This week, Liverpool’s success on the pitch translated into a huge return for Henry’s Fenway Sports Group. The club, which carries little debt, has been valued at more than $7bn in a stake sale to a group of investors led by Amit Bhatia, the son-in-law of steel tycoon and billionaire Lakshmi Mittal. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin are backers.
Will McDonough, founder of merchant bank Corestone Capital,
made the introductions that led to the deal. Talks accelerated during the World
Cup. A key moment came when Henry and Bhatia met at Zero Bond, a private club
in New York, and built their rapport, according to two people with knowledge of
the matter.
The powerful consortium has bought around a third of the
club and could increase its stake over time.
The valuation sets a new record
for a football club, surpassing the $6.3bn enterprise value ascribed to
Manchester United when Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought a 25 per cent stake in 2024.
There is a growing belief among investors that live sport is relatively
insulated from AI disruption. Top clubs also benefit from huge loyal fan bases,
scarcity value — there is only one Liverpool FC — and low correlation to stock
markets.
Steven Horowitz, a banker who advised the previous two
buyers of Liverpool, told the Financial Times that Premier League “paradox” is
that clubs “can be terrible dividend stocks but terrific long-term assets”.
“You’re buying scarcity, global relevance and an extraordinarily sticky
consumer — people change jobs, cities and spouses, but they very rarely change
their football club,” he added.
Behind the scenes, Fenway deployed the sort of sophisticated
data analysis that it helped pioneer at the Red Sox to recruit the players to
suit Klopp’s system. Liverpool often bought players who were undervalued by the
market and who would complement other players in the squad.
Off the pitch, Fenway expanded the capacity of Anfield,
Liverpool’s home stadium, from about 45,000 in 2010 to more than 61,000,
helping to almost triple match day revenues from £40.9mn in 2010-11 to £115.6mn
in 2024-25.
“Since the initial acquisition, [Fenway] have rarely put in
much funding and it has always been in the form of loans, as opposed to equity
investment, some of which have since been repaid. These have basically only
been used to improve infrastructure at the stadium,” Kieron O’Connor, the
football finance consultant who blogs as SwissRamble told the FT.
But Fenway has also clashed with supporters over the years.
They joined 11 other clubs in signing up to the failed European Super League in
2021, sparking an angry protest from supporters. Critics said the US-style
closed competition went against Europe’s more meritocratic system of promotion
and relegation. Liverpool fans have also repeatedly protested against ticket
price rises, constraining an otherwise straightforward way to boost revenues.
The club endured a disappointing 2025-26 season, finishing in fifth place
despite spending €482mn to sign new players in the preceding summer transfer
window, the most of any club in the Premier League.
“The only way to grow the club is to grow geographically and
grow it online. These are three of the best people in the world to do that,”
one source told the Pink ‘Un. Fenway’s stake sale values Liverpool at about
seven times O’Connor’s estimated revenues for 2025-26, slightly above the
roughly 6.9 times revenue paid by Ratcliffe for United.
At the time of the respective deals, Liverpool’s net debt —
which stood at £283mn in 2025 — was below United’s, which stood at £537mn in
2023, according to Swiss Ramble. There is, however, still a major gap between
valuations of Premier League clubs and those for US sports teams, which can
exceed 10 times revenue.
That is explained by the threat of relegation and the
possibility of failing to qualify for the lucrative Champions League.
Additionally, the intense competition between teams requires constant spending
to recruit and retain players, which can wipe out profits.
O’Connor said he does not expect the bumper valuation
fetched by Liverpool to act as a catalyst for other club deals. “Only elite
clubs can attract such a valuation, while there are very few people who have
the means to invest at this level,” he explained.
The arrival of a member of the Mittal family, Bezos and
Saverin at a Premier League club has provided another stark reminder of the
growing financial gap between the best and the rest. “How does anyone aspire to
compete with the superpowers?” asked one English football executive. “What
happens to everyone else?”
There may be increasing resistance to relegation as American investors seek to preserve the value of their franchises. Relegation from the top flight could be reduced to two clubs.
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