In recent seasons Liverpool have found lucrative rewards through leveraging their on-field success.
When things started to click for Jurgen Klopp's men, the season they reached the 2018 Champions League final, started the ball rolling for the Reds in terms of being able to command more money from their commercial deals.
The 2019 Champions League success and the 2020 Premier League win, their first English league title in 30 years, placed Liverpool back at the summit of the European game and increased their reach across the globe, with more and more new fans arriving on board.
That success, born from the tremendous managerial nous of Klopp against the backdrop of limited transfer spend in comparison to their rivals, allowed for owners Fenway Sports Group to raise their commercial revenues considerably. In the past 10 years commercial revenues have risen £143m per year to £243.4m, also rising 42.5 per cent since 2018 when they were at £170.8m per season.
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The clubs four major and most visible commercial deals with Nike, Standard Chartered, Expedia and AXA are worth a combined £436m over their span of the contracts, with the deals with Standard Chartered (£160m) and AXA (£60m) due for renewal in 2023 and 2022 respectively.
Expedia, shirt sleeve sponsors at £10m per year, are also due for renewal in 2023 while Nike, whose flat rate deal with the Reds has not yet revealed its true value, with 20 per cent of royalties from the sale of licensed Nike/Reds merchandise globally being kicked back to Liverpool annually. Industry experts predict that could make the deal worth up to £70m per year, a contract that runs until 2025.
But with a number of key deals up in the next 18 months or so, Reds chiefs will already be testing the water to see how strong the commercial market for key sponsors may be given the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
They have managed to bring another partner on board this summer in electronics firm Sonos, who join Carlsberg, Kodansha, Mauritius, MG, Nivea Men, Holly Frontier, EA Sports, Quorn, Cadbury, Acronis, Vodafone, NH Foods, Joie, Alexbank, Extrajoss and Verbier as official club partners.
Sponsors want the brands that they are spending money on to offer strong engagement and figures suggest that is something where Liverpool score highly and that will make them desirable and in a position to potentially see their commercial gains increase, something that is very much key to the FSG business model and helps to aid investment into the squad, although not to the level that many would like to see.
A survey from Sponsorpulse, via Sports Pro Media, showed that Liverpool were the most engaging club in the Premier League at 45 per cent.
The engagement level was calculated across a 12 month period and looked at engagements across linear and digital broadcast, social or traditional media following, buying or wearing merchandise, playing fantasy or betting, as well as word of mouth recommendation.
Manchester United were second at 42 per cent, Manchester City third with 40 per cent and Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and Arsenal all level on 39 per cent. The sample size was roughly 6,000 for each club.
Now stadiums are back open and fans allowed to return at full capacity, Liverpool will be hoping that the hospitality revenue stream, which ties in with commercial deals, will be able to return to help them bounce back in the 2022 financial accounts, with 2021 expected to see heavy losses as the full extent of the pandemic will be shown on the balance sheet.
