Peacock. (The final) Sunday, which they billed as 'Championship Sunday', had a lot at stake. There was relegation at stake, European football and the EPL title. What that allows them to do is spread the content across the entirety of their Comcast channels.
"The key matches were on cable TV. The Manchester City game was shown on NBC while the Liverpool game was shown on the USA Network.
"As a sports fan and a big Premier League fan who does not subscribe to Peacock there are some very high level matches that I would want to watch as a non-Peacock subscriber. What does that mean? It means I have to go to Peacock or Peacock plus and become a paid subscriber. That's fine, they are actually being thoughtful in that. For the powers that be in the Premier League that could not have been very satisfying. Fast forward and there is a lot of placating that can be done with the rights that they have now agreed to.
"For NBC, having something that drives subscribers to a new platform is important. Also for NBC you want what is going to give you instant programming and viewership at a time of day across channels, given the magnitude of the games, is considerably higher than what you would get here in the US on a Saturday morning or Sunday morning.
"For Premier League owners like FSG, the shuttering of NBC is something that would have had to be massaged. The linear operation at NBC Sport was shuttered on January 1 and all the games were shifted from having a designated home to being spread out among a variety of channels. Money can placate a lot of hurt feelings and bruised egos."
There has been a shift in the US towards more participation in football, although trying to convert that to more eyeballs will be the next hurdle to cross. At present the Premier League isn't the most watched football league in the country, it is second, ahead of the MLS, but trailing Mexico's elite men's competition, Liga MX. The rest of Europe's major leagues do, however, trail well behind the Premier League in viewership and the money paid to broadcast their respective competition.
Having been nowhere to be found on US television not too long ago, the Premier League can now be beamed into hundreds of millions of homes and gives the game a platform to take a slice of the action, particularly given the time difference in some parts of the US means that the Premier League isn't going toe to toe with traditional sports. That is the kind of exposure that is so valuable to Liverpool and their commercial partners.
"When I was growing up, to watch a soccer game over here in the US you would have to launch a satellite from your back yard, it just didn't exist," Kevin LaForce, managing director of FSG's 11 percent part owner RedBird Capital Partners, told the ECHO.
"The advent of MLS in the US and its growth over the last decade plus means you have now found soccer on linear television. I do think the entrance of the Premier League based on the first deal that they did with NBC was a big event for European soccer in the United States. I know from personal experience with my family, of being able to get up on Sunday mornings and see the EPL play live, with some of the best soccer in the world.
"I have experience with the NFL (where LaForce was an executive and key to the NFL securing a $100bn 10-year TV deal) when we played pre-season games in Europe. People didn't want to see pre-season games, they wanted to see the best players in the world playing their best, and certainly the EPL is that. With that and the support of NBC, which has the greatest reach, enabled people to start engaging with the sport and learn more about it and the players, teams and history. There were plenty of people who were already there but this just widened the net and that is the power of free-to-air TV in the US as you are in 130 million homes."
The fact that Liga MX is the most watched football league in the US may seem curious, but a look at the demographics of the US population and it makes more sense.
"The Premier League isn't actually the most watched league in the US, that's the Mexican league," Rosner said.
"Liga MX viewership is something like 40 to 50 percent higher than the Premier League. It makes sense given the number of Mexican Americans in the USA who think about football in a very secular fashion.
"The MLS viewership is somewhere in the region of 400,000 per game. You look at the viewership, it's Liga MX, the Premier League and then the MLS. What that means on aggregate, it's about two million plus. That's just for domestic leagues, it's not for Champions Leagues or the CONCACAF.
"The World Cup is coming here in 2026. Think about the World Cup in 1994, and I worked for that World Cup. Think of that kind of spark moment, in '94 the mission statement for World Cup USA was to put on the greatest World Cup in history, and the US still remains the most attended World Cup in history. Secondly, it was to leave a lasting legacy for soccer in this country.
"The 2026 World Cup aim will be to bring football in America to a new higher level. It's like an espresso shot, can you provide with that love and enthusiasm to take it to another level. I think the answer will be yes."
The new TV deal has been a boon to Premier League clubs and their owners and the increased financial package that has been negotiated means the league's teams have been able to strengthen their position. For FSG, Liverpool's owners, it has provided them with the opportunity to maximise the potential of the club's brand in the US with the backdrop of growing interest in English football.
Back in March the Reds and club partner EA Sports put on a free two-day 'Anfield Experience' exhibition in New York, using digital mapping to deliver a virtual experience to give US fans a taste of what the matchday experience at Anfield is really like. It was an indication of Liverpool's intent to engage more with their American audience, both existing and potential.
Gareth Watford moved from Formby to New York back in 2014. The lifelong Liverpool fan has seen first hand the changing nature of the game in the US.
Watford, a member of New York's Official Liverpool Supporters Club (NYOLSC), said: "I think one of the biggest indicators of how big it is getting over here, the coverage on NBC, they started doing live events, they do their fan festivals. We have had a couple in Miami and LA, and also in New York.
"I have been over here since 2014 and if you look at the coverage back then to what it is now, on the final day of the Premier League season there were 10 different games on 10 different channels. NBC don't just keep it to their sports channels, it was on NBCSN, it was on NBC, it was on USA, it was on SYFY. It was on all these channels. From my experience of watching games in a pub in England, the difference over here is the mix of genders. I've been here seven years plus so I don't know what it is like now watching a game in an English pub but over here we have a pretty good balance of men and women watching the games.
"A lot of girls play football in schools and the historical success of the US women's team, a few of those players became stars outside of the game.
"The reason a lot of kids are getting into football here in the US now is that a lot of schools are playing football because it is really cheap to equip the kids to play. You need a ball, that's it. If you are playing baseball or American Football, the amount of equipment you need is significant and costly."
For Liverpool to realise the kind of growth that they would want to achieve in America, the TV deal gives them a sound footing. But it requires the buy-in of a new and existing audience in order to keep those sky-high media deals going into cycles in the coming years. The fervent passion that comes from nations globally where football is their number one sport is challenged in an American market where baseball, American football and basketball are big business and have long been the dominant forces for eyeballs and wallets.
Justin Wells, president of the NYOLSC, said: "The interest comes in crests and waves, when big things happen like a Champions League or a Premier League title run that are heavily contested it picks up. Through seasons you will see people pick up teams and support them in a really passionate manner, but that constant devotion to teams hasn't really taken off yet. It kind of ebbs and flows. I suppose the challenge now is how they grow and then sustain that here in the US."
Liverpool are positioned well to make the most of these new opportunities that are arising, however. A winning side, charismatic manager in Jurgen Klopp, recognisable world class players with appeal across demographics, and an ownership set-up that already has its roots firmly in American sport, and has the added cachet of having a globally recognisable superstar in basketball legend LeBron James as part of the group and playing an active role in projects with the Reds, such as the Nike kit deal and its initiatives, means that they are a club better placed than most to capture the imagination of the US public increasingly interested in English football.
