By pushing boundaries in commerce and technology, Jeff Bezos has become the third-richest person on the planet — as of Wednesday, Forbes’ real-time online calculator estimated his fortune to be $267.4billion. Bezos has lost $1.6bn since the markets closed on Tuesday. An astronomical sum, but loose change to Bezos, and ultimately typical of the way water flows in the extreme world he inhabits.
The volatility of the markets helps explain why Bezos has
targeted Liverpool for investment. He
needed to analyse only the profits the club’s owner has made from selling a
chunk of its assets to him to realise that high-end English football is a safe
place to spread a small proportion of your money if you can afford to stick
around over a long time.
Fenway Sports Group bought Liverpool in 2011 for around
$470m. Fifteen years later, it has sawn off around 38 per cent of the club to
the consortium that includes Bezos for around $2.7bn. With a new television rights deal to be
brokered by the Premier League within the next two years, the value of its
members will likely increase. And if something resembling the European
Super League ever happens, it will stretch even further.
Liverpool appear to be an easy win for Bezos, who will not
take a position on the club’s board for the time being, allowing him to avoid
direct operational burdens and, in theory, sit back while the value of the club
steadily goes up along with his own money.
For context, he is part of a group that now owns around 10
per cent more of Liverpool than another minority shareholder at Manchester
United. By comparison, INEOS has signed up to handle the day-to-day and
everything that comes with it. Bezos might ask: why bother?
With cold eyes, maybe he has realised that football has
reached an unsettling point where well-run famous clubs can allow the richest
people to get richer without doing much beyond paying another very rich person
to be involved.
FSG’s principal owner John W Henry will be 77 in a month.
The club’s chairman Tom Werner will celebrate the same birthday next year and
FSG president Mike Gordon is 61. While Bezos is a year older than Gordon, the
other members of the consortium are much younger, with Bhatia aged 46 and
Eduardo Saverin aged 44.
Time is not on the side of FSG and it would be typical of
its decision-makers to lead a phased handover, ensuring softer exits and
landings as well as an increased sense of normality around a big change. That
is how the Massachusetts-based venture capitalist firm has tried to run
Liverpool at the executive level, with a series of sporting directors, for
example, gradually disappearing from view rather than with a sudden jolt.
It would seem to go against Bezos’ instinct not to strongly
influence what is happening at Anfield at some point. Look at more of his
messaging on social media, where he begins and signs off posts with the
corporate motto of his aerospace manufacturer, Blue Origin. Gradatim
ferociter translates as “step by step, ferociously”.
Bezos sees himself as an inventor, and he has changed the
world when the canvas in front of him was blank. Football club ownership is a
different space because histories, connections and emotions are already
embedded. Liverpool’s unionised supporter base has a sharp sense of what they
want to hear and see from the people who run their club, and many are well
aware of Bezos’ handling of the Washington Post, which has experienced
union-busting and layoffs since he purchased the newspaper in 2013.
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