The Liverpool Record that Nobody is Talking About 🤑
+ The Miami GP set to make more money than the Super Bowl + A Fake Lake!
Hello Everyone,
Thank you for joining us for another Athletic Interest newsletter. We have decided to take the Real Madrid approach this week. The first 80% of this newsletter will be a complete mess, you will assume we are moments away from disaster and then BAM…we will somehow write the most amazing story in the history of newsletters. So you might as well skip to end…
Talking of Real Madrid, they now need to pull off another upset against an impressive Liverpool team. It’s not often that Real Madrid would be considered an underdog, well for the first 80 minutes at least, but they are facing a Liverpool side that is within touching distance of breaking records.
Yes, If Liverpool win the Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup, to go alongside their League Cup triumph, they will be the first English team in history to complete a quadruple. To be in contention for a quadruple this late in a season is impressive enough and it appears that this success will translate into a huge payday for the reds.
According to reports, Liverpool are currently in talks to complete the biggest ever shirt sponsorship deal in history.
Their current $55 million a season deal with bank Standard Chartered is set to end in 2023, with some analysts predicting that any new deal will be somewhere in the region of $100 Million.
To put that in perspective, here are the current top 10 in the shirt sponsorship league (according to Forbes):
🇪🇸 Real Madrid - $82.5 Million
🏴 Manchester United - $64.9 Million
🇪🇸 Barcelona - $64.8 Million
🇫🇷 Paris Saint Germain - $57 Million
🏴 Arsenal - $56 Million
🏴 Liverpool - $55.3 Million
🏴 Chelsea - $55.2 Million (currently suspended)
🇮🇹 Juventus - $53.1 Million
🏴 Tottenham - $50 Million
🇩🇪 Bayern Munich - $35.4 Million
So, a $100 Million a year deal would see Liverpool earn a whopping $17.5 Million a year more than second-placed Real Madrid.
So, why is Liverpool such an attractive prospect for sponsors?
Firstly, Liverpool have been incredibly successful over the last couple of years, reaching three finals of the Champions League. This sort of success brings global attention, something that many companies would love to be a part of.
This is evident when you look at the type of companies supposedly bidding to become shirt sponsor. Aside from Standard Chartered, there are said to be crypto, media, electronics, and travel companies all wanting to throw money at the team.
Secondly, shirt sponsorship is on the rise. Barcelona just announced their own new sponsorship deal with Spotify that will see their yearly payment increase by around $10 million to $74 Million.
Chelsea, who are in the late stages of a takeover from a US consortium, are reportedly looking to end their currently suspended deal with Three and sign up with a more lucrative U.S.-based sponsor.
Real Madrid are coming to the end of their deal with Emirates and could look to negotiate an even better deal in light of the news surrounding Liverpool.
This growth is happening in shirt sponsorship because football is growing in all of the right places. Since 2015, the U.S. audience for the Premier League has grown by at least 20% and shows no signs of slowing down.
To put those two factors together, having your logo on a Liverpool shirt ensures that your brand is instantly associated with success and exposed to a massive growing global audience…what is not to love?
Talking of Liverpool shirts, it looks like Nike is also very happy in its current partnership with the reds. So happy in fact that they just prematurely ejaculated released next season’s kit all over the internet.
The simple one-colour design, which the club described as ‘bold and no-nonsense,’ has been drawing mixed reviews from fans.
Some have suggested that the design is a little boring but the club insists that it reflects the attitude of the people of Liverpool (It’s like they want to offend Liverpudlians?!)
One Liverpool fan that is not offended by his team is Lebron James.
After watching Liverpool’s second-half resurgence against Villareal, and subsequent qualification for the Champions League final, James took to Twitter to express his happiness.
For any fans wondering why basketball legend Lebron even cares about football, you might be surprised to learn that Lebron actually bought 2% of Liverpool in 2011. To understand why this deal could have been his best ever, and how it might even result in him leading an NBA franchise in Las Vegas, be sure to check out our latest video…
Miami Grand Prix to Make More Money than the Super Bowl 🏎
It’s Formula 1 race week again and this time it’s a big one! For the first time ever, Formula 1 will be hosting a race in Miami. The event has seen so much hype that the Grand Prix is expected to bring in more money to the local area than the Super Bowl.
That is huge news, but it’s even more impressive when you realise that this year’s Miami GP is being held in the car park of the stadium that hosted the 2020 Superbowl.
That’s a bit like Liverpool getting a bigger sponsorship agreement than the team with the most Champions League wins in history…oh wait 😳
So, why is a sport like Formula 1, which has far fewer fans in the U.S. than American Football, making so much money?
Well, to put it simply…the tickets are incredibly expensive!
Ticket prices range from $149 per seat for the Friday practice to $14,000 for the best seats at the Sunday race.
On top of this, hotel prices have surged due to high demand. Top suites at luxury hotels in the Miami area are now selling for upwards of $100,000 a night.
Food is also set to be very expensive, with one chef at Miami Beach charging $3,000 per plate. That particular restaurant is currently sold out.
If music is more your thing, some Nightclubs have started hiring DJs for around $100,000 per set. Ticket prices at those nightclubs start at $5,000 per table.
While these prices may seem ridiculous, they are not without some justification.
The market for Formula 1 in the U.S. is growing at a rapid pace. Due mainly to the success of Drive to Survive, the U.S. TV audience grew 54% from 2020 to 2021 and a further 47% from 2021 to 2022.
It isn’t just the TV audience that is growing. The 2021 U.S. Grand Prix in Austin saw a record attendance of 400,000 people over the three days of the event.
The demand for attending an F1 event in the U.S. has only increased, especially when you consider that Miami is a far more attractive location than Austin Texas.
Ticket prices are being driven even higher because, despite record demand and hundreds of thousands of people descending on Miami, the event’s capacity is restricted to 80,000 fans per day.
This has allowed ticket resellers to up their prices and given local hotels and restaurants the opportunity to host lucrative F1-based events for the unlucky thousands who can’t get a ticket.
But record demand is not the only reason behind these crazy prices. Formula 1 has always been about glitz and glamour and has attracted a far wealthier fan base to its events.
Prestige events like Monaco would not be the same without images of billionaires and Celebrities mingling aboard expensive superyachts in the gorgeous marina…
Considering the importance of such images to the F1 brand, the Miami Grand Prix tried to replicate the Monaco lifestyle.
The organisers promised to build an exclusive yacht club at turns 7 and 8 of the circuit, complete with superyachts and a man-made lake.
This is what they promised it would look like:
And this is the reality:
Yes, it appears the organisers took the ‘man-made lake’ part of the plan a bit too literally.
Instead of adding actual water to the marina, they decided to simply add a weird picture of water on top of a raised platform that holds the boats in place.
It is not entirely clear why the decision was made to use fake water, but it is likely that the logistics of having millions of liters of water next to a high-speed race track were too complex to fix in a short time frame.
As soon as the images of the ‘marina’ broke online, fans were quick to mock.
Some suggested that the fake water looked like it was from an old video game, while others just couldn’t resist…
Even F1 broadcaster Sky got in on the act: