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Liverpool owner John Henry’s stance on £4.9bn US takeover after FSG update in last 24 hours

Adam Williams

Tue 21 January 2025 16:45, UK Updated Tue 21 January 2025 17:02, UK

Fenway Sports Group are a sophisticated sports investment machine and when the time comes to sell Liverpool their prize asset will fetch billions upon billions of dollars.

Speaking exclusively to TBR Football last summer, Liverpool University football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire said the 💯Liverpool takeover looks like the “bargain of the century” almost 15 years on.

If Arne Slot can deliver the Premier League title this season, Liverpool’s revenue for the campaign will soar past the £600m mark. That is twice what FSG paid for the club back in 2010.

Qualification for the Champions League knockout phase is already sewn up meanwhile. And UEFA’s new format means this European season has the potential to be the most lucrative in Liverpool’s history.

ꦍVictory in tonight’s match against Lille would mathematically clinch top spot in the 36-team league system if Barcelona lose at Benfica.

If they win the Champions League in Munich in May and make it a league and European double, prize money could see Liverpool’s overall revenue approach the £700m mark.

Position	Team	Played MP	Won W	Drawn D	Lost L	For GF	Against GA	Diff GD	Points Pts
1	LiverpoolLiverpool	21	15	5	1	50	20	30	50
2	ArsenalArsenal	22	12	8	2	43	21	22	44
3	Nottm ForestNottingham Forest	22	13	5	4	33	22	11	44
4	ChelseaChelsea	22	11	7	4	44	27	17	40
5	Man CityManchester City	22	11	5	6	44	29	15	38
6	NewcastleNewcastle	22	11	5	6	38	26	12	38

ꦡFor context, when FSG took over the club from Tom Hicks and George Gillet their annual turnover was £183.6m. That’s almost a 300 per cent increase in the Boston-headquartered firms time at Anfield.

♊Even accounting for the explosion in the value of centralised TV rights in the last 15 years, that is a mind-blowing uplift. They earn more in sponsorship alone than they did from every revenue stream in 2010.

If John Henry💙 and his peers in the FSG throne room were to sell Liverpool tomorrow, they would recoup somewhere in the region of £4.5bn, according to Forbes.

🉐However, that makes up only a fraction of the value of their sports and media empire, which reports this week suggest could be expanding.

• READ MORE: ♚Arsenal have just poached key behind-the-scenes figure from Liverpool after £118m triumph

FSG to acquire NBA franchise?

𓆏Earlier this week, reports in the US suggested that FSG were interested in £4.9bn-valued NBA franchise Boston Celtics.

🗹On face value, it makes sense. FSG are situated in Boston and already own one franchise there in Major League Baseball outfit Boston Red Sox, as well other businesses and bricks-and-mortar assets.

๊With outposts in the Premier League, MLB and NHL, a team in the NBA would take FSG pretty close to completing the set in terms of properties in the world’s richest sports leagues.

꧑Unlike in Liverpool where income can be volatile depending on factors such as qualification for Champions League football, returns are more or less guaranteed in the NBA.

🎃The NBA’s most recent TV deal meanwhile is worth an astonishing £62bn over the next 11 years, making it one of the most lucrative in sport.

• READ MORE: ⭕£40m player would rather sign for Liverpool than Manchester City

Liverpool owner John Henry has already made his thoughts clear

🔥It was only 12 months ago that FSG confirmed they had invested around £2.3bn in the PGA Tour, the world’s top golf series currently involved in a complex potential merger with Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf.

൲And as quoted by the last summer, Henry appeared to signal that the PGA deal would be their last major investment for a while.

ꦏ“It means that we’re not looking to grow at this point,” Henry said.

🃏“I hate to say that on the record, but we’ve got our hands full with Boston, Liverpool, this, Pittsburgh [Penguins], NASCAR, real estate.”

𒅌“We’re working on a couple of things that we were working on before we got involved here,” he continued when asked specifically about the prospect of investing in an NBA franchise.

♚“There will be other opportunities, I’m sure, that we’ll look at, but we are fully engaged. We’re not out there, and I think we’ve never been out there, looking for opportunities.”

When might FSG sell Liverpool?

💎FSG have never taken a penny out of Liverpool and, besides repayment of loans used to fund the expansion of Anfield in recent years, probably never will.

🌟Instead, the US owners’ masterplan is to flip the club for a profit when they think they achieved maximum upside.

♕When exactly that time will come and how FSG intend to get there is an open-ended question, but it likely means the owners are unlikely to stray from their self-sufficient business model any time soon.

🔯That doesn’t bode well for supporters who are desperate to see Liverpool make blockbuster signings, not to mention ensure the contractual futures of the likes of Mohamed Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk.

When reports a few weeks ago suggested that the world’s richest man and close ally of President Donald Trump Elon Musk was interested in taking over Liverpool♍, it therefore set some fans’ imaginations running wild.

💯Predictably, those stories proved well wide of the mark. Even if they weren’t, FSG have no desire to sell right now.

♓They realised some of the value of their investment with a small equity sale to Dynasty Equity in 2023, with that deal believed to be worth somewhere in the region of £150m.