The sale comes almost 16 years after the Boston ownership group paid £300 million ($405.9 million) to rescue Liverpool when it was close to administration. Since then, Liverpool has won multiple domestic and European trophies, and FSG is now collecting a far larger return on its original investment.
Yet even as a growing number of sophisticated international investors take notice of English sides, the clubs themselves are still risky and often unprofitable businesses. The contradiction is not as strange as it sounds: much of a club's value sits in the assets attached to the team - its brand and the licensing opportunities that come with it - rather than in a single year's profit-and-loss account.
A major driver of the financial strain is the player transfer market, where fees have ballooned. "With expenditure on player transfers having grown to keep pace with the ever-escalating race for talent, the likelihood is that this will have been another year of substantial financial losses," Deloitte researchers wrote.
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These losses are not a new phenomenon. Premier League clubs have consistently spent more than they earn, particularly on player wages and transfer amortization. The league's broadcast deals, which are the richest in world football, provide a massive revenue base, but that money is often quickly reinvested in the squad.
In the 2024/25 season, wage costs had a significant share of club revenues, and the escalating transfer market has only exacerbated the problem. Deloitte noted that financial fair play regulations have not been enough to curb spending, and with clubs competing for a limited pool of elite players, the pressure to overspend remains intense.
Even with those losses, the Liverpool deal points to a strategy that has already worked for FSG: buy a club when its value is depressed, improve the business, and sell a stake once the asset has appreciated. The Premier League's global appeal has pushed club valuations higher even while the annual accounts are in the red.
Investors are effectively buying a long-term asset whose worth is tied to the club's brand and licensing opportunities, rather than to any single season's bottom line. That dynamic helps explain why a club can lose money on paper while its owners still see the holding appreciate year after year.
While Richard Haigh, global managing director at Brand Finance, said Monday on CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe": "Even if you're not making a profit day-in, day-out, the value of the asset is still going up, and there are plenty of assets within it that can be licensed out."
For FSG, the move from a £300 million rescue to a $7 billion-plus valuation is a reminder that patient ownership can turn a bleak sports asset into a global asset, even if the league as a whole remains far from consistent profitability.
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