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Written by David Skilling
Jeff Bezos is close to becoming a part-owner of Liverpool Football Club, which is an interesting place for one of the world’s richest men to invest his money.
A consortium led by former Queens Park Rangers co-owner Amit Bhatia is getting close to a £1.35 billion deal for around a 30 per cent stake of the club. The current owners, Fenway Sports Group, would remain in control, while the proposed transaction values the club at approximately £4.5 billion.
There are no doubt financial reasons for Bezos to get involved, given the current trajectory of sports teams around the world, and the fact that FSG bought Liverpool for £300 million in 2010. That’s a clear incentive, so anyone looking at the increase in value over the past 16 years can see why football clubs have become attractive investments. I just don’t think the money is the most interesting part of this for Bezos.
Forbes estimated his fortune at more than $240 billion, and once someone reaches that level of wealth, the reasons for buying things often change. Making another few hundred million is still preferable to losing it, but that amount of money over a decade isn’t going to change his life. Owning part of the brand Liverpool FC might have some impact though.
I think there comes a point in time for the world’s richest people where money has already bought almost everything they can buy; what becomes harder to acquire is a positive position inside culture, and the institutions that shape how the rest of us live, think, and feel.
Amazon became part of everyday life around the world, giving him wealth on a massive scale. Then, in 2013, he paid $250 million for The Washington Post, one of America’s most important newspapers. There were business reasons for buying it, but ownership also gave Bezos a position within American media, politics and public life.
Blue Origin takes him somewhere different again. When he founded the space company in 2000, he invested a lot of resources into it, and eventually flew to space himself. Whatever the commercial outcome, there’s an obvious legacy component to putting your name alongside humanity’s attempts to explore space.
In my opinion, Liverpool fits into the progression of someone attempting to become one of the key cultural figures of our time, not just one of the wealthiest, and Football gives him something his other projects don’t.
Liverpool is a prime sporting asset (pun intended), playing in the most popular league in the world; it also belongs to a tiny group of clubs recognised globally due to its long history of success. Twenty English league titles, six European Cups and generations of supporters have created something that even $240 billion can’t reproduce elsewhere.
You could give Bezos £4 billion tomorrow and ask him to build a football club from scratch, but he couldn’t replicate 134 years of Liverpool history. He can, however, buy into it. That’s part of what makes elite sport such an interesting asset for billionaires.
A Premier League title race puts Liverpool in front of hundreds of millions of people across different countries and cultures, while a Champions League night at Anfield can create an emotional response that even the world’s largest tech companies can’t recreate.
People use Amazon because it’s useful, but people support Liverpool because their dad did, because they grew up near Anfield, because Steven Gerrard was their hero, or because they happened to watch the right match at eight years old and never really escaped.
There’s a difference between being known and being culturally relevant, and I think that’s what drives decisions like this for people like Bezos.
We’ve watched versions of the same story across sport for a while now. Billionaires who made their fortunes in technology, finance, and private equity, wanting to buy football clubs, NBA teams, NFL franchises, Formula One teams, and other sporting assets that put them inside something people actually care about.
Sports assets are appreciating, media rights increase in value, and there are only so many elite teams available to buy. All of that is true, and Bezos will likely make a considerable amount of money from Liverpool. But for someone worth more than $240 billion, I doubt that’s the primary driver of the decision.
There are only so many things left that Bezos can’t create, and genuine history, community and sporting relevance is one of them. Liverpool already has them, built over more than a century and carried by the club’s supporters; a 30 per cent stake gives its owners a connection, and financial interest in that history.
Owning part of Liverpool wouldn’t make much of an impact on Jeff’s food shopping budget, but I’m sure he’s thinking it puts him in a different conversation when it comes to global culture positioning.
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