Liverpool under Fenway Sports Group have been, perhaps, the best possible ownership group in terms of a club’s stewardship in the modern game. Yes, there’ve been unvarnished money grabs that have alternately been prevented (e.g. the scuttled Super League) and begrudgingly accepted (e.g. ticket price hikes).
FSG haven’t been perfect, but in a world of deep pockets where the ethics of the ownership class are made up of folks who participate in the oppression of marginalized groups within their home countries, it is a distinction – pale as it may be – that FSG’s biggest mark against it is that it is a nakedly capitalist enterprise. And given that the club were staring administration in the face at the time of its acquisition, with two Premier League titles and a Champions League – along with all available domestic honors – since then, it’s really hard to find too harsh a word against them. They are, in the modern game, the platonic ideal when it comes to club ownership.
Looking around at the class of organization that Liverpool swims with, you don’t have to worry about money coming from the likes of, say, a state ownership group tied to the ruling government that assassinated a journalist. Which feels like a tiny oasis, all things considered.
Which is why it is more than a little disheartening to know that FSG agreed to sell a stake of the club to an ownership consortium that includes none other than Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos. I want to be clear here in case the preceding paragraphs weren’t clear: Liverpool FC as an FSG holding wasn’t clean. It was, though, perhaps the best possible outcome as far as ownership goes in that the money, more or less, is coming from the standard fare of uber wealthy folks. Bezos being involved, though, makes this feel a lot more sinister.
I don’t want to have this be a litany of misdeeds; I don’t know that serves to make a point. I also want to avoid getting into a hierarchy of bad. But it is important to name a few things that serve to paint a picture of who this man is. First, one can’t escape that in order to amass his wealth, Bezos has historically engaged in some of the worst employer practices in America. There are real horror stories about working in an Amazon Warehouse. And while unionization has taken hold in a few locations, Amazon has been among the most aggressive in terms of union busting.
If it were not enough for Bezos to be an exploitative boss, think of the ways in which his wealth is tied to the pernicious and explosive growth of surveillance tech. First, Amazon acquired Ring, the video doorbell company. Ring. Now, the tech is innocuous enough except, if you’ll remember, Ring got into some public hot water over the fact that they’d struck a deal with some law enforcement agencies to provide access to Ring footage without a warrant. They’d walked that back but in October of 2025, Ring announced a partnership with Flock which essentially provides a pathway for that footage to be accessed by law enforcement – including agencies like Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Coincidentally, this is the National Week of Action Against Automatic License Plate Readers (APLRs), which is a technology led by Flock. Besides a partnership with Flock, Amazon also has ties to Palantir, which is one of the other databases law enforcement – again, including ICE – uses to surveil people in America. Bezos, then, is exploiting workers and finding other funding streams by selling people’s privacy to law enforcement.
I could bring up other pieces but suffice to say that Bezos isn’t just some random rich guy. He’s someone that’s hoarded more wealth than any human can spend in a lifetime and, despite that, has devolved into some of the most grotesque business ventures – including cozying up to the current federal admin – in order to just make more money. It is a distinction that puts him in a select group of such folks – Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg being the others – that really should make most football fans crinkle their noses.
Most folks know I’m a Los Angeles sports diehard – the Lakers, Dodgers, and Kings took up the bulk of my imagination before finding Liverpool Football Club. And the first two are the only sports franchises that comes even remotely close to my sporting fandom. I name them, though, because of their own complicated history of ownership – the Dodgers having historically participated in the forced removal and destruction of a long-time Mexican-American community to build Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine, and more recently both the Lakers and Dodgers (briefly) sharing ownership via Mark Walters who was fine with letting ICE use team property to set up for raids that terrorized his own fanbase (and then brought the club to the White House).
Which is to say: I know what it’s like to root for owners that get themselves embroiled in not just unsavory activity, but in actively courting and then embiggening themselves upon relationships with people that are actively using their power to harm specific communities. That those communities constitute parts of their own fanbase is cruel, but it reminds me that they likely do see us as a mere blip on their accounting sheet; the loss of potential ticket and concession sales a mere drop. Worth the price of selling us out to the fascist specters on our doorstep.
I am not asking for people to stop rooting for Liverpool – I likely won’t – or encouraging a boycott as it’s not my place to do so. But I am asking for people to honestly confront and wrestle with what it means when the game and club we love so much is beholden to someone who can and has written off people we consider friends, neighbors, and family all in search for one more dollar he’ll never have the capacity to spend down.
I ask this because I’ve already seen people waffling and throwing qualifiers around Bezos as if he isn’t someone that’s actively participated in the harm I’ve seen and continue to see within the neighborhoods I live and work. And I wonder about that – especially given that some posts have been outright celebratory and already dreaming of having big transfer signings with “Amazon Prime” delivery.
This isn’t the same as sanctioning the death of a journalist in order to quell dissent. But is it so far off when the data – including our very faces – necessary to send government-sanctioned kidnappers to your home is being packaged by this guy? I struggle with that because I know people who’ve self-deported and have had to talk my child through what detention means because a parent’s classmate had been detained at one of the country’s most, if not the most, deadly facilities.
The impact of Bezos is felt directly by me and the people I love. And, I guess, I’m kind of wondering what it means to hope for a signing like the next Yan Diomande but to have it all be funded by the guy crushing families right here.
There’s no easy answer, but there is the reckoning and considering. And given Liverpool’s own history of struggle against oppressive governments and destructive narratives, my hope is that this space will be receptive to that. Just wrestle with the implications. Don’t let it easily slide by. And, maybe, let our conscience lead us to something like a plan. To something that might require courage but will lead us towards the voices of our better angels.
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