Fenway Sports Group (FSG) are sometimes characterised as the steady Eddies of Premier League club ownership but they have routinely courted controversy at Liverpool.
Given that they bought the club from leveraged buyout specialists Tom Hicks and George Gillett when it was one day away from administration and groaning under the weight of over £400m in debt, the Boston investors may have felt they had some credit in the bank during their early years at Anfield.
But if FSG thought back in 2010 that their takeover would make them instant local heroes on Merseyside, they were quickly disabused of that illusion.
There is an inherent – and probably healthy – distrust of global capital at Liverpool, a club whose socialist roots run deep. There is no room for the likes of John Henry, whose net worth sits around £4.5bn, in the famous Bill Shankly quote: “At a football club, there’s a holy trinity – the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the checks.”
Credit: Adam Williams/TBR Football/GRV Media
When fans saw FSG sharply raising ticket prices in 2016, fan protests forced them into an embarrassing U-turn. It wasn’t to be their last at the club – and not nearly the most embarrassing.
Despite all the glory that Liverpool have enjoyed under Jurgen Klopp and now Arne Slot, it’s impossible to appraise the club’s American patrons and their time in the Premier League without mentioning the European Super League.
FSG were at the very centre of the Super League plans back in 2021, alongside their ostensible arch-rivals Manchester United. Henry and his business partner Tom Werner formed a close alliance with Ed Woodward, United’s former proxy CEO, during the years of planning that went into that failed coup.
The Super League was central to FSG’s ambitions in football finance.
After Liverpool’s fans and their rivals-turned-allies in the rest of the other so-called ‘Big Six’ clubs forced them to U-turn on the breakaway league, it altered their entire business plan overnight.
The European Super League and FSG’s decision to sell a stake in Liverpool
The Super League would have delivered guaranteed profits every year, whereas the current model has seen the owners plunge close to £500m (their initial £300m investment plus subsequent interest-free loans) with nothing in return.
That’s why, 18 months after the Super League collapsed, FSG listed Liverpool for sale, valuing the club at around £4bn.
| Rank | Club | Value | Revenue (23-24) |
| 1 | Real Madrid | $6.53 billion | $1.13 billion |
| 2 | Manchester United | $6.09 billion | $834 million |
| 3 | FC Barcelona | $5.71 billion | $802 million |
| 4 | Liverpool | $5.59 billion | $773 million |
| 5 | Bayern Munich | $5.21 billion | $827 million |
| 6 | Manchester City | $5.16 billion | $901 million |
| 7 | Arsenal | $4.49 billion | $773 million |
| 8 | Paris Saint-Germain | $4.26 billion | $873 million |
| 9 | Tottenham Hotspur | $3.68 billion | $652 million |
| 10 | Chelsea | $3.57 billion | $590 million |
In the end, they changed course and sold a small minority stake to the US investment firm Dynasty Equity for £127m.
That deal in 2023 was both emblematic of a wider investment trend in football – namely the interest in the game from the private equity sector – and a reminder of the breakaway attempt and FSG’s ultimate aims in L4.
But, as University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire remembers in exclusive conversation with TBR Football, the Super League was not the only attempt the owners have made to change the very architecture of football…
Liverpool owners FSG would be in favour of NBA-style play-offs, says finance expert
Last summer, FSG entered talks to take over historic French side Bordeaux.
Ultimately, they walked away from the deal, though Liverpool still want to set up a multi-club model in the style of Manchester City or the Red Bull network. Bordeaux were administratively relegated to the fourth-tier after they failed to find a buyer who could save them from bankruptcy.
If FSG are still keen on France as a multi-club outpost, there may be bargains to be had. In recent months, Ligue 1 has descended into chaos after DAZN terminated their £1.7bn broadcast deal with the organisation less than one year into a four-year contract, stripping French clubs of by far their biggest revenue stream.
As a result, the French Football Federation has proposed a radical restructuring of Ligue 1, which would see the division’s administration move from a non-profit model to a commercial system similar to the Premier League’s, where Liverpool and their 19 peers each have an equal equity share in the league.
Among other details in the plan is a proposal for the Ligue 1 title to be contested via an NBA-style play-off involving the top four clubs in the division each year.
“If the price is right, they will be in favour of it,” says Kieran Maguire, the Price of Football podcast host and author.
“It would be the perfect competition to take place overseas,” he continued when asked about whether this could tie into Tom Werner’s admission that he would like to see select Premier League matches taken abroad.
“During Covid, we had the Lisbon-based Champions League final stages. That was a model that interested a lot of owners, who thought it could be a trial run for something bigger.
“Whether the play-offs took place in the United States or Saudi Arabia, it would be extremely lucrative.”
“How you fit that into the existing calendar is a separate issue.“
READ MORE: Chris Sutton says there’s another position Mohamed Salah could definitely play for Liverpool
Project Big Picture: Repeat of Liverpool plan in 2020 could accommodate Premier League play-offs
One solution would be to simply reduce the number of matches in a regular Premier League season. That was one of the proposals of Project Big Picture, a plan to restructure the Premier League co-authored by Liverpool in 2020 which would have seen the number of teams in the division cut.
TBR Football has seen a copy of the original Project Big Picture document, which was ultimately rejected at a Premier League shareholder meeting.
“Given that FSG ideally want an 18-team Premier League – and that’s a matter of public record – you can see what they would be looking for is sizing down the traditional domestic competition and scaling up of competitions like this,” said Maguire, explaining how FSG might propose to accommodate an NBA-style play-off.
“You’d kick out two clubs and create space in the calendar and it would generate an awful lot of money for FSG.”
