Moore, Hogan and the ever-evolving role of Liverpool CEO

Peter Moore, Liverpool, Billy Hogan
By Simon Hughes and James Pearce
Aug 9, 2020

The Camp & Furnace sits in the heart of Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle, an old warehouse transformed into a trendy bar, restaurant and music venue. It has also been used as a bingo hall.

It is where Peter Moore introduced himself to Liverpool’s staff after he started work as the club’s new chief executive in the summer of 2017.

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Moore gave a presentation on the big screen about his vision for Liverpool. He talked about the mantra of needing to operate with “a local heart but a global pulse”.

He wanted to strengthen links and give back to the Merseyside community, while also looking further afield to the club’s army of supporters across the world. Engagement was at the heart of his plan to enhance and grow the business – making people feel part of something special whether they lived in Speke or Sydney.

“Peter was a breath of fresh air,” one staff member based in the club’s Chapel Street offices in the city tells The Athletic. “The atmosphere changed in a positive way. From the start, he was very approachable. He asked why we were wearing a shirt and tie to work? He said: ‘We’re a sports organisation, wear what you feel most comfortable in’.

“Internal communications improved a lot. You started to get told a lot more about what was happening inside the club and there was a big investment in technology across the board. He didn’t have a seat at the desk in his office overlooking the Liver Building. He explained that he preferred to stand as he felt he got more done and was more productive that way.”

The attraction for owners Fenway Sports Group was two-fold. Moore had enjoyed a highly successful business career in America in senior roles for gaming giants SEGA, Microsoft and EA Sports. He was tech-savvy.

He was also Liverpool born and bred and a lifelong fan of the club. His dad Terry was a freight worker at the docks who later ran a pub in the Garston area of the city. His mum Marilyn was a nurse at Alder Hey Hospital.

Having been taken to Anfield for the first time in 1959, Moore had graduated from the boys’ pen to the paddock and was then a regular on the standing Kop.

After a stint as a PE teacher in North Wales, he moved to the States in the early 1980s where he initially worked in the sportswear industry for Patrick and then Reebok. He had no plans to return to Merseyside until FSG came calling some 36 years after he had emigrated.

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Moore walked into a club which had qualified for the Champions League for only the second time in the space of eight seasons courtesy of a nervy final day win over Middlesbrough.

Three years on, he’s preparing to stand down at the end of August with Jurgen Klopp’s side having won the Champions League and the Premier League, as well as lifting the UEFA Super Cup and the Club World Cup.

“I’m not sure there’s ever a great time (to leave) but if there was a great time it’s now,” Moore told LFCTV. “We’re the champions of everything and everywhere. The world, Europe and the one we really wanted after 30 years of waiting, champions of England. They are memories I will cherish forever.”

Moore’s three-year contract expired at the start of June. A short extension was agreed until the end of August in order for the 65-year-old to help guide the Premier League champions through the ongoing issues associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to the official announcement in late July, he had long since known that his time at Liverpool was coming to an end with his plush house on the Wirral peninsula already up for sale.

August represents a month-long transition period with Moore working alongside his successor Billy Hogan, who has been promoted by FSG from the role of managing director and chief commercial officer. The date for the formal handover of duties is September 1.

While the offer of a new long-term deal wasn’t forthcoming from the owners, the parting of the ways is amicable. Moore still represented Liverpool alongside chairman Tom Werner at Thursday’s Premier League AGM.

“There’s no anger or bad feeling on either side,” one senior Anfield source tells The Athletic. “In the end it was a mutual decision in that all parties agreed what was best for the club going forward. There’s been a succession plan in place with Billy for a while and Peter knew that.

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“Peter and his wife Debbie have six children between them back in the States who they rarely get to see, especially with the pandemic. The time is right for them to move back there and spend more time with them.”

Moore’s legacy won’t be the trophies Liverpool won during his tenure. After all, football operations have been taken care of by the trinity of FSG president Mike Gordon, sporting director Michael Edwards and Klopp.

Unlike Ayre before him, Moore wasn’t involved in the recruitment or the retention of players. But he was responsible for the day-to-day running of a business which employs some 800 people and had thrived with record revenues before COVID-19 struck.

There were some controversies and mistakes along the way but where Moore undoubtedly triumphed was in reconnecting Liverpool with its local community. From the off, he was a passionate supporter of the work of the LFC Foundation, the club’s official charity, and the Red Neighbours initiative, which helps those battling social deprivation in the Anfield area.

He didn’t just talk a good game, he got his hands dirty. He got involved in the walking football sessions and attended breakfast clubs for local kids. His wife Debbie gave up her time to teach yoga to the over-50s.

Before every game at Anfield, Moore would turn up laden with Tesco bags to make his own personal donation to the foodbanks.

Member of Parliament for Liverpool West Derby and lifelong LFC fan Ian Byrne co-founded Fans Supporting Foodbanks. They were given a new collection van by the Peter Moore Foundation. “We will always be eternally grateful for the support and advice Peter afforded us over the years in helping us build our initiative,” Byrne says.

Two treatment rooms at Alder Hey in the name of his mum and a new classroom at Anfield Sports and Community Centre in memory of his dad were paid for.

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The work of James’ Place, Liverpool’s only male suicide prevention centre, the LFC Foundation’s mental health initiative for those struggling with COVID-19, a teenage facility at Clatterbridge Cancer Centre and a children’s programme at Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra were all funded either directly by Moore himself or via his foundation. “I’m a Scouser and it’s important to remember your roots,” he says.

Moore forged and strengthened relationships between the club and key figures such as Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson, the region’s Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram and Merseyside Police chief constable Andy Cooke. He commissioned an economic impact report which showed that nearly £500 million per year flows into the city as a result of Liverpool FC.

He has always been a vocal supporter of LGBT rights and marched through the city during Liverpool Pride. “Equality, diversity and inclusion is what we’re all about,” Moore told the media.

He’s a rarity – a football executive on Twitter, joking that he “learned words that I didn’t know existed but the value of what I get out of being engaged on social media far outweighs the negativity of the name-calling, the trolling and the keyboard warriors that come out”.

When he travels across the world, he always pays a visit to at least one of Liverpool’s global network of 300-plus official supporters’ clubs. From Cape Town to Shanghai, Bangkok to Los Angeles, he has given presentations to fans and stayed around to have a beer with them and share stories.

At times his sheer passion for Liverpool and his willingness to chat and engage has led to him arguably saying too much.

Eyebrows were raised both at Melwood and in Boston when he talked at the World Football Summit in Madrid about Liverpool being “back on our perch” in the wake of winning the Champions League final in 2019. It was 12 months premature.

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His comments about Liverpool being “a socialist club” and how when it comes to business decisions they always ask themselves “what would Bill Shankly do?” seemed at odds with the rampant capitalism of the Premier League.

For example, it’s unthinkable that Shankly would have approved of Liverpool’s support for a £5 million “golden handshake” from the 20 top-flight clubs for outgoing Premier League executive chairman Richard Scudamore in 2018.

Those words were duly thrown back in his direction in April when Liverpool announced plans to furlough around 200 staff.

The furious backlash at the prospect of a club valued at around £2 billion and with annual revenues in excess of £530 million using government funds led to a dramatic U-turn 48 hours later.

It was Moore who penned an open letter to supporters to inform them the club was “truly sorry” for coming to the “wrong conclusion” and that they would find “alternative means” to cover wages.

From a business perspective, Moore, Hogan and Gordon had initially been in agreement that using the furlough scheme was crucial to help ease cash-flow issues and safeguard jobs. They pointed to the fact that bigger companies than Liverpool had turned to the government for help but they had misjudged the mood.

Negative headlines were also generated by the club’s attempts to trademark the word “Liverpool” for goods and services, which was rejected by the Intellectual Property Office last September. Moore had pursued it vigorously, insisting Liverpool FC were “under attack” from the large scale manufacturing of counterfeit goods, costing the club millions of pounds each season in lost revenue.

Despite trying to reassure local traders and non-League clubs such as City of Liverpool and AFC Liverpool that they wouldn’t be affected, concerns remained with supporters’ union Spirit of Shankly welcoming the decision not to allow the word to become the club’s property. No appeal was ever lodged.

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Moore’s tenure as chairman of Liverpool FC Women was a tale of contrasts.

He was the driving force behind Vicky Jepson’s squad being incorporated into the men’s pre-season tour for the first time last summer when they headed for America. He also ensured that Anfield hosted its first WSL game last November when more than 23,000 fans watched them in action against Everton. He sorted out new city-centre accommodation for the players and pushed the merits of the women’s game more than any other senior figure at Liverpool.

Yet criticism abounded last season — from the size of the budget of the women’s team to the state of the pitch they had to play on at Tranmere Rovers — as they suffered the ignominy of relegation.

Issues have since been addressed with Moore championing the need for the club to provide greater assistance in terms of facilities and resources.

On the night that Jordan Henderson lifted the Premier League trophy to the heavens, Moore stood in the Anfield directors’ box watching the celebrations unfold. At one stage he was flanked by icons Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush as the trio sipped Champagne.

It wasn’t a bad way to sign off. Come the autumn, he will move back to the San Francisco Bay area on the west coast of America.

Back to setting his alarm for 4am to watch Liverpool’s lunchtime kick-offs. Back to being a fan rather than a chief executive. Back to spending more time with his family.

He intends to take stock and see what other opportunities arise before deciding whether, at the age of 65, retirement beckons.

Moore didn’t always get everything right at Liverpool but his heart was always in the right place. From the outset his mission was to ensure that he left the club in better shape than when he first walked in and on that front he certainly succeeded.


From the highest floors of the city’s second Four Seasons Hotel, the views stretched across the Charles River and in the middle-distance small yachts bobbed about in the bay’s gentle waters. Little over a year ago, Billy Hogan was on territory he knew well. Yet in the space of a 40-minute interview with The Athletic, he described Boston as well as Liverpool as “home”.

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Home, because Boston is where he made his first steps with Fenway Sports Management just before the Red Sox clinched their first World Series in something like a gazillion years. Home, because Liverpool is where his responsibilities and profile have gradually increased since transferring his absolute focus to what was happening on Merseyside in 2012.

In late July, it was announced that Hogan, who was born and raised in Cleveland, will become Liverpool’s new chief executive in September after eight years as chief commercial officer. In three of those years, he has also acted as managing director.

Across that period, he has helped triple commercial revenues at Anfield. From the suite at the top of the Four Seasons, he explained that his team had identified that Liverpool’s reach was actually much further than anyone imagined with surveys revealing the club has as many as 700 million followers across the planet. This meant digital and social media “created an incredible opportunity for us to engage with fans, regardless of where they are”. Numbers generated from those platforms have proven a major selling point when it comes to discussions with potential partners.

Hogan was instrumental in establishing club offices in London in 2014, which helped accelerate commercial growth because, quite simply, it became logistically a lot easier to hold meetings.

He has since renegotiated a shirt-sponsorship deal with Standard Chartered which runs until 2023 and is understood to be worth around £40 million a year, alongside lucrative agreements with Western Union as a shirt sleeve sponsor as well as training kit deals with BetVictor and then AXA. There have also been partnerships with companies like Levi’s, Nivea Men and Quorn.

The deal with Western Union, which was worth around £5 million per year, expired this summer and The Athletic can reveal that Liverpool are currently in talks with a number of interested parties to replace them.

“As Premier League champions the club is in a strong position to be discussing options in the market,” insists a senior Anfield source. “We won’t rush the process and we may even start the new season without a sleeve partner.”

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Mike Gordon oversees the running of Liverpool from his home in Brookline and he was impressed by the way Hogan handled negotiations with Nike, who officially became Liverpool’s kit manufacturer at the start of August after New Balance lost a legal battle to retain the contract.

Hogan negotiated the terms of a five-year deal which sees Liverpool bank a lower flat fee that they got from New Balance — £30 million per season compared to £40 million.

However, Liverpool will receive royalties of 20 per cent on all net sales of merchandise. There is also a £4 million bonus for winning the Champions League, £2 million for being Champions League runners-up and £2 million for clinching the Premier League title.

The Athletic understands that under Liverpool’s projections, based on ambitious global sales and continued on-field progress, that would bank a windfall of between £60 million and £70 million per year.

Nike’s more extensive global distribution network and their commitment to use their sporting icons to market Liverpool was a major appeal for Hogan.

The benefits of switching suppliers was highlighted this week when NBA superstar LeBron James was pictured wearing Liverpool’s new home jersey when he reported for the LA Lakers’ game against Oklahoma City Thunder.

James has a two per cent minority stake in Liverpool which he received after a tie-up between his marketing firm, LRMR, and Fenway Sports Management, the sponsorship arm of Fenway Sports Group. Discussions are ongoing over further collaborations with James’ management team.

Quietly, Hogan was able to prepare for his own promotion by hiring Matt Scammell as a new commercial director. He replaces Olly Dale, who left Liverpool last year.

Scammell’s arrival after nine years at Manchester United where he worked as the head of global sponsorship sales did not get a mention on the club’s website but Hogan has since saluted his “vast experience and expertise”.

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Back in 2004, John W Henry, Tom Werner and Gordon were looking at ways of driving revenues outside of the Red Sox’s standard streams of income. Hogan was the first person hired in a new commercial department, ahead of Sam Kennedy who is now the Red Sox CEO. By the summer of 2019, as he eased back into a leather chair at the Four Seasons, Hogan was able to explain the key differences between the commercial operations at baseball franchises and football clubs and it was clear that because of greater freedoms, the possibilities in the latter excited him more.

“The commercial side of the Red Sox is principally local in nature. Anything outside of New England is outside of the Red Sox control. A sponsorship with a major drinks company, for example, could only appear in New England. They couldn’t advertise it in New York. The principal commercial strands in baseball are through sponsorship and ticketing. With 162 games a season, with 81 at home, we’ve got a lot of tickets to sell. This means tickets are a huge part of revenue in baseball. Then there’s league revenues that come in like merchandising which is controlled by MLB. When you buy a Red Sox cap, that revenue goes back into central baseball and it gets split 30 ways. Even though the Red Sox might sell more caps than another club they’re getting an equal share of the revenue. It’s another way of effectively levelling the field. The same happens with media output.

“Compare that to Liverpool… we control our markets outside of the live rights that are sold for the Premier League collectively. We have the ability to retail our product on a global basis. In sponsorship, we can go outside of our markets in the UK. Outside of the live rights we also control our media and monetise that content on a global basis…”

By 2019, Liverpool had the highest viewing figures of any Premier League team on NBC. Meanwhile, the highest number of hits on the club’s website from a country other than the UK was in the US. This meant his homeland was viewed as a “critical market”.

“When I was growing up it was very difficult to watch live football unless it was the World Cup, you had to search hard,” he said. “Now it’s on every weekend, Saturday and Sunday morning and it’s a terrific time because nothing else is on other than cartoons. NBC have spoken about a new daypart that’s been created.

“Kids didn’t wear Premier League kits but now they do,” he continued. “The access to the content and the video game side of it has absolutely helped. My son plays FIFA constantly and he knows every player at every club through that. It helps that the content is incredibly compelling and available all of the time. In that 25-and-under age group, people are legitimately fans of clubs because they’ve grown up watching the teams whereas that just wasn’t the case 25 years ago.”

His job at Liverpool in his own words as a commercial executive was to simply “drive as much revenue as we possibly can to then drive that back into the club so that Jurgen and Michael can reinvest that back into the football club”.

As chief executive, his duties will be broader than that but clearly his creative understanding of how to make money in the midst of a pandemic will surely be crucial at a football club that exists in a real economic world.


Before 1998 there was no chief executive at Liverpool. The responsibilities of that role fell with the secretary. Peter Robinson was a respected figure and on at least two occasions the FA tried to poach him. His Lancashire roots meant he preferred rugby and cricket to football but that did not mean he knew the job any less. Bill Shankly’s campaigning to remove decision-making processes from directors ended at Robinson’s door, someone he wanted to take with him to Sunderland on one of the many occasions when he threatened to leave if he didn’t get what he wanted.

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It has been claimed that the Liverpool board failed to capitalise on the team’s success and comparisons are made with the operation at Manchester United many years later. Context is often lost in this discussion because the environments in which each club’s glory years fell was very different. A commercial department did not exist at Liverpool because football did not have the exposure it gained in the 1990s through enormously profitable television deals.

It was viewed as controversial when Robinson brokered the English top flight’s first ever shirt-sponsorship deal with Hitachi in 1979. This was worth £100,000 to Liverpool across two years, though the terms of the agreement fell in line with branding restrictions and this meant the Japanese conglomerate only had their logos on shirts for league games that were not televised.

Robinson tried to increase revenues by ensuring Liverpool became the first club to sell replica shirts but this innovation came at the start of the 1980s, a decade which hit Liverpool, as a city, hard economically. While few match-goers possessed the finance to splash out on what was then considered a luxury item, there was also very little will. This was a period where the casual culture infiltrated the terraces of English football grounds and even supporters of other clubs sometimes recognise the phenomenon started in Liverpool.

It would be understandable if Robinson was frustrated by the terrain he was operating on. The new Kop grandstand was built in 1994 with Sky money while other clubs spent on players. This meant he needed to find ways of increasing revenues and one of those solutions was leasing part of the stand to McDonald’s. This move was met with a similar resistance and the relationship between Liverpool and the fast-food giant lasted only a few seasons.

Today, Liverpool’s business operation is away from Anfield, with a headquarters at Chapel Street in the city centre as well as the office in London. Under Robinson, the entire club was run from two small rooms beneath the stadium’s main stand. One was the manager’s office. The other door led into Robinson’s workplace. Separating them was a hallway with two plastic orange chairs where visitors used to wait. If Liverpool was the best-run corner shop in the country, it was nevertheless a corner shop. Robinson tasked Geoff Twentyman, the chief scout, with the job of banking profits made from gate receipts in a vault in Bootle and Twentyman would drive across town in his hand-me-down Ford Corsair without any security.

Robinson prided himself on day-to-day priorities like logistics and he took charge of arrangements for European away trips. This included the hiring of buses as well as the booking of flights and hotels along with meal planning. By the mid to late 1990s, Robinson was in his sixties and Rick Parry, 30 or so years his junior, was a Chester-born accountant who had worked on Manchester’s bid for the Olympics in 1996. This led to a role with the Premier League when it launched in 1992 where he became the organisation’s first chief executive. When he was approached by a Premier League club to become CEO he realised that the only club he really wanted to work for was Liverpool. So he called Robinson and in his own flat way told him, “Peter, I’d quite like your job”.

Privately, Robinson had decided to retire in 2000. Parry arrived three years earlier, initially in a shadow role that involved individual projects like the building of the academy in Kirkby. When Robinson walked out unexpectedly in 1999, Parry stepped up and for the next 10 years he was in charge. As a supporter of the club, he later admitted to feeling “an enormous sense of responsibility”, especially when the team didn’t meet expectations and supporters went looking for reasons. Football’s finances changed dramatically in the 1990s, but it accelerated faster than ever before in the following decade. It was during this period that Liverpool were attempting to catch up with its rivals off the pitch while somehow remain competitive on it.

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In 1999, Parry estimated that Liverpool needed to qualify for the Champions League for three seasons in every five in order to have the financial power and relevance to challenge United, Arsenal and latterly Chelsea. Liverpool could afford one season out of European football and another in what was then the UEFA Cup. Though he was supported by staff, all of the big meetings and decisions were on him. Parry reported to David Moores, the chairman and owner. Moores left the running of the club to Parry, who like Robinson was central to match planning arrangements but also had what potentially would have been the biggest move ever made by the club on his agenda. Parry believed a new stadium would shape the club’s future for at least the next 25 years. On reflection, he wishes he would have delegated more on the smaller issues.

Though Liverpool won almost everything there is to win during Parry’s tenure, he was heavily criticised especially for his prominence in Moores’ decision to sell the club to Tom Hicks and George Gillett. This led to a civil war paralysing the club and Parry’s time came to an end after Hicks lambasted him in a TV interview held in the billionaire’s front room in Texas.

“On the odd occasion you’d come across people you hadn’t seen since school. They’d inevitably say, ‘Blimey, you’ve got the best job in the world’.” Parry later reflected. “You’d pause for a minute and only then would it dawn. ‘I suppose I have actually. Thanks for reminding me! It didn’t always feel like that’.”

His replacement in 2009 was Christian Purslow, who was given a different title as managing director but assumed more or less the same duties. Purslow’s priority was the task of renegotiating a £350 million loan with Royal Bank of Scotland. Though he was successful in securing a four-year shirt sponsorship deal with Standard Chartered, he proved to be an even more unpopular figure than Parry after it became clear that he had not only assumed transfer responsibilities but imposed his will on new manager Roy Hodgson as to who should be bought and who should be sold.

Purslow lasted 15 months. Though he favoured New England Sports Ventures in a bidding process as the club lurched towards financial meltdown, one of the first things the new owners did was get rid of him. Replacement Ian Ayre had also been involved in the sale and it was decided by Fenway Sports Group, as they became, that it would be wise to have a Merseyside native in charge. Ayre replaced Purslow as managing director in early 2011 before earning promotion to chief executive level three years later.

Ayre was another divisive figure. His legacy project proved to be the new £110 million Main Stand at Anfield – a significant development in Liverpool’s modern history given the way it has helped improve the club’s revenue streams. Yet locally, his reputation took a hit when he featured on the Being: Liverpool documentary in 2012 where he rode through the streets of the city on a Harley Davidson. Like Parry and Purslow before him, he was criticised for his transfer record — particularly for the number of deals that he failed to get over the line. Meanwhile club insiders felt like Ayre was always looking over his shoulder and this meant many of those working for him felt the same way. Culturally, Liverpool remained damaged from the civil war of 2007-09, which Ayre was a part of having been hired by Hicks as a finance officer.

Ayre bragged about driving up the club revenues through shirt sales of bad signings like Mario Balotelli and made himself unpopular amongst contemporaries from lower-ranking Premier League clubs when he suggested that elite brands like Liverpool should be able to broker their own television rights deals abroad.

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Though he suggested to FSG in 2016 that Liverpool’s supporters would react badly to a new ticket price structure for the Main Stand, he did not argue his case forcefully enough and ended up doing an interview which implied that he was in total agreement with the move. His warning that fans should be “careful what they wish for” came across like a threat and the next day, more than 10,000 supporters walked out of Anfield in the 77th minute of a game against Sunderland. The planned ticket price increases were ditched.

Within a fortnight, it was announced that Ayre would be leaving Liverpool — albeit via a long farewell that lasted 15 months. This transition period allowed FSG to consider their options. It had always been their intention to restructure the club into different departments led by specialists, but the key was finding the right person to act as sporting director. Edwards had already assumed several key responsibilities from Ayre by the time of the walk-out and within six months, he was given the role that had lay vacant since Damien Comolli’s departure in 2012.

Hogan was considered as Ayre’s obvious replacement but the role of CEO was changing. With Edwards in place, no longer did the incumbent need to worry about transfer dealings. FSG recognised Liverpool needed a friendlier face at the front desk. Hogan was doing well as chief commercial officer and finding ways of exploiting the possibilities created by the Main Stand development as well as through the achievements of Klopp’s team. This combination led the owners towards Moore. Now they believe the time is right for Hogan to step up.

(Photo: John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

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