Fenway Sports Group partner Gerry Cardinale says that one of the biggest regrets in his career was not purchasing Liverpool in 2008.
Cardinale, the founder of FSG’s third largest shareholder RedBird Capital Partners, had been working for US investment bank Goldman Sachs at the time and had urged the firm to make a move on a controlling stake in the Reds at a valuation of $350m.
At the time, the deeply unpopular reign of George Gillett and Tom Hicks was in situ and interested parties were circling and ready to take over the club, including current Newcastle United part owner Amanda Staveley alongside Dubai International Capital.
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No Goldman deal materialised, however, with former CEO Lloyd Blankfein blocking the deal after Cardinale had managed to sway the initial opinion of the Goldman investment committee through getting the buy-in of the ownership groups of both the New York Yankees, where Cardinale had a strong connection through helping to set up the regional sports TV station YES Network, and the Dallas Cowboys.
FSG, then New England Sports Ventures, eventually acquired Liverpool at a similar valuation in 2010, the value of the club now standing at as much as $4.5bn by Forbes magazine.
Cardinale, whose RedBird firm paid $750m for an 11 per cent stake in FSG back in March 2021 and have since acquired a controlling stake in Italian giants AC Milan, was quizzed on what he would tell his ‘20-year-old self’ when he appeared on a panel at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference recently.
Cardinale said: “The advice to my 20-year-old self? I started the YES Network with George Steinbrenner when I was 33 years old, so the advice to my 33-year-old self would have been the inkling that we had a few years later to go and buy Liverpool at a $350m valuation.
“Goldman (Sachs) shut me down on that and we would have done that a lot earlier and that would have been pretty good."
RedBird have been one of sports’ most prolific investors over the past decade, with controlling stakes in both Milan and Toulouse, as well as ownership of the XFL spring football league alongside Hollywood star Dwayne Johnson and business partner Dany Garcia; a stake in the Rajasthan Royals Indian Premier League cricket team; and a slice of LeBron James’ SpringHill Company, alongside their FSG investment.
However, RedBird, who could increase their equity in FSG in the future, are understood not to be part of the investment search that FSG are currently going through with Liverpool, with RedBird’s football focus on both Toulouse and securing a new stadium for AC Milan moving forward.
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