Liverpool and Manchester United’s ownership groups are on very different paths.
There are dozens if not hundreds of football finance supremos worldwide who have tried to approximate the Fenway Sports Group business model at their own clubs.
FSG have spent almost nothing and won everything during their 15 years at Liverpool. Yes, there were mistakes early on, but the Americans are now probably the best owners in the game.
Liverpool and FSG co-owner Tom Werner attends a Premier League match at Anfield, watches from side lines
Photo by Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images
They’ve controlled and optimised costs, mastered player recruitment, made the best hires at the back of house, and given the club the TLC it needed to become a global commercial behemoth.
It was appropriate that last season’s Premier League title, the second of the FSG era, came after the Boston-based regime ignored the noise and finished the campaign with the league’s lowest net spend.
Now, John Henry, Tom Werner and Mike Gordon have given their blessing to ramp up spending, with Richard Hughes and Arne Slot’s expenditure this summer approaching the £200m mark.
And yet, Fenway Sports Group themselves probably won’t spend a penny. Instead, everything the Merseysiders do in the transfer market will be funded by their own revenues. The same goes for Liverpool’s gargantuan wage bill. Their payroll is one of the world’s highest but, again, is fully-costed.
Chart for TBR Football showing key revenue events in the FSG era
Liverpool key revenue events in FSG era Credit: Adam Williams/TBR Football/GRV Media
At the other end of the resource-efficiency spectrum sit arch-rivals Manchester United.
There has scarcely been a club in history that has spent as poorly as the Red Devils in the last decade or so. Since Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill left Old Trafford, United have spent approximately:
£3.5bn on wages
£1.5bn in amortisation (how clubs account for transfer fees over a set period)
£125m in dividends to the Glazer family
£450m in interest payments
In return, they have won a handful of honours but have never even been close to winning the biggest on offer. Until recently, their goliath commercial and matchday income was at least to ensure that the club wasn’t running at a cash loss. But now, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been forced to inject several hundred million pounds of his own money in order to cover costs. With no European football of any description next season, the additions of Matheus Cunha and potentially Bryan Mbeumo will be funded by player sales.
In the cold war between Liverpool and Man United, it’s very clear who’s winning.
Liverpool now rival Man United for worldwide influence, says FSG chief Tom Werner
Before the ‘Big Six’ came into parlance to describe the richest and most-followed clubs in the Premier League, there was the ‘Big Four’. Even further back, it was the ‘Big Three’.
And while the finances show that the race is much tighter than previous eras, the ‘Big Three’ – Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal – are still very much alive and well as English football’s biggest exports.
Liverpool were the Premier League’s most-watched team in 2024-25, with a cumulative global audience of nearly 500 million. The club’s commercial department shouted about it from the rooftops, as they should – more viewers equals more leverage with sponsors and, under FSG’s self-funding model, a bigger playing budget.
We don’t have the 2024-25 figures yet, but Liverpool recorded commercial income of £308m the previous season and, according to football finance authority Greg Cordell via his Vanity, Sanity and Reality Substack, are likely to have hit around £334m last term.
Man United meanwhile went backwards commercially in the last full published financial year, albeit by just a few hundred thousand pounds. But zooming out on the graph, their growth has been almost non-existent since 2016-17, at least compared to their peer group.
Their quarterly accounts show that they will probably set a new record for sponsorship, merchandise and events sales in 2024-25, but that is nothing to particularly shout about in an era when the expectation is for Big Six clubs to not just break their own records each year but to do so by a sizeable margin.
Chart for TBR Football showing commercial income of Big Six, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal
Big Six commercial income chart Credit: Adam Williams/TBR Football/GRV Media
United’s anaemic growth can be attributed to their lack of success on the pitch and, arguably, their overreliance on volume of partnerships at the expense of commercial innovation.
Man United’s commercial department have often used the claim that they have 1.1 billion followers worldwide as a selling point in negotiations with sponsors. And it’s true that they have the kind of global influence of which most clubs can only dream.
However, Tom Werner – who is Liverpool chairman and one of FSG’s biggest shareholders – has intimated that his club are now rivalling the Red Devils in this department too.
“We are very aware of the global power of Liverpool,” Werner told The Times.
“The club’s reach around the world is by far the strongest in the Premier League. We’re the only Premier League club to surpass 500million views on television [by March 2025 from August last season]. Last season on social media we generated 1.7 billion engagements. That’s not unique engagements, but it’s still a huge number.
“Many Americans still don’t appreciate the global power of football. But we think there could now be as many as a billion people around the world who follow Liverpool.”
Liverpool’s multi-club ambitions: Will Getafe takeover affect transfer budget?
Elsewhere on planet FSG, Liverpool’s ambitions to launch a multi-club network are gathering pace.
As revealed by TBR Football, Fenway Sports Group have agreed a deal in principle to acquire Getafe.
The La Liga club could set Liverpool’s owners back around £200m, including both the purchase price and a subsequent funding commitment.
Interestingly, sources have told this site that the Reds’ summer transfer business could affect the timing of the proposed deal which may suggest that FSG are considering injecting liquid capital into Liverpool to fund transfer business for what would be the very first time.
Player From Fee
Jeremie Frimpong Bayer Leverkusen £29.5m
Ármin Pécsi Puskás Akadémia £1.5m
Florian Wirtz Bayer Leverkusen £100m + £16.5m in add-ons
Milos Kerkez Bournemouth £40m
Freddie Woodman Preston North End Free
Liverpool’s summer signings so far
“Liverpool have been very active in the market,” says University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively to TBR Football, suggesting that the whispers around FSG might be expectation management from the owners.
“The success that they have had last season and the fact they didn’t spend much money last year means they are in a very strong financial position.
“Presumably, the deals [ for Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez] will be structured over time from a cash flow perspective.
“£200m for FSG is chicken feed. I don’t know whether this part of a broader expectation management issue. They have spent £200m already this window – they might be saying that unless a really good deal comes in the pipeline this window, they are done and dusted.
“Also, it could be a piece of expectation management at Getafe too. FSG will front-load a deal if they can get a discount for doing so.”