Is Liverpool FC Worth Saving? The Drama of the Sale of the Premier League Club Continues
The sale of Liverpool Football Club has been going on for a number of months now. It was first put up on sale a long time ago after incurring debts of £240 million to RBS. The American owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett,
pushed the club almost into bankruptcy and with the RBS breathing down their necks to get their money back, it seemed the prominent football club would be sold very soon. But it turns out that the two owners have used the legal system in America to place an
injunction on a potential sale and have asked for more time to consider rival offers. We all have to wonder what the future will be of the football club and whether anyone cares as to who buys it anymore.
The question to be asked here is whether Liverpool FC is a club worth saving? Well, a lot of the club’s fans seem to think so and the numbers paint a very positive picture. The club was formed in 1892 and was accepted into
the Football League the next year. It is the second most successful club in the Premier League’s history along with Manchester United. Liverpool has 18 Premier League titles, 7 FA Cup wins along with 7 League Cups. It also has 5 European Cup wins, 3 UEFA Cups
and has an annual turnover of £159m. It has TV revenue of almost £75m a year and is valued between £300m and £600m.
The problem for the club is that it has debts worth about £280m, and it also has two inept owners who seem to have run the club into financial disarray by incurring such a huge loan of which the interest and repayments mess
with the club’s financials every month.
Several buyers came forward and the most recent ones have been New England Sports Ventures (NESV), Peter Lim and Mill Financial. The two American owners seemed very keen on selling the club to NESV, and it looks to people,
especially Peter Lim, that the owners got the high court injunction in order to give NESV more time to better their offer. Peter Lim, the Singaporean tycoon, was a serious contender for the club until the injunction took place and he withdrew his offer.
Mill Financial was one of the rival bidders along with Peter Lim, and the American financial house had put in its own bid but Hicks and Gillett had felt that the offer was too low to consider by them. However, the offer that
Mill Financial put in was £350m and it was reportedly higher than the offer that NESV put in. The two owners have valued the club themselves at the higher side and put the figure at £600 and by the two offers on the ground at the moment, that of Mill Financial
and NESV, the owners would lose a lot of money.
The problem at the moment for everyone is that RBS is breathing down the neck of any potential new owner and any deal that will go ahead. The bank wants to recoup the money that it has put into the football club. The debt
amount at the moment is a huge £240m and this will be a big factor in any sale or potential sale that goes through in the next few weeks.
Some fans feel that the owners are being very greedy and are simply trying to make a lot of money out of the deal after basically driving the club into the ground with poor financial decisions. The people getting affected
the most are the fans of football and of Liverpool at the moment. All they want to do is watch their beloved club continue to win matches and all this talk of the sale and financial disarray is ruining their football experience these days. Hopefully, in the
next few weeks, this whole issue can be solved and the Liverpool dilemma can end.
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