As you said, we’ll be recognising him tomorrow against Sunderland. Obviously, he had some time at their cross-town rivals and we’ll be recognising him, and then we’ll recognise him before the Monaco match at Anfield on August 9. And we are in touch with Newcastle. Obviously, we open the season against Newcastle at St. James’ Park, so we’re talking to them about what we might do to recognise him there as well. Very sad to learn of Kevin’s passing.
Important periods obviously on the pitch for the team and getting ready for a new season, but also a really important period for you off the pitch, too?
Yeah, it’s a huge opportunity for us. Obviously, the US is a really important market. Coming off the back of what was a really exciting World Cup that has also, I think, just been great for the sport, great for football generally. This is something from our perspective where, as I said before, the opportunity for us to bring the club out to our supporters here in this market, to interact with our Official Liverpool Supporters Clubs, which we’ll be doing in every market that we’re in, and really getting a chance to interact with our partners that we have. Almost 40 per cent of our partners actually are here based in the US, so an opportunity to engage and activate with them.
And then there’s a huge part of what we do here on tour, which is also about the community, so LFC Foundation is here. As I say, they’re the hardest-working people on tour – morning until dusk they’re running soccer schools and events with different organisations. We’re really proud of contributing back to the community. We were at a children’s hospital here in Nashville, we’ll be doing the same in Chicago. So, it’s something that we take very seriously, this opportunity to bring the club out to our supporters and engage with them here on the ground in these markets.
Round it up for us then, why is the US so important to Liverpool, particularly on this tour?
Yeah, as I said before, the US is a really important market from our perspective. A huge fan base here, over 26 million supporters of the club, which, I’m told, actually the only US sports team that has more fans is the LA Lakers. So, a pretty good indication of the popularity of the club. It’s our No.1 international retail market. We are the No.2 most-watched team in European football here in the US. So, the team is incredibly popular.
It’s an important market from our perspective. As we mentioned before, we’ve got a number of our partners that are here. And so, all of that kind of comes together to make it a super-important market from our perspective. And as we said before, great facilities, a great opportunity for us to engage with the fans and a great spot for us to tour in. So, really excited to be here and excited to see all our fans here over the course of the next two weeks.
