Liverpool-owned Fenway Sports Group is set to acquire minority partner RedBird Capital Partners.
John Henry and Jerry Cardinal are generally allies on board. The business partners will go from friends to foes in a matter of hours when Liverpool take on Toulouse in the Europa League on Thursday night.
Fenway Sports Group (FSG) will compete with Redbird Capital Partners for the first time after working together for the past two and a half years. In April 2021, FSG decided to sell an 11% stake in the company to RedBird for £535 million.
As a result, the company founded by Cardinal, a former partner of Goldman Sachs, became an indirect investor not only in Liverpool, but also in Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox.
Under FSG, Liverpool have returned to the elite of European football. Since Jurgen Klopp took charge in October 2015, United have won six major trophies, including a sixth Champions League title in 2019 and a first Premier League title the following year.
In addition, major investment of around £200m has been made to increase Anfield’s capacity to 61,000 following the completion of work on the Anfield Road stand, and £50m has been spent on a state-of-the-art AXA training center .RedBird bought an 85% stake in Toulouse before buying FSG shares and focusing on football.
At the time, Les Violettes were preparing for life in the French second tier after relegation and RedBird reportedly paid €20m for the club.
RedBird, like FSG, chose a data-driven approach in Toulouse. Former Liverpool director of football strategy Damien Comolli was appointed chairman and Toulouse were promoted back to Ligue 1 for the 2021-22 season and won the Cup for the first time in the club’s history after finishing a respectable 13th place.
France is a national team like the FA Cup. As a result, they qualified for the Europa League.But the cardinal was forced to step down as head of Toulouse last summer. In August 2022, RedBird took over European power, succeeding FSG.
They spent €1.2 billion on seven-time Champions League winners AC Milan, which is why the RedBird did not seek a direct package at Liverpool while FSG were looking for new capital. The Cardinale will be hoping to find a home away from the historic San Siro stadium they share with rivals Inter Milan.
Dynasty Equity became a minority partner in FSG last month when the £100m to £200m deal was announced. UEFA rules are clear about owning multiple clubs, as Milan play in the Champions League and Toulouse play in Europe’s second tier.
Article 5 states that “no one may be involved directly or indirectly in the management, administration and/or sports competitions of several clubs participating at the same time in UEFA club competitions”. But the cardinal will be interested in the meeting.
Toulouse travel to Anfield as underdogs to face Liverpool, who are Europa League favorites and have shown early signs of challenging for the Premier League title this season. In fact, while working at Goldman Sachs, Cardinal pitched the investment bank to acquire Liverpool for $350 million in 2008, but the deal fell through. According to Forbes, the Reds are currently valued at $5.3 billion. “It’s great,” Cardinal said at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2023. “Advice to my 20-year-old self? I started DA with George Steinbrenner when I was 33 years old.
So my advice to a 33-year-old would be to speculate on buying Liverpool for $350 million in a few years. “If Goldman (Sachs) had cut me off, we would have done it sooner and that would have been great.”But if Toulouse spring a surprise, the Cardinal could well nudge John Henry and the rest of the FSG management team the next time they sit down at the business table together.
