'Save my club' - Phone call and email that sparked FSG £300m Liverpool takeover

Prior to acquiring Liverpool in 2010, Fenway Sports Group had been on the hunt for more sporting additions to their empire.

FSG, then known as New England Sports Ventures, had already delivered success with the Boston Red Sox baseball team that they had owned since 2002, ending an 86-year wait for a World Series title. The first arrived in 2004, and another came along in 2007 as John Henry and Tom Werner changed the fortunes of a storied organisation that had been forced to live in the past.

In 2022 the focus for FSG's next power play is to acquire an NBA franchise, and there is potential that an expansion team in either Las Vegas or Seattle could be that route into the world's biggest basketball league, something that FSG partner and basketball icon LeBron James will likely front. Twelve years ago the same thoughts were in the mind of Henry and Werner as they sought to grow their empire, but a deal never materialised.

They would soon buy Liverpool, though, and according to The Athletic, FSG's path to ending the ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett may have been aided by the presence of an ardent Reds fan among their staff in Boston.

FSG were on the lookout for new opportunities already, and the Premier League was fertile ground with its booming media rights deal and global appeal, not to mention the valuations of clubs then being far lower than it would have cost to gain entry into a major market in the US such as the NFL. And, for a company that likes to grow value, there was plenty of scope that existed within Liverpool, as evidenced by the £300m sum paid for the club turning into a £3bn valuation in just 12 years - a valuation that now stands above the Red Sox, who had been the cornerstone of FSG's