It doesn’t scream trust when you do something this quietly.
Reports first hit the media about a month ago that a consortium led by Amit Bhatia wanted to buy a stake in Liverpool FC. As is often the case with these deals, it hit the financial press before the football media. The Financial Times outright said in its initial reporting that this would be for 30% of the club, but sports reporters presumably briefed by people from inside football avoided putting a number on it. “The proposed deal is similar to the one FSG agreed with Dynasty Equity in 2025”, saidThe Athletic’s Matt Slater, “when the American investment firm paid a figure in the region of £150 million ($200 million) for about three per cent of the Premier League club”.
It took another couple of days before anyone even mentioned a certain very high-profile figure involved in the consortium. “Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, has been approached to join a consortium which is in talks to buy a stake in Liverpool Football Club”, wrote Sky News. This was Sky News’ business reporting, not Sky Sports News. “A source cautioned that he was not certain to proceed with an investment in Liverpool FC”.
Then on the 10th August1, we got Sky News’ Mark Kleinman again reporting that a deal was close. “One insider said the deal was now expected to be slightly larger than previously thought, potentially involving a stake of over 30%.”
A few days after that on the 14th, Fenway Sports Group put out a press release announcing they have sold a minority equity stake in Liverpool to “1892 Holdings, a consortium led and managed by Amit Bhatia, with investments from Amit Bhatia and the Mittal Family Trusts, K5 Sports (a K5 Global Fund), with Jeff Bezos as the lead investor in the K5 Sports fund, and EE Capital, the family office of Elaine and Eduardo Saverin”. There we go. Only after the deal has closed (and thus cannot be subject to public scrutiny) do we find out that it’s for 38% of the club.
And CNBC’s Alex Sherman broke the big news after the fact:
First, Bezos’ group K5 Global made “largest contribution to the $7.1 billion minority investment — more than $1 billion”, even as Bhatia is positioned as the face of the consortium. The financial reporting language is getting a little confusing here, since the $7.1 billion figure presumably means the value of the entire club, not just the 38% stake they just bought. I might be totally misreading this, but if I’m correct, this means Bezos’ K5 firm owns at least 14% of Liverpool, while Bhatia and Saverin must each have slightly less than that. FSG’s shareholding is not public information, but I would imagine John Henry is the only individual who owns a larger chunk of Liverpool than Bezos.
And then the real story hidden in there: “as a condition of the deal, the investment group has an option to become the majority shareholder of Liverpool at a valuation around $8 billion in the next 12 months, according to a person familiar with the matter”.
Yes, I think this is very different to Dynasty Equity buying 3% of Liverpool last year. They have played the media very carefully here, keeping the story relatively small and irrelevant until it’s too late. Do they have something to hide here? What’s up?
Obviously, we have no idea whether 1892 Holdings will actually take over the club, or at least gain a majority stake. But it’s clearly a live possibility, and so we should take the implications seriously.
Let’s be very clear about what this doesn’t mean. Liverpool aren’t about to go on a Chelsea in 2003-esque spending spree. Even if these people wanted to do that, we all know the profit and sustainability rules make it impossible. I see a lot of people online still mentally living with the model that you want an “ambitious” owner to splash the cash. That’s just not how it works anymore. You need to be confident that the owners won’t take large sums out of the club, but otherwise, you’re looking for studious and sensible decision-making over the long term.
FSG have, broadly speaking, done that. They’ve reinvested revenues back into the club while taking a patient, long-term strategy that’s been pretty sharp on identifying talent. Liverpool were a mess when they bought the club, with a thin squad and debt issues that seemed likely to put a structural cap on ambitions. They looked like a club that would have to settle for an occasional Champions League qualifying spot. If you told supporters in 2010 that the next 16 years would bring two Premier League titles and another Champions League, they would’ve very happily accepted the deal.
If Bhatia is fronting the 1892 group, it seems likely he would make the decisions, at least initially. And there are a lot of decisions to make right now. Whoever is in charge, Liverpool are going to look pretty different in two years compared to right now.
The structure of the last couple of years has been with Michael Edwards as the “CEO of Football”, essentially responsible for all sporting decisions. He resigned this summer, presumably because FSG had decided not to pursue a multi-club model. Right now, the role is being filled by FSG President Mike Gordon, who did the job before, but this seems to be temporary. Obviously he won’t be in charge if 1892 have a majority stake.
Directly below him is sporting director Richard Hughes, also about to leave the club when his contract expires next year for a job at Al Hilal. Considering his abysmal performance, he is very lucky to be leaving for a big payday instead of getting sacked. Liverpool will certainly be hiring a new sporting director at some point this season, and I can’t imagine 1892 won’t be involved in that discussion. If this were just Fenway, it would be easy to expect an internal hire, such as current assistant sporting director David Woodfine or FSG technical director (and former Liverpool sporting director) Julian Ward. But the new investors, particularly Bhatia, could easily want someone more established in European football, with stronger connections to agents. That could pretty radically change the way Liverpool do business.
This all puts new manager Andoni Iraola under more pressure than he could reasonably expect to be under after one game. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Liverpool were nearly as poor against Newcastle as the discourse has implied. They got punished in very predictable ways for a team adapting to a high pressing system, while otherwise dominating the game. Iraola wants his players to be much more aggressive without the ball than Arne Slot did, at the same time responding to specific and complex pressing triggers. It is going to take time for that to become second nature. No manager on the planet could make even the best group of players learn this overnight.
At the same time, there are ways that the squad needs reshaping if he is to succeed. Hughes made an enormous mess of last summer’s transfer spend that left Liverpool in an awkward spot. Let’s break that down back to front, because the pressing work starts from the number nine.