Fenway Sports Group are preparing to announce a deal that would bring Jeff Bezos and two other billionaires into Liverpool's ownership structure, with a transaction potentially set to be confirmed as early as this week.
Bezos is among a group of investors set to acquire a stake of slightly more than 30 per cent in the Merseyside club. The consortium is led by Amit Bhatia, a 46-year-old British Indian entrepreneur and former co-owner of Queens Park Rangers, and also includes Eduardo Saverin, who co-founded Facebook alongside Mark Zuckerberg.
FSG confirmed last month that a syndicate headed by Bhatia had expressed an interest in investing. "An investment consortium led, managed, and represented by Amit Bhatia has expressed interest in making a strategic minority investment in Liverpool Football Club," the group said in a statement to the Financial Times.
The proposed investment would value Liverpool at £4.4bn, placing it among the largest deals ever struck in sport. The stake itself has been reported at around £1.35bn. The last time any portion of the club changed hands was in 2023, when Dynasty Equity purchased a small interest that valued Liverpool at more than £3.3bn.
The wealth assembled within the consortium is considerable. Bezos, who founded Amazon in 1994 and whose other interests include aerospace company Blue Origin and The Washington Post, has a fortune estimated by Forbes at over £207bn. Saverin, who is 44 years old, is said to be worth over £23.7bn, while Bhatia's father-in-law, Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, has a net worth of more than £14.8bn. Bhatia is married to Vanisha Mittal Bhatia, Mittal's daughter, and currently manages a multi-asset investment firm called AyBe Capital.
Bhatia himself was a shareholder at QPR for 18 seasons before transferring his stake to majority shareholder Ruben Gnanalingam. He confirmed his departure from QPR's board last month on the same day FSG acknowledged the talks. Saverin was previously part of a consortium that mounted an unsuccessful bid for Chelsea during the 2022 sale triggered by Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
FSG, which also owns baseball's Boston Red Sox and ice hockey's Pittsburgh Penguins, took control of Liverpool in 2010, paying around £300m for a club then mired in financial difficulty under Tom Hicks and George Gillett. Since then, the Reds have won two Premier League titles and the Champions League, as well as undergoing major investment in both Anfield and a new training ground. The structure of the new deal is expected to leave FSG in overall control of the club.
Links between Bezos and Liverpool first surfaced last month, and while he had previously explored bids for NFL sides the Seattle Seahawks and Washington Commanders, he did not proceed with either pursuit.
Reporting: The Independent, Evening Standard, Sky Sports, The Sun, Daily Star, Inside World Football.