利物浦主席下台

Mr. Broughton is going to become chairman of a new firm called Sports Investment Partners, which will focus, as the name suggests, on investing tens and possibly hundreds of millions of pounds in sports-related businesses. Now Martin Broughton is going to step down as the chairman of Liverpool after a short transitional period to the new owners, and he'll be overseeing this new firm as its chairman. It will be run on a day-to-day basis by Martin Broughton's son Michael, who is a former senior executive from the sports industry, and Nick Couchman, the founder and chairman of a specialist's sports law firm called Couchmans. Now this fund has been planned for some time but was essentially put on whole while the future of Liverpool was being resolved. And I understand that they've already begun talking with potential investors about raising quite considerable sums of money to invest in the sports industry.

Yes, it's interesting, isn't it? It's the time when we are talking about saving cash and they are talking about spending. Are they confident they can actually raise those funds?

Well, I think they are. I mean between them they obviously have a very strong pedigree. I don't think there's doubt that Martin Broughton's reputation was in harm to ultimately buy the Liverpool takeover. It was a six-month auction which of course towards the end became mild in legal controversy, but actually he ultimately did deliver what he was brought to the club to do which was to deliver a bluechip owner to Liverpool Football Club, and his son Michael, as I say, is a senior sponsorship executive as well. So I think that, as I understand, the conversations with prospective investors have already been progressing for some time, and they'll be looking at investing in areas like sports intellectual property, the betting and gaming industries and the support services related to sport as well. So I think there'll be some more interesting news emerging from this new firm over the coming months.