New threat to move Premier League games abroad: Liverpool chairman says he’s ‘determined’ to have matches in New York and multiple global cities all in one day – with a bizarre plan for travelling fans

Liverpool chairman Tom Werner has expressed his ambition to watch Premier League matches played abroad.

The English top club, which has been called the Premier League since 1992, has never played a match outside Great Britain in its history, although such an event seems to be getting closer.

There have been a number of proposals over the years to present the competition on a larger scale, most recently the European Super League, which was announced in 2021 and met with major backlash from fans.

A number of arguments have been made as to why this would happen, with the monetization benefit being clear and others stating that it would help the league grow globally by allowing more fans to watch and interact with teams.

It’s a proposal that Werner, an American whose group Fenway Sports Group took over Liverpool in 2010, is enthusiastic about, as he told the Financial times.

“I am determined to have a Premier League match played in New York City one day,” he said. “I even have this crazy idea that there would be a day where we would play one game in Tokyo, one game a few hours later in Los Angeles, one game a few hours later in Riyadh and make it a kind of day where football , where the Premier League is celebrated.’

Werner’s proposal is similar to that of Game 39, which was first conceived in 2008. An extra round of Premier League matches would have been played around the world midway through the season.

The event was planned to start in the 2010-2011 season and then in 2013-2014, but that has not yet happened as the FA ruled it was ‘unsustainable’.

During the event, venues are said to have bid to host unspecified games, with coverage available for all 10 games due to staggered start times.

Werner co-owner John W. Henry apologized after his side pulled out of the Super League plan hours after it was announced, but appeared to suggest regular season matches should be held abroad, meaning fewer matches would be held by home teams. ‘stadiums, instead playing at neutral venues.

The American, who owns the Boston Red Sox in Major League Baseball in addition to a number of other sports teams, proposed a way to prevent fans from England from being unable to watch their side.

“Let’s figure out a way to offer them very cheap travel and accommodation,” he said. ‘When Liverpool play Nottingham Forest we will support fans coming to New York and make it attractive for the fans too.

The Premier League has previously said it has no plans to stage matches abroad, but Manchester City’s struggles against the Premier League could be a deciding factor if this happens in the near future.

Major changes to the Premier League rules require 14 of the 20 clubs to vote in favor of the deal, but that could all change if City prevail in arbitration.

Daniel Gore, a senior associate at law firm Withers, said The Athletics of how a two-thirds majority rule is generally applied in corporate proceedings.

He said: ‘It is difficult to imagine how effective governance could take place without such a threshold, so the challenge from Manchester City could throw the Premier League’s governance structure into chaos and make it more difficult to make any decision .’

The number of clubs have American owners who, for example, want matches to be played in the US, or want to implement rules of American sports leagues, such as closed competitions or how TV revenue is divided between the teams.

A move to have, for the sake of argument, five Premier League matches played in the US could require only eleven votes in the future if all clubs cast their votes, rather than the fourteen currently required by the two-thirds majority rule.