For Liverpool it is their first long haul pre-season tour since before the pandemic.
The Reds are currently out in Southeast Asia for games against Manchester United in Thailand and Crystal Palace in Singapore, their legions of fans in the region able to see their heroes up close and personal for the first time since Liverpool toured Asia in 2017.
Preparations for 2018 and 2019 both took in trips to the United States, the home of their Fenway Sports Group ownership, with those tours key to strengthening partnerships with existing US partners and aiding the creation of new ones. It also helped them further connect with their American fan base in a country where football's popularity has been on steady rise.
Asia has long been a valuable market for Premier League football clubs, right back to when Manchester United began the trend of trips to the Far East as part of their pre-season plans back in the late 1990s, something that gave them a foothold in the region and helped them become the dominant English club, able to leverage that status to great effect commercially.
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But Liverpool's success in recent years under Jurgen Klopp, allied with Manchester United's undeniable decline, has seen the pendulum swing towards the Reds, who have been making gains in terms of the strength of their brand in the region.
While for Reds players it will be a gruelling few days in Thailand and Singapore there is also little time for the staff behind the scenes to take in the sights, with the trip set to be the busiest yet for Liverpool's commercial department.
The reasons for that are that Liverpool have a number of partners in Asia, partners that have paid good money but, due to the impact of the pandemic, have not been able to realise the full benefits of partnerships that may have been agreed pre-Covid. That means that the Reds are on a mission to make sure they deliver that value to partners in spade loads over the next week or so, providing them with marketing opportunities with the squad and enabling them to deliver a physical connection between the club, the brands and the Liverpool fans in the reason.
Liverpool usually take a number of LFC Legends out on their tours to help with their marketing activities, but this year they are understood to be taking more than usual, such is the demand for the Reds during this trip. It is a hectic schedule that leaves little in the way of down time.
Liverpool CEO Billy Hogan told the club's official website : "As we know, most of our global fans probably never have the opportunity to come to Anfield, never have the opportunity to see the team play in the UK. So this is a great opportunity to interact with the club on a more personal, in-person basis. It's just important as a club that has hundreds of millions of fans around the world, to be able to bring the club out to them when we can, and this is the one time of our season when we can.
"So, it's important from a club perspective in that regard, and also an opportunity for us to work very closely with our corporate partners – a number of whom have critical business interests particularly here in Asia, where we are over this tour. And it's an opportunity for our supporters and the club and our partners to all work together. There's a number of different events that we're doing where we're going to be bringing our former players along to community events. Really, it's just an opportunity for us to do kind of everything across the club but bring that to our supporters on a global basis. "
Liverpool don't specify the money that arrives from pre-season tours in their accounts but a look at Manchester United's last inclusion of their 2019/20 tour to Australia shows that the club made £12.9m from it, a figure that Liverpool won't be too far behind on.
The tour also arrives at an opportune time for Liverpool, with two major sponsorship opportunities coming available at the end of the 2022/23 season.
Standard Chartered, the club's front-of-shirt sponsor, and travel firm Expedia, who are Liverpool's sleeve sponsor, are both due to expire at the end of the coming season, the combined value of the two deals standing at around £50m per season, a figure that Liverpool will be looking for a significant uplift on when they speak to new partners given how the club's standing and brand value has increased since the last time the deals were struck.
Liverpool commercial director Ben Latty is out on the tour to Thailand and Singapore and meetings with parties interested in aligning themselves commercially with the Reds will likely be on the agenda as Liverpool seek to accelerate their revenues following the past two Covid-impacted financial years.
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