'The USA is very important to us'
With Liverpool having confirmed a three-game visit to North America during pre-season, we caught up with Managing Director Ian Ayre for his thoughts on what promises to be a spectacular tour.
Firstly Ian, how excited are you now that Liverpool have confirmed details of this summer's pre-season tour?
I'm very excited. I think often a lot is lost on people about how much work goes into the planning and some people throughout the team have put a lot into it. It's about trying to find a balance between a really, really important period for the players and the manager in preparing for the season ahead. But also, it's about creating the right sort of tour for the right opportunity for fans for wherever we go each year. It's about finding the right opportunity for our commercial partners. So it's a huge exercise taking 50 or so people on holiday - there's a lot of luggage to pack and we want people to get here and there. But we're very excited about the announcement.
There are lots of territories all over the world that would love to have LFC in their country, so why North America?
I think the answer sort of lies in the question really. Very fortunately we have a very big, expansive fan base across the world. We get one chance a year, other than European competitions to travel extensively and so we're trying to balance that. We particularly try to focus that in the non-tournament years, so when there's not a World Cup or a European Championship, we tend to go further afield, with Asia being the preferred destination in those years. Then in the tournament-based years, we try to make it a little bit closer to home and that's partly why the decision this year was America. The US and North America are very important to us. It figures very highly, in terms of the fanbase size we have, the appeal we have and we see that across all sorts of areas of our business. The number of visitors that come to our website, watch our TV, watch our games, shopping online with us, North America's a big market for us in that sense and it's just a great way of paying back all the great dedication and the support those fans have shown us by turning up in their back yard and giving them all the opportunities to touch and feel the product and see the players up close. I think everyone's excited about it.
Away from the commercial side of it, how important is the football and the quality of opposition that you've lined up? We've got an MLS side, then we play Roma and Tottenham. So it's high quality...
Yes it is and that's part of the planning and collaborative process that goes on when we pull the tour together. We sit with the coaching staff and we understand what point they feel the players will be in terms of their preparation and fitness and those types of things. So you tend to stage it so that the games get tougher and tougher. Then you balance that off with the quality of the game that fans will see. So we're really pleased with the three opponents and we think there's a really good mix. We've got some great memories of playing Roma in the past and obviously great memories of playing Tottenham every year. So I think it's a really good mix and I think that the fans who get to go to those games will see something very special.
It promises to be a memorable tour and of course the second game will be at Fenway Park on its 100th year anniversary. What sort of occasion are you expecting that to be when we take on Roma?
I've been talking to some of the guys at Fenway this week about their celebrations they had last week to celebrate the 100th anniversary. It's a very, very important time for them and everybody is very excited about this year at Fenway. I think it's fitting and right and fantastic for the owners and everyone at Fenway Sports Group (FSG) that Liverpool football Club, part of FSG, can be a part of that celebration. I think it's also perhaps the greatest opportunity we'll ever have to bring together the fans of the Red Sox and the fans of Liverpool and get people to understand that we're all in this together and we're all helping each other. And if we can pick up some new fans from the Red Sox and the Red Sox can pick up some new fans then, that's fantastic. It's a fantastic facility. If our fans ever get the chance to go there, which some will for the tour, it just very much reminded me of Anfield and the first time I ever went there. It's got that historic feel about it, it's got lots of memories, lots of history and it's just a great place to be in and I think we're all certainly looking forward to playing there.
I'm sure you speak to John and to Tom all the time, just give us an insight into what it means to them to be bringing Liverpool to a stadium which is so close to their hearts. What sort of an experience are they expecting?
I've never really asked them that but I guess that having made such a significant investment, John and all the shareholders at FSG, in Liverpool, part of it is about getting people to understand what it really means to own Liverpool Football Club. When you come here and you experience a great victory, whether it's at Anfield or the Carling Cup final or the FA Cup semi-final, it's very easy to see what you've bought and understand the passion and the excitement and the size of the brand.
We experienced last year on our tour, the real power of Liverpool's brand in places like Kuala Lumpar, where 80,000 people turned out for a game and nearly 40,000 people to watch a training session. So if you see and feel all of those things, you get a real sense of what you bought as an owner. And so I think this is one way or one opportunity to showcase that, at Fenway Park, to both Red Sox and to their friends and their partners and their business partners. So I think there must be a lot of excitement from that point of view. Bringing as many of the constituent parts of what makes up FSG together as often as possible, is fantastic.
Finally, it promises to be a memorable ten days, what do you hope we achieve, from both a club perspective and from a football perspective as well?
Well the football perspective is easy. What we always expect to achieve from that is to prepare the players in a pre-season period as best as we can. And it will be a good climate, with fantastic facilities. I was fortunate enough to be out there to see where we'll be based, where the players will train and the sort of facilities they'll have access to, which will be at Harvard University. And they're second to none. I think it probably will turn out to be one of the best facilities they've ever trained in.
And so if everybody comes back on the plane in good shape and ready to get going in next season for the Premier League and the Europa League then that's the best we can expect from a footballing perspective. From the rest of it, it's about making sure we deliver a fantastic experience, a fantastic memory for all our US fans. And then it's equally important that we deliver a useful and productive and valuable tour for our sponsors and partners because they contribute significantly to the business, to the football club and we're very grateful for that. Touring is an important part of them getting return on their investment in us. If we achieve all of those things it will be a great success. And certainly in the last four or five years that I've been around and gone on the tours, they have been successful and everybody's come back feeling good about it, so let's hope that it's the same with this one.
You can now buy tickets for our USA tour clash with Tottenham and win tickets to our first home Premier League game in 2012-13 by visiting www.lfctour.com.