Liverpool’s owner Fenway Sports Group is close to selling one third of the Premier League giants to a billionaire boys’ club featuring the owners of Amazon and Facebook.
Daily Mail Sport reported three weeks ago that a consortium led by Amit Bhatia, the former co-owner of Championship side Queens Park Rangers, were serious and confident of buying a stake of around 30 per cent for roughly £1.35billion.
And now sources indicate the process is ticking along nicely, with suggestions it could be rubber-stamped in the next week.
The most notable name is Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, who is the world’s third-richest man with an estimated net worth of £207.4billion, per Forbes, and is part of the deal alongside Mark Zuckerberg’s classmate and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, valued at £24.5bn.
Bhatia will lead the bid. He stepped down after nearly two decades as QPR supremo last month – he has a stand named after him at Loftus Road – and he is the son-in-law of steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, who is the world’s 65th-richest man with £24.8bn to his name.
It is understood the 46-year-old British-Indian business leader Bhatia has also entrusted the help of a senior PR executive who previously worked for Manchester United and King Charles when he was the Prince of Wales.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is part of a group set to buy a minority stake in Liverpool
FSG principal chair John W Henry has always been eager for additional investment while still being keen to hold the majority stake
There are warnings to fans getting excited about the mega-money set to infiltrate Liverpool: the club itself won’t have direct access to an infinite supply of cash, as the funds will go to FSG and not the team.
The Premier League has recently introduced a modern version of financial fair play with the ‘squad cost ratio’ rules which state that clubs can only spend a set percentage of its football-related revenue and profit/loss from player sales.
It is around 85 per cent but can be 70 per cent for those competing in Europe, as Liverpool often is.
However, if the club was looking to borrow money at a future date, they will be in a position to do so on an interest-free basis which can only benefit cash flow. Bezos and Saverin’s names help with commercial deals.
Some fans are also worried that this is a sign of FSG slowly selling up, with principal owner John W Henry now 76. FSG sources say this is the opposite and insist this is another way the owner is looking to further position the club for success.
The Boston-based owners, with Mike Gordon more hands-on again now Michael Edwards has departed, will still make the day-to-day decisions despite selling off 30 per cent of the club.
FSG and Bezos have been approached for comment.
MEET THE KEY PLAYERS
JEFF BEZOS
Bezos is the third-richest man in the world, according to Forbes. In 1994, he read that web usage was growing at a rate of 2,300 per cent a year and wanted to open an online book store, so set one up in his garage in Seattle alongside his then wife Mackenzie Scott.
He changed the name from Cadabra to Amazon after the South American river as, at the time, website listings were alphabetised so an ‘A’ listing would be near the top. They slowly started selling more products and are now one of the most recognisable companies in the world.
Bezos is no longer the CEO of Amazon but retains the title of executive chairman. He is also the owner of the Washington Post and founder of Blue Origin which competes with Elon Musk in the modern-day space race. He flew to space in 2021.
The 62-year-old has dabbled in the idea of sports investment before but this time appears to be different. He was interested in buying the current Super Bowl winners Seattle Seahawks and fellow NFL team Washington Commanders but pulled out.
He married former American journalist Lauren Sanchez last year.
Bezos has dabbled with the idea of sports ownership in the past but this time appears to be different
EDUARDO SAVERIN
Saverin was born in Brazil with Romanian heritage. He moved to Miami at age 13 and attended Harvard University. He became friends with fellow undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg and the pair wanted to set up a website for students to communicate, making a $1,000 investment each.
The site was originally named ‘The Facebook’ and soon grew to other universities, later anyone in the world aged 13 or older. It now has more than 3billion users and its parent company, Meta Platforms, has a market value of around £1.12trillion.
Saverin is played by Andrew Garfield in The Social Network film based on the book Accidental Billionaires about his rise at Facebook. Weeks before Facebook became a public company, he moved to Singapore and renounced his US citizenship.
The 44-year-old is now head of B Capital, a venture capital firm.
Eduardo Saverin was a co-counder of Facebook and is now head of venture capital firm B Capital
Amit Bhatia, the son in law of Lakshmi Mittal, previously worked for QPR for 19 years
AMIT BHATIA
Bhatia is a 46-year-old British-Indian with an investment banking background in sectors such as technology, media, property, real estate and health.
He formerly worked on Wall Street before founding a construction company aged 32, which has more than 5,000 UK employees. He won the young entrepreneur of the year award in 2013.
Bhatia married Vanisha Mittal in 2004 in a six-day wedding which the Guinness World Records recorded as the most-expensive ceremony of all time at £41m. Vanisha’s father is Lakshmi Mittal, the world’s 65th-richest man with £24.8bn as per Forbes.
Bhatia worked at QPR for 19 years and his company, AyBe Capital, owns shares in the cricket franchise London Spirit, former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen’s YouTube channel and an indoor golf league founded by Rory McIlroy.
The tycoon recently played a round of golf with basketball legend LeBron James and is regularly on the course with Indian cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar.
