Report: John Henry Spent $169 Million More On Liverpool Than Red Sox This Year

Report: Henry Spent $169 Million More On Liverpool Than Red Sox This Year

February 9, 2012 1:29 PM

John Henry (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)

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BOSTON (CBS) — The Red Sox and general manager Ben Cherington’s insistence that the team is on a budget has understandably rubbed some fans the wrong way. With Fenway Park having the most expensive tickets in baseball and with owner John Henry having seemingly endlessly deep pockets, the concept just does not make sense on the surface.

A new report by CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman may explain the sudden change in spending philosophy.

Heyman calculates that all of the Red Sox’ minor deals this offseason cost the team about $10 million. By contrast, Henry has spent $169 million on Liverpool, the English football club which he purchased in late 2010.

“Henry’s outlay of loot for his Liverpool soccer team was $179 million this year, or about 20 times what he spent on the Red Sox,” Heyman wrote. “Forward Andy Carroll got 35 million pounds ($54.7 million), forward Luis Suarez got 23 million pounds ($35.9 million), midfielder Stewart Downing 20 million pounds ($31.2 million), midfielder Jordan Henderson 16 million pounds ($25 million), midfielder Charlie Adam 7.5 million pounds ($11.7 million), defenseman Sebastian Coates seven million pounds ($10.9 million) and defenseman Jose Enrique got 6.3 million pounds ($9.8 million).”

For some contrast, Heyman explains that the Red Sox traded Marco Scutaro for Clay Mortenson to save $6 million, content to let Mike Aviles and Nick Punto battle it out for the shortstop position. After dropping millions on Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford last winter, the team has taken a much more conservative approach to filling out the roster for 2012.

When Henry talked with Felger and Massarotti in October, he said his business interests with the Red Sox and Liverpool did not get in the way of each other.

Report: Henry Spent $169 Million More On Liverpool Than Red Sox This Year

John Lefrancois

In fairness, Liverpool also sold at least $75 million in players last year as well.
Raj

Oh my good lord. You don’t even know the basics!

The players didn’t get their transfer fees. The clubs did.

You appeared to have completely ignored the incoming transfer fees Liverpool got for selling players. £50 million for Fernando Torres is just one example.

You really should be embarrassed to be writing this having done so little research on the basics of how the transfer system operates.

I think you should retract this and print an apology to Red Sox fans for misleading them.
http://polacko.wordpress.com mpolacko

They are NEW owners of a club that was and still is in need of much rebuilding to return to its former glory. Henry actually reduced the wage bill this season and those players did not get the stated amounts in this article as those were the transfer fees the club paid to purchase them from other clubs. The Atlantic divide in knowledge levels of the other sides sports, truly is staggering.
Pedey

This is some of the worst reporting I’ve seen. No mention of revenues generated by each organization. No mention that while new Red Sox contracts cost $10 million, existing contracts are on the books for about $170 million this year. No mention that John Henry is not the Red Sox or the soccer team, each of which are separate entities with other owners. No mention of the length of the Liverpool deals. This was written either by a second grader, someone with absolutely no business knowledge, someone trying to trash John Henry’s reputation or someone screaming for an attention-getting headline. The whole article is garbage and should be deleted. Posting this article calls into question the integrity or competence of the owners of CBS4.
Juan

Red Sox and soccer are gay….