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da apostebet： With 18 league titles and five European Cups Liverpool FC remain the most successful club in the history of English football. Club legend Bill Shankly started a longstanding dynasty at Anfield when he led the club to their first league title in 17 years at the end of the 1963-64 season.
This level of success was carried on and brought to unprecedented levels throughout the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s by founding boot room members Joe Fagan and Bob Paisley. Kenny Dalglish then took this mantle and built on it further with three more league titles. For over 40 years the name, history and reputation of Liverpool has grown and the club still remains a British institution today.
Despite the success on the pitch, Liverpool have struggled to uphold such high levels of achievement off it. The formation of the Premier League in 1992 and the subsequent lucrative TV and sponsorship deals which followed opened up immense global opportunities for a club of Liverpool’s unique and unrivalled history. However it is Manchester United, the most successful team of the Premier League era, and not Liverpool, who have managed to turn themselves into England’s truly iconic global brand.
United’s success was built in-line with the exposure of the Premier League, helping the club to remain at the top for such an extended period of time. MUFC have long-received the greatest share of the Premier League broadcasting rights as the league’s most successful team. The Red Devils are also a big attraction in Asia where they are estimated to have a staggering 80m supporters. While United have been cashing in since the ‘90s, Liverpool have been under-performing in all aspects of their commercial revenues. The club’s current commercial director Ian Ayre was brought to the club by owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks three years ago to overhaul every commercial feature of the club and increase dwindling profit margins.
Rick Parry, the former chief executive of Liverpool, was the blamed for the club’s commercial failings in recent years and removed from the position at the end of the 2008/09 season. Parry had been at Liverpool for over 12 years before being accused by co-owner Hicks of failing to make the most of the commercial opportunities available to Liverpool. Hicks labelled Parry’s tenure ‘a disaster’ before blasting the lack of sponsorship deals in place under him the club’s lack of progress in the Asian market.
Ayre soon managed to secure a record £80m sponsorship deal with Standard Chartered, equal to the most lucrative in football history. The four-year agreement is worth £20m-a-year to the club and dwarfs the previous deal with Carlsberg by an astonishing £13m-a-year. Liverpool’s support in Asia has also grown with club captain Steven Gerrard and star striker Fernando Torres remaining big draws in the Far East. Despite the positives, Ayre feels the club failed to take advantage of their 2005 Champions League win and admits that changes had to be made behind the scenes:
“One thing that’s for certain is when we get back to sustained winning you can be absolutely certain we’ll be ready to maximise that opportunity.
“In 2005 when we won the European Cup, it was argued that the club had not made the most, commercially, of that.
“Certainly, as long as I’m here we won’t be in that situation again.”
Now that Liverpool have everything in place to prosper commercially the only problem is the success on the pitch needed for lift-off. Over to you Roy ….
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