Liverpool FC chief executive officer Peter Moore discusses reaching the Champions League final and establishing the platform to place the club back among Europe’s elite. Alex Miller reports.
Despite Liverpool’s standing as Britain’s most successful club in European football, progress to the final of the Champions League has caught most people by surprise.
The progress of the club on the pitch has been a massive fillip this season, reinforcing the club’s intentions to haul itself back into contention for the game’s biggest prizes on a regular basis.
“The ability for us as a club is to start to think we are on the cusp of something special,” said CEO Peter Moore.
“We have a broader long-term strategy of building a platform for success with a manager who is unparalleled in the world of football, with regards to his leadership, and an exciting squad that plays a unique and exciting brand of football that even neutrals can appreciate.
“It is all part of a plan that catapults us back into our rightful place among Europe’s elite.
“In today’s world of football business, that is an incredibly important part of our long-term strategy, to be successful in Europe – as we have previously been – and ultimately build a robust platform to compete at any level against any club in the world.”
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Despite the club’s rich pedigree, that will be no mean feat. After all, hidden under the blanket of euphoria surrounding their Champions League progress, this is the first time the club has appeared in the final of the competition for 11 years.
Moore concurs: “The stakes in the world of football business couldn’t be higher. We are proud of our heritage, our five European Cups, but it has been 13 years since our last one.
“We need our heritage to be matched by our financial robustness and performance on the pitch. That perfect storm is coming together now. Reaching the Champions League final in Kiev firmly cements us back where we belong.
“That is important when we are talking to commercial partners, important for the pride of the people living in the city and for our fans everywhere, and for our ability to carry out the work that we do in the community.
“Building a platform to allow us to compete with the best in the world is critical. The financial robustness is essential; to allow us to invest in the players the manager believes will help us cement this position for many years to come, to give him the tools he needs.”
Born and raised on Scotland Road, just a stone’s throw from Anfield, 63 year old Moore, arrived at the club last June, replacing the long-serving Ian Ayre. Before his arrival, he spent 38 years away from the UK and 50 years away from Liverpool, with his work taking him to the US.
With vast experience from a raft of leading-edge companies and sectors under his belt, including Reebok, EA Sports and Sega, Moore’s enthusiasm for the club is obvious.
“Coming to the club has been wonderful for me on a personal level and something I thought would never happen,” he says.
“I am lucky to have come in to an incredibly talented team that has this emotional passion for the club and everything we need to drive forward on behalf of the millions of fans of the club across the world.
“What I bring is a different – but not better – view, having worked in Silicon Valley. I have experience of building out platforms and technology to interact with fans. I can see that having done that, and with what we need to continue to do at Liverpool Football Club, it is eerily similar.
“Engage with the fans on a global basis, do it daily, make them feel part of the family and decisions; bring them inside the tent on everything you do. Don’t have a sense of elitism or a closed-door mentality – we need everyone pulling in the same direction which is where we need to be.”
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The upturn in the club’s fortunes under manager Jurgen Klopp comes at a key time for the club, with massive investment going into infrastructure in and around Anfield stadium, plus a new training complex.
The new Main Stand cost a reported total of £114 million, but is already paying dividends. It has boosted capacity to 54,074 and added around £1 million in additional match day revenues per game, mainly through increased hospitality sales.
Moore insists that just as importantly as revenue, the new stand is bringing a world-class match day and non-match day experience for fans, adding: “These days you have to also think of the non-match days. Stadiums are massive fixed costs and they are very important places for fans to visit, both locally and from around the world. We will continue to invest in Anfield. As a club we have to look at how we can better facilitate visits to make them even more special than they currently are.
“Revenue is critically important, but so is the continued modernisation of Anfield. We will continue to look at the feasibility for any proposed Anfield Road expansion over the coming months and years.
“It is important for us to be able to get more fans in the ground. But no matter what we do there, it won’t satisfy demand. We have outline planning permission that is good for another year and a half and if we change our views on what we want to do, we can always resubmit another planning application.”
Moore also reveals the club now has potential to improve the use of Anfield on non-match days.
“A lot of our colleagues in the Premier League use their stadiums to great effect in the close season as concert venues. When one thinks of Liverpool and its linkage to music and other sports, it would make sense to look at longer-term options to be a part of that.
“Some further work would need to be done on the stadium to make the case for what we call ‘Destination Anfield’, which is to make this very special place a place people not only want to visit 365 days a year, but also to make it a venue for non-football events, as and when they become available.
“Work would need to be done to make it a little bit more friendly for bringing in concert stages. The last major concert here was Paul McCartney (in 2008) when they had to drop the stage in with cranes over the top of the roof of the stands. Obviously that is not ideal.
“Access to the stadium becomes critical for anything like this to enable us to compete. We now have a hybrid pitch, put in at the start of the season, which is durable and not only able to withstand more games, but also allows us to hold events other than football matches.”
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The club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group (FSG), are also investing £50 million to bring a world-class performance facility to the club. Work is expected to get underway in the summer on the new complex, which will be built in Kirkby, and will allow all club players to train on one site. The plans look exciting and will be a massive consolation when they bid a tearful goodbye to Melwood.
Success on the pitch is also crucial with major commercial deals coming up for renewal. Both the shirt sponsorship deal with Standard Chartered and manufacturer deal with New Balance are reportedly up for renewal next summer.
“We are in constant conversations with all of our partners, no matter how long deals have left to run.
“We continue to talk about how to meet the objectives of these companies, to all of our brands and sponsors about their goals and objectives and their long-term relationship with us, and ours with them,” he says.
“I spend a lot time with their executives and marketing teams around the world. They are phenomenal partners and couldn’t be more proud of where the club is today and what that means to their brands and businesses.
“BetVictor, our training wear partner, the same, they are delighted with what we have been able to deliver for them against their objectives. You think about Carlsberg. I can’t think of another sponsor that has had a wonderful, 25-year relationship with a football club.”
The success of these partnerships has seen the club continue to grow commercially with the latest available accounts to May 2017, showing commercial revenues growing by £20m to £136m.
During that period, the club announced 12 new partnerships including Malaysia Airlines, Konami and Joie. Three existing partners also renewed their deals, while wholesale retail businesses have been established in the US, Hong Kong, Canada and Holland.
“Over the last year, companies like Western Union, our sleeve sponsor, have come in. Billy [Hogan, managing director and chief commercial officer] and his team are doing a great job. Then there are the TV deals we have signed over the last 12 months.”
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Moore is overseeing substantial investment in digital technology too, an area of obvious interest, due to his professional background and experience as a fan living overseas.
“One of the great things about this club is its global reach. I experienced it on my arrival last summer. From 70,000 fans in Sydney last post-season who came to watch the likes of Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard play with some of the first-team players, through to massive games in Hong Kong, Munich, Dublin and Berlin in pre-season.
“The global impact and footprint that this club has on the hearts of hundreds of millions of people is incredible.
“I have experienced this in video games too, which may sound completely different, yet the parallels are actually very similar – a passionate fan base that spends an enormous amount of waking hours thinking about nothing else and invests their hard-earned money to be a part of that experience, whether that be Liverpool Football Club or gaming.
“Also, fans wear their hearts on their sleeves and their opinions on the tip of their tongue. The ability for us as a club to be able to harness that power is down to technology.
“We have a local heart with a global pulse. I lived 5,500 miles away from Liverpool in San Francisco, but absorbed every piece of news and content in anticipation of the game at 4am on a Saturday morning. There are millions like me.
“What we have to do is provide the technical as well as experiential platform to bring that closeness to the club.
“I have done that in my previous lives at EA and Microsoft with Xbox. Lessons learned about what you build and how you interact with your fan base are eerily similar in what we have to do at Liverpool.
“We want to corral this massive power that we have as a club and continue to engage with our fans in ways they want to interact with the club, and to provide a commercial basis for the club that allows us to reinvest in the playing squad.
“We have been working with the big tech companies for years, but we will step up that work. It is absolutely critical for us to ensure that fans can interact with us from a content point of view, as well as commercially. If you don’t, you get left behind.
“We will significantly invest in this area going forward to further improve our digital platforms across the club, but the investment will be paltry in the grand scheme of things.”
Club databases show that the fan base outside the local, national and Irish following is largely in the US, China, Scandinavia, Asia and more and more in Eastern Europe.
“We have official fan clubs in just about every major city in the world. We are now up to 55 million followers on social media platforms we are active on, such as Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat. But that is the tip of the iceberg for our social media potential, which we will continue to invest in, with added content generation.
“Our ultimate goal is to build a financially robust operation that will give Jurgen Klopp and his team everything they need to be successful against any team in the world.”
Images: PA Images
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