Premier League: What price success for Liverpool?

So the word on the business high street is that Liverpool owners, John Henry’s Fenway Sports Group (FSG) cartel, has been working with two American banks to establish the worth of the club, and have come up with a valuation of about $5.5bn. Should they decide to sell, FSG would realise one of the best investment returns ever, when you consider that Henry bought Liverpool for just $300m just 12 years ago.

Some might think a $5bn plus price tag is ridiculous or obscene, you’d be right. But one must , that just this past summer, Chelsea were sold for $5bn, a club with a significantly smaller stadium, fan base, and generational success than the club on Merseyside.

An FSG statement read: "FSG remains fully committed to the success of Liverpool, both on and off the pitch”.

This indicates that the American consortium are hedging their bets and that they are ostensibly looking for investors to them in the running of the club. But there is no way of hiding the tantalisingly way they are dangling the bait and one has to believe that if the price was right an outright sale would be immediately on the table.

Dubai debate

So far, investors from Dubai look to be leading the race to become the new owners of Liverpool, but there is also speculation of further involvement from other Middle Eastern and American sports consortiums.

It is noted that Dubai International Capital (DIC) ‘almost signed’ for a takeover of Liverpool for £311.5m back in 2007. They are now, again, the main contenders to buy the Anfield club but at a much more expensive price now it’s 2022.

The founding chairman of DIC, the Gulf State’s sovereign wealth fund, Sameer Al Ansari is supposed to be an avid Liverpool fan and said in 2014 that "As soon as they [Liverpool] won the Champions League in 2005 we got serious about due diligence in 2006 and almost signed in January 2007.

"What delayed us is that everyone knew I was a lifelong fan of Liverpool, including His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. So we did three times the amount of due diligence, as I had to prove the business sense and there were very few clubs, frankly, where you can make a business sense,” Instead, Liverpool were bought by Americans Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr in a short, ill-fated, and debt-ridden run, until they offloaded it on FSG.

It now may be the perfect time for DIC and Sameer Al Ansari to achieve his dream as a Liverpool fan. And for just €5bn.

Another Middle East bidder could be Sheikh Khaled Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the cousin of Man City owner Sheikh Mansour, who reportedly failed with a £2bn bid to purchase Liverpool from FSG in late 2017 and early 2018.

America calling

The next strongest suggestion as Liverpool’s new owners is a group desperate to buy into the Premier League and include Chicago Cubs owners The Ricketts Family, Boston Celtics owner Stephen Pagliuca, and a consortium led by former Liverpool chairman Sir Martin Broughton, who all lost out in the race to buy Chelsea back in May.

As the former chairman of British Airways, Broughton was briefly Liverpool chairman in 2010, and is credited for brokering the Reds' eventual £300m sale to FSG.

Another group that may attempt to buy Liverpool may well be the preferred choice by Henry and FSG, as they already have a stake in the club and have a strong working relationship.

RedBird Capital Partners are an investment vehicle that already owns a 10% stake in Liverpool. Having stumped up £538m early last year, owner Gerry Cardinale refused to rule out fully owning the Reds, "I definitely would not exclude it as it would be a privilege but I think that Liverpool is in fantastic hands with the current group."

At this stage, the only bid we can rule out as unlikely is Conor McGregor’s pitch that he would “love to buy Liverpool”, despite him being a well-known Man United fan. Maybe he is planning a ‘Manchurian Candidate’ takedown of United’s bitter rivals from within. Or rather a Mancunian Candidate in this case.

Deal no deal?

The obvious advantages that a big-money takeover of Liverpool for the club would be the finances that would become available for juicy transfers that now go the way of Man City, PSG and even Newcastle United. Fans and manager Jurgen Klopp have bemoaned the lack of competitiveness in the transfer market as the club’s budget constrains their true ambitions.

However, it’s telling that this speculation about Middle Eastern interest in buying a sports club comes the same week when the football world wrings its hands in guilt in bringing the World Cup to Qatar.

For Liverpool fans, the consolation of losing out on so many recent Premier League crown to Man City was that it had the moral high ground of not having it bought with climate destroying and human-rights infringing Arab state money.

Liverpool fans now have to ask themselves, are they willing to let their club the ranks of morally ambiguous sides in order to gain success on the field?

And the world has to ask itself, is it unfair to load guilt on clubs, players, and managers, while the rest of the world happily burns Gulf state oil, ignores their human rights violations, and sells them arms to engage in illegal wars?