Late in August, the business group 1892 Holdings acquired a 38% stake in Liverpool Football Club, valuing the franchise at around $7.5 billion. The group is led by British-Indian businessman Amit Bhatia and includes Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Tech bros got another toy.
I became a Liverpool supporter when the English Premier League (EPL) began to become a global thing sometime in the early 2000s for the simple reason that it was the hometown of The Beatles. I have never been to the city. On receiving news of Bezos’s purchase of Liverpool (okay, an exaggeration), I rescinded my support. I am now looking for an EPL club to root for.
Unloving Liverpool FC is easy for me, but for Liverpudlians it is much harder. Most core identities (like nationality, ethnicity, language, race, caste and gender) are almost impossible to shake. It happens, but infrequently.
Geographic identity—especially of country and city—is a similarly durable core signifier for most people. Sports turns geographic identity into one of the most profitable revenue generators in entertainment. National identity is the most durable and has enabled sports competitions among nations like the world cups of football and cricket to become bonanzas.
Place-based identity (by city and region) is somewhat less robust than national identity, but is a very reliable consumer brand because it’s built on something people rarely forsake: their hometown. Those local identities are increasingly commodified and globalized in successful leagues like the EPL.
There is big money in sports. The Fifa World Cup this year generated revenues of $9 billion, the highest all-time by some distance. In comparison, in the 2024-25 season, the EPL’s revenue was close to $11 billion.
Together, all the football club leagues in Europe (including Bundesliga, La Liga, Ligue 1, Serie A and other tournaments in Russia, the Netherlands, etc) generated revenues touching $55 billion. Add in the Champions League at $6 billion, and you get annual European football revenues of over $60 billion. That is roughly half the revenue of Reliance Industries and in the range of giants like ONGC and Tata Motors.
In the US, professional sports leagues (each run as an inter-city competition) also generate large revenues. With a 17-game season, the National Football league has the fewest matches but the highest revenue: around $23 billion.
The National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball each generate revenues above $12 billion. One baseball player, Juan Soto of the New York Mets, has a guaranteed contract of $765 million. The Indian Premier League, which has enriched cricketers around the world, is puny in comparison at a mere $1.5 billion.
The remaining 62% of Liverpool FC is owned by the Fenway Sports Group, whose principal owner, the American John William Henry II, also owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team and the Boston Globe newspaper. Manchester United is co-owned by the American Glazer family (71%) and British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe. The majority owner (81%) of Manchester City is Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan of the oil-rich royal family of Abu Dhabi.
Both the men’s and women’s teams of Arsenal are 100% owned by American billionaire Stan Kroenke, who, through his holding company, owns a sports empire topping $25 billion (including American football, baseball and basketball teams).
It’s not just the top of the EPL that is foreign-owned. Ten of the 20 EPL teams (including Chelsea, Chrystal Palace and Leeds) are owned by Americans. Newcastle is owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund; Wolverhampton Wanderers by the Chinese conglomerate Fosun International. In addition, there is Greek money in Nottingham Forest, Czech money in West Ham and Egyptian (plus American) money in Aston Villa.
The EPL model of ownership by foreign private capital is increasingly widespread, but not the only one. The Bundesliga has a rule that every club must be majority owned by its members. There are four historic exemptions, but all other teams, including Bayern Munich and Dortmund, are member-owned and run, as are the leading teams in La Liga like Real Madrid and Barcelona.
How English is an EPL team? Barely. Not by ownership, nor by players. The 25-man roster of Liverpool FC includes players from 14 countries. There are five players from England, only one of whom gets any playing time. Manchester City has players from 13 countries (seven are English). Manchester United has players from 14 countries, Arsenal from 11.
One must conclude that Liverpool FC is an American private firm that uses skilled international labour to sell what looks like a local product in a global market. Civic pride is the hook that sells tickets, which generates some revenue, but more importantly, fills stadiums and looks good on TV.
The real money comes from the global media presence of the EPL brand spiced with Liverpool’s ability to create a compelling narrative.
In response to a laudatory recent report on the success of the Liverpool brand, the club’s website gushed: “To see the club recognised as the most culturally relevant football club reflects the breadth of our community, from the passionate supporter culture and deep roots we have here in the city of Liverpool, to our global fan base around the world. Their continued passion and support help Liverpool remain part of conversations far beyond football.”
Liverpool FC has transformed from a regional football club to a global superclub with retail stores in cities around the world, partnerships with firms like Cadbury and Tommy Hilfiger, and more than 14 billion social media views last year. Private capital has commodified ‘authenticity’ and local identity into a global product and thereby altered that identity itself.
The bigger Liverpool FC gets, the less it has of Liverpool itself. This is an unavoidable trade-off when the local goes global. Everyone is happy: American owners, international players and adoring local fans. Who am I to complain?
The author is professor emeritus of global studies, Temple University