Mukesh Ambani may be interested in Liverpool, but this British billionaire doesn't see value in buying a top PL club

Media reports suggest that Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries is interested in buying the English football club Liverpool FC. A rush in global interest in purchasing a property like Liverpool was inevitable but not everybody sees value in buying a top Premier League club.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, a British billionaire, recently ruled out the possibility of picking a stake in the Merseyside club, said there is more value elsewhere in the footballing world, than in buying a top-tier Premier League club. Ratcliffe currently owns Ligue 1 side Nice, a French football club.

“Our position has developed since the summer and we are now focusing our efforts in Nice and raising our ambitions for the club to make them into a top-tier club in France to compete with PSG,” his spokesman said in a statement to The Telegraph.


“This would represent much better value for our investment than buying one of the top-tier Premier League clubs.”



Repeated interest?

This isn’t the first time Ambani has eyed a stake in the Premier League club either. The company was eyeing a takeover bid in 2010 before Fenway Sports Group (FSG), the current owners, purchased the Premier League side.

FSG completed their £300million ($344.1m) takeover of the Merseyside club in 2010. Fenway Sports Group Holdings LLC is now working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley as it gauges buyer interest in the English Premier League team.

Subrata Roy of Sahara Group and Ambani were lining up a bid to purchase 51% of the club's stake from former owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett in 2010.

Currently, Ambani's company owns Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket side Mumbai Indians and also runs the Indian Super League football event besides being the commercial partner of the All India Football Federation (AIFF).

Ratcliffe in May 2022 attempted to purchase Chelsea FC with a late, but ultimately unsuccessful, bid. Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich eventually sold the club for £4.25 billion to a consortium led by Los Angeles Dodgers part-owner Todd Boehly.

According to 'The Mirror', the FSG are willing to sell the club for £4 billion. The Mirror on Sunday reported that Ambani, rated by Forbes as the eighth richest person in the world, has enquired about the club.

Forbes listed Liverpool as the world's fourth most valuable football club, with a value of around $4.45 billion (around £3.8 billion). The club has won 19 top-flight league titles and numerous trophies in European competitions. It’s recently been enjoying a return to its glory days under German coach Jürgen Klopp, who in 2020 led the club to its first league title of the EPL era.

Investors from America and the Middle East are likely to be among those interested in buying Liverpool given their strong appetite for exposure to the world’s richest football league. The last two years have already seen the high-profile takeovers of EPL clubs Newcastle United FC by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Chelsea FC by Boehly.

IANS reported that RIL has denied any takeover plans of Liverpool FC.