Livepool are big commercially across the pond

It’s over a quarter of a century since I worked in the United States.  Domestic soccer was in its infancy then.  I had to get up very early on a Saturday morning and get a change of trolleybuses across Seattle to watch Premier League football at an Irish bar.   Now the World Cup has given another boost to interest in the game, although it still lags behind American football, basketball and baseball (declining).   Is it bigger than (ice) hockey? Probably in the States but certainly not in Canada.

“From the data we have and the metrics we look at, it suggests that we are the biggest Premier League club in the United States. I believe we’re in a unique position in terms of our pulling power.”  Liverpool’s chief commercial officer Ben Latty is talking to The Athletic about the impressive foothold they have established in the American market and their grand plans for further expansion.

According to audience research company GWI (formerly Global Web Index), Liverpool have 26 million ‘supporters’ in the U.S. and boast the fastest-growing fanbase of any Premier League club in that country.   They have 62 official supporters’ clubs spread across 32 states and 12 international football academies based there. The U.S. is Liverpool’s biggest retail market outside the United Kingdom, accounting for 26 per cent of all international sales.

No wonder they have just returned from a lucrative two-week-long pre-season tour which saw new coach Andoni Iraola’s side play in front of more than 116,000 fans across three matches in Nashville, New York and Chicago.  “As a club, obviously we get money to go to the U.S., but it’s much bigger than the fees we get,” Latty explains. “It’s about the importance of being on the ground there. Our partners see the U.S. as a big market and want us to activate more there.

“With our ability to sell tickets, the strength of our retail business, the size of the TV audiences and engagement figures on our social-media channels, we’re perfectly poised to take advantage of the U.S. market. That’s one of the reasons why we travelled out there rather than staying in Europe.

Last season, they had 1.5 billion social-media engagements and were the most engaged Premier League club for the third successive campaign.  They also had the most-visited club website in the Premier League for 2025-26, with more than 91 million globally.

Currently, 11 of Liverpool’s 28 commercial partners (39 per cent) are headquartered in the States — the highest number of any European club. It’s the reason the club’s commercial director Kate Theobald is based at their New York office.  They also have a presence in Boston, where they benefit from the input of sports marketing firm Fenway Sports Management, a subsidiary of Fenway Sports Group, the conglomerate from that city which owns Liverpool.

The pre-season tour involved plenty of discussions with potential partners as well as cementing relationships with existing sponsors. Latty believes interest generated by the recent World Cup will open more doors for Liverpool in North America.

Part of the grand plan involves growing Liverpool’s global network of standalone retail stores. Currently, they have 26, which is more than any other sports team in the world. Eight have opened in the past year alone, including in Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and London.

However, they have yet to open any in the States. That is set to change in the coming months, with the club also keen to set up a distribution centre in America rather than having to rely on every order being dispatched from a hub in the Netherlands.

Their latest set of accounts, for 2024-25, showed that the club’s commercial revenue climbed to a record £323 million. However, that figure is set to increase considerably, given the success of a new kit deal with Adidas, which is worth around £90m per year. Adidas took over from Nike last summer.

The 2025-26 home and away kits were both the highest-selling in the club’s history. The home one outstripped sales of the previous year’s equivalent by 700 per cent, with orders received from more than 150 countries.

Liverpool’s deals with long-standing shirt-front sponsor Standard Chartered and shirt-sleeve sponsor Expedia both expire in the summer of 2027. Discussions over possible extensions are underway.