Here’s The Secret To John Henry’s Bottomless Pockets
Wow, has John Henry begun channeling the late, great George Steinbrenner?
First he lays out $477 million for a Liverpool soccer club that has seen better days. Then he shells easily another $300 million more on two monster deals free agent deals for beloved Red Sox.
The spending spree, in turn, has fans on both sides of the Atlantic fretting.
Just a few weeks ago, Sox fans were were worried that he had emptied his wallet with the Liverpool deal.
So much for that theory. But now it’s the turn of Liverpool fans to be anxious, with fears that Henry’s Sox acquisitions means he won’t have anything left in the bank to upgrade their franchise, according to The Wall Street Journal.
But as I noted recently in my weekly B&T column, Henry has found the key to spending big in sports and not losing your shirt.
It’s relatively simple, but not that easy to execute, as more than one former billionaire who fell in love with a team will testify.
Henry makes money on his teams, from creative sponsorship deals to turning what was the nation’s oldest ballpark into a much envied cash cow.
In an email to a Wall Street Journal reporter, Henry explained that spending on players is determined by each team’s individual revenue.
“People don’t have a clear understanding of Fenway Sports Group. So it’s understandable that they may believe that buying Liverpool Football Club deprives the Boston Red Sox of capital,” he wrote to the Journal reporter. “But it just doesn’t work that way.”