Bezos is in, and the consortium buying a third of Liverpool is led by Lakshmi Mittal’s son-in-law

Fenway Sports Group has controlled Liverpool on its own since 2010. That is about to change, and the most interesting name in the group taking a slice of Anfield is not the one leading the headlines.

Sky News reported on Monday that a consortium is closing in on a deal for roughly a third of the club, with FSG preparing to announce a transaction as soon as this week. Jeff Bezos is in the investor group. So is Eduardo Saverin, one of the co-founders of Facebook. The valuation being put on Liverpool is 4.4 billion pounds, close to 6 billion dollars, which would rank it among the richest deals the sport has produced. One source told Sky the announcement could slip into next week.

The man running the syndicate walked away from QPR to do it

The consortium is led by Amit Bhatia, a 46-year-old British Indian investor who runs a multi-asset firm called AyBe Capital. He is married to Vanisha Mittal Bhatia, daughter of the steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, and until last month he was a director and co-owner at Queens Park Rangers.

That exit is the tell. Bhatia had been at QPR for 18 seasons and served a spell as chairman. Once his interest in Liverpool became public in July, QPR confirmed he was stepping down from the board and transferring his shareholding to majority owner Ruben Gnanalingam. “I step back from my formal responsibilities with pride, gratitude and affection,” he said in his departure statement. Nobody gives up 18 years at a club for a deal they expect to fall over.

FSG had already acknowledged the approach. “An investment consortium led, managed, and represented by Amit Bhatia has expressed interest in making a strategic minority investment in Liverpool Football Club,” a spokesperson said in July. The two sides have been talking for around three months.

What 300 million pounds turned into

The arithmetic on FSG’s 16 years is the part worth sitting with. John Henry’s group bought Liverpool in October 2010 for 300 million pounds, at a point where the club was carrying heavy debt and the sale had to be forced through the courts against the previous owners. A 4.4 billion pound valuation is not a good return on that. It is one of the great sports investments of the century.

The market has been climbing steeply too. When Chelsea changed hands in 2022, the last time an English club of that size was sold, the shares went for 2.5 billion pounds and the buyers committed another 1.75 billion in investment on top. Liverpool are now being valued at nearly double the Chelsea share price four years on.

Why not everyone at Anfield is celebrating

Bezos ranks among the four wealthiest people on earth by Forbes’ count, and Saverin was part of a group that bid unsuccessfully for Chelsea during the 2022 auction. Put them alongside the Mittal family and Liverpool acquire a shareholder base rich enough to change what the club can contemplate in a market where a 100 million pound fee no longer settles an argument.

Sky Sports News chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol struck a more careful note. “When people invest or buy clubs, who previously don’t have a link to the club, the duty is to ask why they want to invest. What is in it for them?” he said. “People invest because they want to make money.”

A stake of this size does not hand anyone control. It buys a seat at the table and, usually, a route to more, and Sky’s report says the arrival of a consortium this powerful will fuel expectations that its members eventually seek outright ownership. Minority deals in English football have a way of not staying minority.

The Indian thread here is not incidental

The Mittal family bought a 20 per cent stake in QPR in December 2007, months after Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore took the club over, and reporting at the time put the steel magnate’s interest down to a football-mad son-in-law, who duly took the family seat on the board. Bhatia was the visible half of that ownership for most of what followed, through promotion to the Premier League in 2011 and the fall back to the Championship after it.

Eighteen years later he is fronting a group that includes two of the richest men alive, negotiating for a third of a club with six European Cups. For an Indian business family, that is a different order of involvement in English football than anything that has come before.

An announcement is expected within days. Liverpool start their season at Newcastle on 23 August, Andoni Iraola’s first competitive match in charge, with a squad that has surrendered two-goal leads twice in pre-season. The football and the finance are about to get loud at the same time.

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