Revealed: Liverpool £250m+ jackpot imminent after two deals agreed
Commercial income is due to rise for the eighth successive year at Liverpool in 2023-24, Football Insider analysis shows.
The club’s revenue from sponsorship and merchandise in 2021-22 totalled £247m, up from £217.6m in the previous pandemic-struck financial year.
That upswing was due in large part to a successful year on the pitch, with Jurgen Klopp’s side lifting the League Cup and FA Cup while narrowly missing out on the Premier League and Champions League.
Strong showings in those competitions have triggered performance-related bonuses from sponsors and bolstered the club’s position when it comes to negotiating with potential new partners.
Liverpool’s 2022-23 campaign has been decidedly less glittering, but extensions on significantly improved terms with front-of-shirt partner Standard Chartered and sleeve sponsor Expedia mean another commercial hike is in the post.
The deals, which kick in from next season, are worth £50m (£10m increase) and £15m (£5m increase) per year respectively and should help to insulate Liverpool even if they fail to qualify for the Champions League this term.
Significantly, it is understood that Liverpool will also bank an extra £6.5m annually from the Premier League’s new sponsorship arrangements with EA Sports and Sorare.
Liverpool were the only English club partnered with Sorare before the Premier League announced a division-wide deal with the NFT-based trading card platform in January, news of which was exclusively broken by this site.
The Reds have also signed with blue-chip partners such as Coca-Cola in the last six months, while a deal with Nike-owned fashion brand Converse was inked just this week.
Industry gurus have also repeatedly extolled the virtues to Football Insider of Liverpool’s tie-in with Nike-sponsored basketball superstar LeBron James, who holds a stake in the club as well as in its owners Fenway Sports Group.
James has released a new line of trainers and a bespoke streetwear range in collaboration with Liverpool, mirroring Paris Saint-Germain’s monumentally successful alliance with Michael Jordan.
While the importance of shirt sales is overstated at other clubs, they are hugely significant for Liverpool as they have agreed a lower base rate with Nike in exchange for a greater cut of sales.
Liverpool are believed to earn around £30m per season from the US sportswear titans, topped up to north of £70m with commission on units sold taken into account.
Again, the Merseysiders’ on-pitch success will have helped boost sales, as will the planned opening of new retail outposts in the United States.
Similarly in November last year, Liverpool opened a new store in Malaysia, where they have an enormous fanbase.
The club is expected to return to Asia for pre-season ahead of 2023-24, which football finance expert Kieran Maguire has previously told Football Insider could be worth up to £15m.
One area where commercial income will fall in the coming months, however, is in Liverpool’s inability to host concerts this summer, with the final stages of the expansion of the Anfield Road stand making that logistically impossible.
Anfield staged sell-out gigs for Elton John, the Rolling Stones and the Eagles last summer, earning the club millions in the process.
But that lost income will be offset manifold by the benefits of being able to house an extra 7,000 supporters in the Anfield Road stand, raising both matchday income and footfall at the on-site club shop from 2023-24.
The 2022-23 season is Ben Latty’s first full financial year as commercial director following his return to Liverpool after eight months with Bristol Sport, prior to which he was head of global partnership sales at the club.
Arguably his crowning achievement since his comeback is the Standard Chartered renewal, which will see the partnership extend into its 17th year.
The length of that relationship – which =by the time it is next up for renewal will be just one year short of Liverpool’s iconic front-of-shirt relationship with Carlsberg, who remain an official partner – is telling.
The deal has nearly tripled in value since it was penned in 2010, while the club’s overall commercial income has increased almost four-fold.
A key growth area targeted and capitalised on by Premier League clubs is the cryptocurrency sector, which Liverpool are yet to enter.
Latty has not entirely ruled out the possibility of getting into bed with a crypto sponsor, although he has also stressed the club’s commitment to the environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics in which they routinely excel.
The club’s holistic commercial picture is particularly significant given that FSG will remain in situ as majority owners for the foreseeable future, having ruled out a full sale of the club earlier this month.
FSG have always favoured a self-funding business model, meaning Liverpool cannot rely on the owners to pump in external funds for lavish transfer sprees, as has been the case at Man City and Chelsea among others in recent years.
In other news, Liverpool make move to sign record-breaker Mason Melia