Arsenal
Aston Villa
Chelsea
Crystal Palace
Everton
Fulham
Leeds United
Liverpool
Manchester City
Manchester United
Newcastle United
Nottingham Forest
Southampton
Tottenham Hotspur
West Ham United
Wolverhampton Wanderers
News
£2bn takeover paradox has just been exposed at Liverpool
Liverpool are part of a multi-club ownership circuit that could be clamped down on by UEFA in the coming years.
Arne Slot‘s side learned their fixture list for the revamped Champions League last night, with the new format seeing 36 teams enter the competition under the Swiss system model.
Liverpool will face Real Madrid, RB Leipzig, Bayer Leverkusen, AC Milan, Lille, PSV Eindhoven, Bolgona and Girona between now and the end of the league phase.
The expanded competition format will yield extra revenues, thanks to enhanced commercial revenues as well as an extra matchday at Anfield, plus a rejig of the distribution system.
All in all, the new-look Champions League could be worth an extra £23m to Liverpool this season – and that is on top of the substantial revenues that were already laid on by UEFA under the old format.
But some commentators have raised one regulatory issue relating to Liverpool and several other clubs’ ownership regimes which they believe European football’s governing body will soon clamp down on.
Liverpool highlight multi-club question in Champions League draw
This summer, UEFA made overtures to crack down on more than multiple clubs under the same ownership umbrella being represented in its competitions.
The rise of Man City’s City Football Group and the Red Bull network are the most prominent examples but there are now countless multi-club operations running throughout football.
In fact, as highlighted by industry experts CIES Sports Intelligence via , more than half of the 36 teams represented in the Champions League draw are part of a multi-club operation.
Liverpool themselves are included in that statistic through their association with Arctos, a private equity firm that have invested substantially in their owners, FSG.
Arctos are also part-investors in Paris Saint-Germain and Atalanta.
Arctos have raised £2bn for further sports investments and, as the biggest sports-specific private equity firm in the world, will continue their inroads into football.
Dynasty Equity, who bought a £164m stake in Liverpool themselves, are another sports-specific P/E company who are interested in acquiring football clubs.
UEFA gave Man City and Man United license to play alongside sister clubs Girona and Nice in the Champions League and Europa League this season, but this was expected to be a temporary reprieve.
And although UEFA clearly deem minority investment through third parties like private equity firms acceptable, the presence of so many linked clubs in the Champions League does seem to go against the spirit of the governing body’s conflict of interest rules.
FSG and Liverpool’s multi-club ambitions
Liverpool’s have made clear their plans to acquire more clubs to place into a multi-club orbit around Anfield.
FSG were in talks to buy Bordeaux earlier this summer, only for those negotiations to collapse and leave the
Parisian side Red Star have also been touted as a sister club for Liverpool, as have a number of Brazilian sides.