Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group are on course to see the total value of their empire break the £10bn mark.
FSG, who have Liverpool, the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Penguins and RFK Racing among their sporting properties, have seen enormous growth in the value of their teams in recent years, much of it linked to the continuing upward trend in the value of media rights.
Forbes magazine published their January insights into the most valuable sporting empires in the world, FSG ranked third, behind Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke's Kroenke Group in second and Formula One owners Liberty Media in first. The valuation of the FSG empire was pegged at $9.8bn (£7.2bn), with Liverpool said to be the most valuable individual sporting property in their portfolio at £3bn.
But with the Liverpool valuation based upon 2021 and not taking into account the mammoth domestic and international media deals that have been struck by the Premier League in recent months, with Chelsea's takeover pushing valuations for the London club at north of £3bn, Liverpool's will now likely be pushing the £4bn mark.
READ MORE: Jurgen Klopp could make Luis Diaz u-turn as Naby Keita pecking order changes
INTERVIEW: Liverpool £2m signing overcame tragedy to star at Wembley for the Reds
HAVE YOUR SAY: Can Liverpool win the quadruple?
The huge rise in the value of FSG's sporting teams has been seen in fresh research from US sports business analysts as Sportico presenting their annual valuations for Major League Baseball teams for 2022 following what has been two challenging years for MLB teams and their owners due to the impact of the pandemic that cut short the 2020 season.
Sportico suggest that valuations have risen by around five per cent year on year, with the New York Yankees topping the pile by some distance at $7bn (£5.3bn), a figure that would make them the most valuable team in world sport. £2bn behind at a valuation of just over $5bn (£3.9bn) is the Red Sox, the team that FSG purchased 20 years ago for $700m (£534m). At that time, in 2002, the deal raised eyebrows as it had seen FSG pay more than double what the previous highest sale for an MLB team had been. Since the takeover the valuation of the team has skyrocketed by 628 per cent.
The Red Sox valuation does include MLB related businesses such as regional sports networks, of which 18 teams have a hand in. FSG own the cable channel NESN that broadcasts Red Sox games, although the value of RSNs has not enjoyed the same kind of boom as the teams that they have been associated with due to tighter profit margins and some team owners looking to offload. Fenway Sports Group Real Estate is also included as a related business.
The value of NESN and Fenway Sports Group Real Estate means the value of the team themselves sits at around £3.1bn, a figure moves them above the £3bn mark for the first time. Such an increase in valuation despite not having a media deal struck that has the strength of the Premier League deal suggests that Liverpool's £3bn valuation from last year will be close on £4bn this year, something that would represent a 1,200 per cent rise in what FSG paid for the club just 12 years ago, demonstrating the trajectory of the business and why it has become so important to FSG.
Taking a more restrained view on valuations and using a base point of £3.8bn on the Reds, FSG are still closing in on the £10bn barrier for their entire operation. The Pittsburgh Penguins, whom they acquired for $900m (£700m) in November of last year, Fenway Sports Management and investments into LeBron James and Maverick Carter's SpringHill Entertainment company are worth several hundred million combined, placing FSG at around the £9bn mark for the total value of their empire.
Gerry Cardinale, founder and managing partner of RedBird Capital, who closed a $750m deal for 11 per cent of FSG in March of last year, believes that valuations will only continue to rise for the forseeable future.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Cardinale said: "The valuation discussion is complicated. There isn't a great amount of rigour to it. There is a little bit of LIFO (last in, first out) to it, as in you look at the last trade and you put a mark-up on it. What is alluring there, and deceptive, is that people have become used to everything always going up in sports. That's anti-Darwinian, that's not possible. Now, the slope of that curve may change, but for the forseeable future everything keeps going up.
"The valuations signal the fact that there is something very premium here, there is scarcity value and there is something very unique in everything that is going on in media and the convergence of (sports, media, entertainment, technology) streams where this is some of the best content that you can access."
For now the valuations continue to rise and FSG, who are eyeing more sports teams to acquire in 2022, including in the NBA and South American football, will likely break the £10bn mark in the not too distant future.
