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Liverpool FC Owners Disagree On Playing Premier League Games Abroad

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The chairman of Liverpool Football Club, Tom Werner, has admitted that he is “determined” to bring Premier League matches to the United States.

His view appears to be at odds with those of Liverpool’s principal owner John W. Henry who says it is not something he is advocating for or is interested in.

The contrasting views from two senior members of the same ownership group demonstrate how the subject has become a polarising one, but it is one where the views of supporters should be heard above all else. The majority of them would side with Henry.

The prospect of playing Premier League games abroad has been raised with increasing regularity this year after FIFA settled part of a lawsuit involving Relevent Sports Group and the United States Soccer Federation (USSF).

FIFA’s exit left the door open for a move that had previously been opposed by soccer’s global governing body.

Relevent Sports has been trying to get Spanish league matches played in the United States since 2018 and now appears a huge step closer to making this a reality.

If this happened, it would encourage other European leagues such as the Premier League and the Italian Serie A to do the same in order to keep up with the potential growth La Liga would experience on the back of games in the U.S.

Liverpool’s owner, Fenway Sports Group, was co-founded by Henry and Werner and also owns the Boston Red Sox of Major League Baseball and Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League among other sporting interests.

It is one of numerous American ownership groups in the Premier League that will be aware of the financial rewards of playing competitive games back in their home country.

But doing so would spark an understandable backlash among supporters. They will see the move as the beginning of a slippery slope towards clubs losing the identity that has contributed to them becoming so popular in the first place and would also see them begin to lose the connection with the fans and communities that are the lifeblood of soccer clubs.

It would also affect the integrity of a competition where home games are seen as a big advantage in a league where teams play each other twice, once at home and once away. Disrupting this with ‘home’ games abroad would affect the balance.

In a wide-ranging feature on Henry in the Financial Times, Werner is quoted as saying:

“I’m determined one day to have a Premier League game be played in New York City.

“I even have the sort of crazy idea that there would be a day where we play one game in Tokyo, one game a few hours later in Los Angeles, one game a few hours later in Rio, one game a few hours later in Riyadh and make it sort of a day where football, where the Premier League, is celebrated.”

Werner did approach the subject of how this would affect match-going fans in Liverpool and the UK, adding:

“Let’s figure out a way to offer them very cheap travel [and] accommodations so that if Liverpool is playing Nottingham Forest, we will support fans coming to New York and make this an attractive thing for the fans as well.”

The feature, written by Sara Germano, states that Henry had not answered any of the questions related to Liverpool, but on learning of Werner’s comments Henry pushed back, saying that taking a Liverpool game abroad was “not something that I advocate or am particularly interested in.”

Henry will no doubt be aware of the commercial potential of a Premier League game involving Liverpool being played in the United States. It would be a guaranteed success.

But Henry also knows from experience that Premier League clubs such as Liverpool are institutions, attached to a place and a community around their home stadium, which means taking a game abroad should not be an option.

Back in 2021, Henry issued an apology following his involvement in plans for the failed European Super League, in which he took full responsibility.

His immediate rebuttal of Werner’s idea to play a Liverpool home game in New York, having previously avoided commenting on Liverpool, feels directly influenced by what he learned during that Super League fiasco three years ago.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Premier League games abroad won’t happen. The furore around them and increasingly less resistant reporting makes it seem inevitable.

Top-level soccer is driven by money and playing games around the world would bring in significant revenue at a time when clubs are seeking additional income wherever they can get it in order to remain within the growing number of financial constraints and profitability and sustainability rules.

Liverpool’s chairman Werner, openly, perhaps naively, said the quiet part out loud in commenting on how much of a commercial opportunity this would be, but in doing so has at best misjudged or at worse ignored his team’s fans.

But there is some hope for the majority of fans who are against the idea that, at least as far as Henry is concerned, it is not something he will agree to at this point in time, even if this view goes against his long-time FSG colleague.

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