Liverpool FC Business
Maximizing commercial revenues is vital in an environment where the cost of putting a winning team on the field is rapidly rising, and the Premier League club sees America as a ripe frontier.
Liverpool FC is headed back to England after its two-week preseason tour in the U.S. concluded on Sunday night. But the Premier League club is already plotting a return across the pond of a different kind.
Ben Latty, Liverpool’s chief commercial officer, told Sportico the club is discussing opening standalone retail stores in America. Much of the process still needs to be sorted out, including what locations Liverpool would target and whether the club would run these businesses itself or license the operations to a third-party partner. Liverpool has already had its retail team visit multiple cities in the country—the “big ones that you’d expect,” according to Latty. The exact timeline for when these plans could come to fruition is unclear.
“Clearly, we’re not at the end of that because we haven’t opened anything or announced anything yet,” Latty said. “But I’d say we are pretty advanced in terms of speaking to the right people.”
That feeds into Liverpool’s ambitions to reach 40 retail stores by 2030. The club already has 26 physical locations across the world in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, South Africa, Denmark, Ireland and, of course, the U.K. Liverpool’s most recent additions to that portfolio came in May and June, when it opened shops in London and Bali. Latty hopes the number will cross 30 stores by the end of the 2026-27 season.
Liverpool wouldn’t be the first European club to establish a brick-and-mortar presence in the U.S., but it’s rare. France’s Paris Saint-Germain notably has a store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Manchester City has experimented with temporary pop-up shops, but it’s believed no Premier League club currently has a permanent physical retail presence in America.
Merchandising, both in person and online, has been crucial to Liverpool’s financial growth. It’s the club’s second-largest commercial revenue stream, behind only partnerships. Those two categories led a vertical that generated $428 million (£324 million) during the 2024-25 season, up almost 40% from $312 million (£233 million) just three years earlier. Only Manchester City and Manchester United posted more commercial revenue among Premier League clubs.
Liverpool does make significant money in the other areas of its business, matchday and broadcast, reporting an EPL-best $929 million (£704 million) in total revenue for the 2024-25 season. But there’s only so much any club in Europe can extract out of its fixtures and media rights payouts in the Premier League. Other competitions like Champions League vary based on performance, not to mention the gradual stagnation of that overall pile of money, as Latty pointed out.
Because of financial fair play rules in European soccer, clubs can’t spend more than they earn. So maximizing commercial revenues is vital in an environment when the cost of putting a winning team on the field is rapidly rising.
“We’re focused on what we call our controllable revenue streams,” Latty said.
The lure of the American market is hard to ignore for Liverpool, the fifth-most valuable soccer club in the world at $5.74 billion, according to Sportico data. The U.S. is already the club’s top retail territory outside of the U.K. and represents 26% of its international sales in that category. In a recent interview posted on Liverpool’s website, club CEO Billy Hogan said it has 26 million fans in the States.
A U.S.-based retail footprint would help the club cut down shipping costs, deliver orders quicker and offer better prices on products. Latty didn’t rule out the construction of an American warehouse to accomplish those goals, either. “I think they both probably have to work in tandem,” he said.
In the meantime, Liverpool may have access to a different kind of war chest to continue its upward climb. Fenway Sports Group, the club’s majority owner, is in discussions to offload as much as a 30% stake to a consortium led by by British-Indian businessman Amit Bhatia, valuing the franchise at $6 billion. Latty declined to comment on the talks, referring to an earlier statement made by FSG.
He also didn’t share specifics on how much he expects Liverpool’s commercial growth to rise in the coming years. Latty did say that the club is “ambitious” with its numbers. And he was quick to boast about an overhaul to Liverpool’s e-commerce platform that was rolling out in the coming days, which he said should feature a “better experience, better design, better customer journey in terms of buying products.”
“We can’t expect our numbers to grow organically,” Latty said. “We’ve got to work for them, and we’ve got to strategically put our investment where we think it’s going to return the highest revenue for us as a club. So yeah, we are working hard behind the scenes.”