Liverpool and FSG are guilty of making bad decisions.
When it comes to the on-field stuff, this team can’t really go wrong. Years of building the team slowly but surely have paid off with a Champions League win and a Premier League win.
But when it comes to the commercial side of things, they can still be a little bit American. That’s not always a bad thing, and it’s resulted in the massive kit deal with Nike.
However, they have scored a number of own goals off the back of it.
Yanks can fail to understand football teams as a social institution. How can they, when their franchises can be moved from city to city at an owner’s whim?
The price point of the new replica shirts is the latest in a long-line of commercial decisions that have sapped at the soul of Liverpool.
We’ve seen the furlough debacle, the issue with the trademark of the name Liverpool and the horrible choice to raise ticket prices. On a number of them, they’ve backed off, but it’s doubtful they will with Nike.
The thing is, their business nous has paid off. There was a queue to get into the online store when the kit was released and sizes were still limited to a handful of options.
But fleecing penny-pinched supporters for nearly a hundred quid runs against the social morals of Liverpool as an institution. Owner John Henry has faced some criticism on Twitter for the price, but many fans are still putting their hands in their pocket.
One way this could be fixed is to donate a tiny amount of each sale to charity – maybe the foodbank. This would turn a bad story, good, and it would give an extra incentive for those wavering on whether or not to complete that purchase.