Simon Jordan believes Fenway Sports Group would sell Liverpool if someone were to offer £5billion - and the former Crystal Palace chairman added that the recent 'appetite' for high-level takeovers suggests there will be interested parties.
A report from The Athletic on Monday suggested FSG were inviting offers for the sale of the whole club, appointing two major US banks in Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to assist with the process as they look to explore their options after a 12-year tenure. In a statement sent to the ECHO on Monday, FSG maintain they are "fully committed" to the ongoing success of the Reds under Jurgen Klopp but admit they are open to the possibility of further investment from elsewhere.
Massive growth since FSG bought Liverpool back in 2010 for £300m has seen the club's value sky-rocket, with Forbes now valuing the Reds at £3.6billion. And Jordan believes recent sales of Chelsea and Burnley prove there is an appetite for a sale of this profile, adding that FSG would sell up for £5billion.
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“It’s been for sale for some time. The American interest in our football clubs has been there for some time," Jordan told TalkSPORT. “If someone walks through the door and offers FSG £5billion then Liverpool are sold. End of discussion. Probably less than that, actually. The bottom line is that at this moment, that’s not the case.
"The Raine Group believe that as a result of the Chelsea deal there’s an appetite now for supposed grownups to really go after these big football clubs because the value of them has inherent opportunities for a variety of other things.
“I’ll be surprised if FSG don’t come into play and come into play more meaningfully because they’ve already done it with Redbird being an acquisition model that bought a significant percentage of their business and took some of their media rights away for another project.”
He added: “It’s two different things being put up for sale and having someone knock on your front door.
“Have they got a ‘for sale’ sign outside? I don’t think so, but the very nature of their ownership and the very nature of their involvement in sport is that everything is for sale and everything has a business side to it that will make sense to them with the quantum of cash that’s available to them in a marketplace that’s now seeing football clubs very, very differently.
“For a long time, bankers and sections of the economic community saw football as a standing joke and saw football as an opportunity to turn a big fortune into a small one.
“They’re now looking at it differently and you’re seeing people like Todd Boehly, you’re seeing leveraged purchases like the Glazers did in 2006 and you’ve seen it replicated with lesser football clubs like Burnley, so you know that this model and the appetite for football clubs is now transcending just the blue-chip ones because even clubs like Burnley have been purchased on a leveraged model.
“So yes, Liverpool will be in some formal play.”
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