Jeff Bezos, the world’s fourth-richest man, has held talks about joining a consortium seeking to buy a significant minority stake in Liverpool Football Club, according to reports first broken by Sky News on Wednesday and corroborated by multiple outlets.
The Amazon founder has held discussions about joining a syndicate of investors led by former Queens Park Rangers co-owner Amit Bhatia, who is the son-in-law of billionaire steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal.
Bhatia, a British-Indian businessman, is the founder and managing director of AyBe Capital Advisers and has served as a director of Queens Park Rangers, alongside chairing Breedon Group and co-founding real estate firm Summix Capital.
Sources close to the matter were careful to temper expectations. A source cautioned that Bezos was not certain to proceed with an investment in Liverpool, and Sky’s Mark Kleinman noted the talks remain at a relatively early stage, with several other participants also involved in the consortium fronted by Bhatia.
Still, Kleinman struck a confident tone, saying he would be very surprised if Bezos did not end up forming part of the deal and taking a stake in Liverpool when it gets across the line in the coming months.
A spokesperson for the Bhatia-led group declined to comment specifically on Bezos’s involvement, and representatives for Bezos were contacted for comment but had not responded at the time of reporting.
Liverpool’s American owners, Fenway Sports Group, confirmed on Tuesday that they had been approached. An FSG spokesperson stated plainly: “An investment consortium led, managed, and represented by Amit Bhatia has expressed interest in making a strategic minority investment in Liverpool Football Club.”
The scale of the proposed deal is considerably larger than FSG’s previous foray into selling equity.
FSG brought in US investment firm Dynasty Equity a couple of years ago to buy a relatively small stake, but this new deal is much larger, potentially 30 percent, which will inevitably fuel speculation that in the coming years FSG could look to exit Liverpool entirely.
For context, that earlier sale saw FSG offload a four per cent stake to Dynasty Equity for £164 million in 2023.
For now, though, FSG is publicly resisting any suggestion of a wholesale departure. The club’s owners maintain there are no plans to relinquish Liverpool, characterizing this as strictly a minority deal, though if it does proceed, expectations will grow that FSG may hand over ownership within roughly the next three years.
The numbers being discussed underline just how much Liverpool’s valuation has swelled since FSG paid a reported £300 million for the club in 2010. Reports from the Financial Times suggest a deal with the Bhatia-led group would value Liverpool at more than $6 billion (roughly £4.5 billion).
Despite the eye-watering figures, sources close to the deal insist Anfield’s transfer kitty won’t be the primary beneficiary. Similar to the Dynasty Equity injection, funds raised through this kind of investment are generally not earmarked for player purchases, with the focus instead on long-term sustainability and infrastructure.
This wouldn’t be Bezos’s first brush with major sports ownership nor his first to fall short of a deal. Bezos has reportedly explored previous bids for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and Washington Commanders but decided against pursuing either deal. Whether Anfield proves different remains to be seen.
With advisers already engaged to hammer out deal specifics with FSG, and multiple parties circling within Bhatia’s syndicate, the coming months should clarify whether Bezos’s interest translates into ownership and whether this minority sale is, as some suspect, merely a prelude to a fuller change of control at one of English football’s most storied institutions.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Jeff Bezos has held early talks about joining Amit Bhatia’s consortium to buy a minority stake, potentially 30%, in Liverpool FC, in a deal that could value the club at over $6 billion. Nothing is confirmed, and Bezos hasn’t committed.
But the key factor to watch is this: even if framed as a “minority” investment for infrastructure and sustainability rather than transfers, a deal of this size raises real questions about whether FSG is quietly laying the groundwork to eventually sell the club outright within the next few years.
