Tycoons Hicks and Gillett complete Liverpool buyout

Liverpool soccer club's new owners -- US businessmen George Gillett Jr, left, and Tom Hicks, right, pose in the tunnel at Anfield Stadium in Liverpool, England, on Tuesday. PHOTO: AP

Two US businessmen and sports team owners -- Thomas Hicks and George Gillett Jr -- on Tuesday completed a US$340 million acquisition of English Premier League club Liverpool.

The deal is the latest foray by Americans into English soccer, a trend that was started in 2005 by Malcolm Glazer, the owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL, when he bought Manchester United in a highly leveraged deal. Last year another NFL owner, Randy Lerner of the Cleveland Browns, acquired the Aston Villa club.

The English Premier League is the wealthiest soccer league in the world, having recently completed a five-year, US$5.3 billion deal to show its games on television in 208 countries outside Britain. Earlier, the league signed a US$3.35 billion domestic deal with Sky TV and Setanta, an Irish pay-per-view company. The 20 Premier League clubs will share in the bounty, which certainly attracted Gillett, Hicks and Lerner to investing in English soccer, rather than buying into the US league, Major League Soccer.

In recent years, some of the top clubs in the world, like Manchester United, Chelsea and Real Madrid, have become global brands, with the potential to make vast amounts of money through merchandise sales and tours in Asia and the US. None of the Americans involved in the purchases of the three clubs are devoted soccer fans, which has led many supporters to assert that they are in it only for the investment potential.

Hicks Gillett each own an NHL franchise; Hicks is also the owner of the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball, having bought the team from US President George W. Bush in 1998. Through his private equity firm -- Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst (now HM Capital Partners) -- Hicks also ran two Brazilian club teams, Corinthians and Cruzeiro, in the 1990s before selling his interests.

"Liverpool is a fantastic club with a remarkable history and a passionate fan base," Gillett and Hicks said in a statement issued through their company, Kop Football Limited.

"Kop" refers to a former standing-room section of Anfield stadium in Liverpool normally occupied by the club's most rabid fans.