Ben Latty, chief commercial officer of Liverpool, calls the club’s tour to America one of its “best ever” in an exclusive interview.
Nothing could have gone more smoothly for Arne Slot’s first preseason tour as Liverpool’s manager. A newfound sense of optimism for the upcoming campaign resulted from three games held in the United States and three victories. For the first time since 2019, the Reds are doing their summer preparations back in the United States with matches against Real Betis in Pittsburgh, Arsenal in Philadelphia, and Manchester United in South Carolina.
The landscape has changed in terms of football, or “soccer,” as our transatlantic cousins call it, since the team’s last trip to the United States. Football, both the men’s and women’s games, has experienced a spike in popularity after decades of struggling to find a way to stand out against the big league sports of the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB.
Though it has long been a popular grassroots sport in the US, it hasn’t really succeeded in capturing the interest of the country’s sports-loving populace on a professional level. With Lionel Messi’s assistance, the nation’s domestic competition, the MLS, may still need some work to expand, but the Premier League’s popularity has increased.
When the next bidding battle rolls around in a few months, broadcaster NBC will probably be willing to spend even more than the £2 billion it paid for the rights to air the Premier League during the previous rights cycle. With the 2026 World Cup to be held in North America and the fact that half of the Premier League’s clubs—including Liverpool—are now owned by Americans, this is considered as a fantastic chance to develop the sport in the country to unprecedented heights.
Premier League clubs have opportunities as a result of this growth. From a business standpoint, teams might benefit greatly from the game’s rising popularity and the top division of English football, as there are millions of new fans to win over and opportunities to form new alliances.
Liverpool already has a sizable following in the US. Liverpool was the most watched team in the world last season among fans who tuned in to watch live match broadcasts, according to Nielsen data. The Reds’ viewership increased by 42% in the US, and the December 2023 matchup with Arsenal received 2.28 million viewers, a record for a Premier League match at the time.
come were around 190,000 people in attendance for the three games on this summer’s tour, which were held in Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium, Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field, and Columbia, South Carolina’s Williams-Brice Stadium. Many of them were come to support the Reds. However, how was the tour seen from within the club, and what goes into making one?
When we set out to talk about what we were doing this year we thought it sort of felt right to go back to the US for a number of reasons,” said Ben Latty, Liverpool’s chief commercial officer, speaking exclusively to the ECHO.
“It’s an important market for us from a fan perspective, one that is a growing market in terms of fan base, I think that is evidenced in the in the data sets that we’re getting in terms of the TV audience.
“We’re number one in that market overall, I think 40% year-on-year growth in our TV audience in the US, which is incredible.
When we set out to talk about what we were doing this year we thought it sort of felt right to go back to the US for a number of reasons,” said Ben Latty, Liverpool’s chief commercial officer, speaking exclusively to the ECHO.
“It’s an important market for us from a fan perspective, one that is a growing market in terms of fan base, I think that is evidenced in the in the data sets that we’re getting in terms of the TV audience.
“We’re number one in that market overall, I think 40% year-on-year growth in our TV audience in the US, which is incredible.
But I’m sure in the media you’ll be fed up of us saying this, but the reality is that it has to work for football first and foremost. So finding the right environment for our football department was really, really important as we went through the process of figuring out where we were playing.
“We’ve got to find good training facilities for them. In pre-season, they are sometimes doing double sessions a day and we have to make sure that it’s the right training environment, the right type of surface, and the right kind of weather and climate that is not too hot.
“Then I guess more broadly, when we’re playing a game we have to make sure that we’ve got the right surface, turf, natural turf pitches are obviously always a preference for us.
We have to try to piece together a tour itinerary where we are spending less time in the air, which is why we stayed on the East Coast. The longest flight we had was just under two hours.”
Liverpool’s first team being out there creates a buzz, and packed stadiums help the club to grow the brand in the US and connect with their fans across the Atlantic. The club also takes the LFC Foundation out to do coaching sessions in the cities in which they play, something that sets them apart from their rivals.
But there is also the commercial element that needs to be satisfied. The club have a growing number of partners, many of them US-based, and ensuring that they are activating appropriately and delivering value for those partners to a long-standing relationship and renewals, is a vital part of what Latty and his team had to do this summer.
“One of them was that we’ve got a number of partners now that are headquartered in the US, some big partners, some big brands that are associated with the club that we felt that we felt it was right to go back to the US to allow them to activate in, in their headquartered market.”
“From a commercial perspective, the next thing to do was to put together a plan that we could make the most of,” explained Latty, whose title changed from commercial director to chief commercial officer earlier in the yearChoosing the location, and opposition was also a key consideration from a commercial standpoint. While similarities existed between the working-class cities of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Liverpool, all of them having been hubs of major industry in years past, the actual criteria took into account major stadium availability in large cities with a sporting interest.
The Pittsburgh game, which Latty said was not organised as part of the Fenway Sports Group connection with the Pittsburgh Penguins, was added later to the schedule and the opposition was La Liga side Real Betis. It drew the smallest of the three crowds, but still a strong 42,000. But the pull of playing major sides such as Arsenal and Manchester United was impactful in terms of putting on a show for the US fans.
Latty said: “I think when we set out in sort of finding out where we were playing and how we can structure that, obviously, notwithstanding what I said around it and making sure that the right environment for the for the football side, we set out on a bit of a stretch to try and play a big team versus big team where we could and put on a spectacle for our fans out there, ideally in a big stadium, which I think we’ve ticked those both of those boxes.
Ideally we wanted it in a big market, and maybe that was one of the criteria that we didn’t meet, but equally, we had the benefits of playing in places like South Carolina, which was amazing.
“It was incredible for us to go to that market and to sell out that stadium and to get a Saturday night fixture as well.
“So there was a number of criteria that we worked through as it relates to that, to try and make the most of the tour. I think we did that and it is probably one of our most successful tours we’ve ever been on.
“I think from our standpoint it was really successful. We put on a number of fan events whilst we were out there.
“I think one thing we do versus other clubs is we get the full club to support and get behind the tour. We have a Foundation team out there and I think we’re probably one of the only clubs out there actually that brings their Foundation out. They provided coaching in the local community wherever we landed.
It was also successful from a retail perspective to engage our retail partners and get the perspective of partners and allow them to engage them from a fan perspective.
“We like to try and leave a legacy, and I think we did that with all the activity we had in market.”
Latty believes that there is a window of opportunity for Liverpool to tap into the growth of the Premier League in the US, with the time of matches being broadcast live meaning that there is no competition from other major sports.
There’s this unique window in the American sporting weekend, where the Premier League plays a critical and vital role now,” said Latty.
“The Premier League are doing their events out there with NBC, the broadcasters, I think Premier League football, in general, is, in my belief, growing in stature and popularity. I think it’s always been a sport that’s, from across grassroots, been incredibly popular. I think with the World Cup coming there’s a huge opportunity for the Premier League and for clubs in the Premier League.
“I think for us in particular, we’re seeing year-on-year the importance of the US market from different commercial areas of the club. It’s a significant market for us from a retail perspective, and obviously we’re very thankful for all the American fans out there. Part of the tour was to get closer to them and bring the club to them.
“For us it was amazing to be in that environment in the US playing football matches over there. Yeah, I would like to think that the data would back us up, but a large proportion of every single game we played out there was Liverpool fans more than a competition. I think that’s actually down to the unique narrative around the club and everything we stand for as a football club.”
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