On Wednesday, Liverpool kicks off its Champions League campaign. But this one comes with a twist: On Tuesday nights in the U.K., its games will air on a platform controlled by one of its new owners.
Just days after former Disney CEO Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner—the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner—bought the Lakers for $12.5 billion, a consortium including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought a minority stake in Liverpool FC, one of soccer’s most storied and commercially valuable clubs.
Bezos has moved away from day-to-day involvement at Amazon after stepping down as CEO in 2021, but remains influential as the largest individual shareholder at the company, holding roughly 8% of the company’s stock. He also retains a seat on the board, which ultimately oversees Prime Video.
The Amazon founder’s investment in Liverpool comes while Prime Video holds broadcast rights for the top-pick Tuesday night Champions League matches in the U.K., as well as other partial broadcast rights in Ireland, Germany and Italy. (In the U.S., the games mostly air on Paramount+, which struck a six-year, $1.5 billion deal for U.S. rights in 2022.)
Liverpool has won the most prestigious competition in European soccer six times, more than any other English team.
A broadcaster owning a team is not unheard of in the United States. Fox bought the Dodgers in 1998 and aired their games on Fox Sports West; Ted Turner bought the Atlanta Braves to broadcast the club’s games on his national TV station WTCG, later named TBS. Tribune—the company that owned the Chicago Tribune—bought the Chicago Cubs outright in 1981. At the time, it owned WGN, the station that had already been broadcasting Cubs games for decades.
Iger, who stepped down as Disney CEO in February this year, has retained his seat on the Disney board; Disney has long been the NBA’s most important rightsholder.
But these types of entanglements are far less common in England, and Bezos’s involvement in the Liverpool consortium could be the moment the norm crosses into English and European sports, prompting concern from antitrust experts.
“If you’re having league-wide meetings and you’re exchanging information about league TV deals, you clearly shouldn’t have someone in the room who is also part of an ownership structure of a team,” Georgetown sports management professor Marty Conwa told Front Office Sports.
The “relevant football authorities”—including the Independent Football Regulator, the Premier League and the Women’s Super League—will review the transaction for up to 100 days, a person familiar with the matter told FOS. The Independent Football Regulator and Premier League do not have specific provisions in place to assess prospective owners on potential conflicts of interest with broadcasters. The regulations governing the Champions League state that UEFA “declines all responsibility” in the event of conflicts arising from contracts between a club and third parties, including broadcasters.
Unlike other soccer broadcasters in the U.K. like Sky or TNT, Amazon can promote Liverpool content to potentially millions of users—as it already has done with several Liverpool-related documentaries—across the company’s huge ecosystem.
“Right now, Amazon’s incentive is to produce any sports documentary that’s going to make them money. If someone comes in and suggests a sports documentary on any rival Premier League team, Bezos could say they’re simply not interested,” Penn State law professor Steve Ross told FOS. “The whole thing is just ridden with conflict.”
“Amazon has already made documentaries about Liverpool FC, and Bezos will have had a front row seat into what kind of returns the club can generate for Amazon. He not only knows what everyone is looking for, but also what everyone else is buying…that’s a big competitive advantage,” said sports business consultant Tim Crow.
The consortium—led by Amit Bhatia, the founder of investment firm AyBe Capital—was first reported to be worth roughly 30% of Liverpool FC at a valuation of over $7 billion. Bezos bought into the deal via the K5 Sports Fund, where he serves as lead investor. Bezos will not hold a seat on the Liverpool board.
However, new details of the deal have since revealed the group bought 38% of the Premier League club, with an option to buy a controlling stake within the next 12 months. This would further intertwine Bezos’s broadcasting giant with his new team.
British regulators have rejected similar proposals in the past. Rupert Murdoch, who was the principal Dodgers owner when his Fox Corp. bought the team in 1998, tried the same playbook in England a year later. In 1999, the Murdoch-owned Sky—then named BSkyB—tried to buy Manchester United. British regulators blocked the deal over concerns it would generate unfair advantages in future negotiations over TV rights.
“One concern was that if Murdoch was at the table as one of the sellers of Premier League broadcast rights, Sky would have had an unfair advantage and this would distort competition in the broadcast market. The second concern was that it would distort competition in the football market,” Ross said.
Bezos’s participation in the Liverpool deal also comes amid widespread and longrunning speculation that he would one day seek to purchase an NFL team. The Amazon founder evaluated a potential bid for the Washington Commanders in 2023 and did not bid for the Seattle Seahawks earlier this year.
“There will always be the inference that he can get to those decision makers and influence future decisions,” Conway added.
Amazon declined to comment on this story. Fenway Sports Group, Liverpool FC, UEFA, the FA, the Independent Football Regulator and the Premier League have not responded to requests for comment.
