For many Premier League managers, long-haul pre-season trips are more a necessity than a desire.
Ahead of a gruelling Premier League campaign that sets off at a frenetic pace and never gives up, the peaceful tranquility of training at the foot of Austrian mountains or just outside a French spa town that straddles the shores of Lake Geneva has been something that Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has enoyed.
The pandemic forced the abandonment of any overseas trips in 2020, while in 2021 the Reds chose to keep things low key as the world continued to wrestle with the fallout of COVID-19 and varying restrictions by heading to Austria and France. This summer the Reds will get back to jetting far further afield with trips to both Thailand and Singapore, taking on Manchester United in Bangkok before facing Crystal Palace in the Standard Chartered Trophy at the National Stadium in Kallang.
Having spent 2018 and 2019 pre-seasons in America growing the club's brand, Liverpool return to the Far East for the first time since 2017 this summer. There will be a competitive edge to proceedings, of course, with the United game one of the first of Erik Ten Hag's reign, but Thailand and Singapore will have a strong focus on commercial objectives and helping Liverpool maximise their appeal, meet obligations to sponsors and also open themselves up to bringing on board new ones.
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Liverpool don't place a value on pre-season tours in their annual accounts, but a look at Manchester United's from 2019, pre-pandemic, showed that £12.9m was delivered in revenues from their trip to Australia in 2019, a destination that United will head to as part of their own summer plans as the biggest clubs look to get back to bringing online the revenue streams that disappeared during the past two years. Given Liverpool's size it's reasonable to assume that a trip to the Far East would deliver a boost not too far behind what their faltering Old Trafford rivals have delivered in the past, especially given the realignment of the biggest clubs in England through Liverpool's success and Manchester United's failures in recent seasons.
The match with Crystal Palace, announced by the Reds earlier this week, will take place on July 15 and will be the third time that the Reds have played there, having toured in 2001 and 2009. A 55,000 capacity crowd is expected for the clash, which will contest the trophy sponsored by Liverpool's main shirt partner, Standard Chartered. The match itself is sponsored by Singaporean online car dealership Carro. That sponsorship, allied with the game being broadcast by StarHub, the platform that secured a six-year deal for the Premier League rights in Singapore recently, a deal that has formed part of the Premier League's whole £10bn media revenues for the next cycle. The game will be shown on Hub Premier and subscription streaming service StarHub TV+.
All these things add to the potential earning power of these tours. Then there are commercial and marketing opportunities to be had while on tour, something that has the potential to deliver millions, and something that ensures that these tours are often whistle-stop before moving on to the next opportunity. Liverpool, for example, will play in Singapore three days after facing Manchester United in Thailand.
The commercial power of these tours isn't just immediate. For a club like Liverpool, whose size and success ensure its place as one of the most popular football teams in the world, ensuring that they are the most followed teams the markets that they visit is important. The Premier League's success is predicated on its global appeal, which is why international rights have now outstripped domestic ones for the very first time. Making sure that eyeballs remain on the League and the Reds is important, and the more supporters in a market the bigger the brand and the more chance of maximising revenue streams such as merchandising, something that is now even more valuable to Liverpool due to their 20 per cent slice of the sale of all Nike/Liverpool merchandise that sits on top of the guaranteed £30m per year from the US sportswear giant.
Klopp will be able to hand some valuable experience to younger players on this tour, as has been the case in the past, and facing tough opponents such as Manchester United and Crystal Palace will allow them chance to see how some of their Premier League rivals are shaping up ahead of the new domestic season. But for the Reds these kind of long-haul trips tick a very important box that has been left blank for the past couple of years, which is the delivery of important revenues to allow them to grow.
