Mukesh Ambani may be something of a mystery to football supporters in England. But to cricket fans in India, he is one of the most recognisable faces in the IPL.
He is the man who has propelled the Mumbai Indians into the franchise stratosphere, both on and off the pitch. A report, published by Forbes, valued the Mumbai outfit at $1.3bn (£1.1bn), making it the most valuable in the competition.
Sitting at the top of it all is Ambani, who is now seen as being the front-runner to buy Liverpool from its American owners, FSG. And even if they’re unwilling to part completely with a club they took over in 2010 – which some believe to be the case – then the Mumbai-based billionaire appears to be in pole position to spend at least some of his hard-earned fortune to purchase a considerable stake in the club.
If he does, then the 65-year-old – a man ranked as the 10th richest on the planet by Forbes with an estimated net worth of $90.7bn (£77bn) – will be bringing more than cash to Anfield. He will also carry the keys that Liverpool hope will open one of the world’s largest, but largely untapped, potential markets.
“An investment in, or an acquisition of, Liverpool delivers you one of football’s biggest trophy assets,” says Rob Wilson, football finance expert at Sheffield Hallam University.
“It’s an iconic cultural brand and it’s not a club you’d be able to acquire easily. John Henry and FSG have been able to reset the club after the fiasco of [George] Gillett and [Tom] Hicks. That has put the football club on a stable footing, both financially and in a sporting sense.
“The FFP regulations and the broader competitive framework across Europe means that, as a business, the football club is in a much better place for whoever comes in than it would have been 10 or 15 years ago.”
Although he comes with a reputation for driving the hardest of bargains, Ambani is a man with a history of investing in sport.
Back in June, an Ambani-backed venture, Viacom18, won the digital streaming rights for the IPL in a deal worth an eye-watering 238 billion rupees (£2.6bn). That figure is now higher than that of the TV rights, which illustrates both the changing face of broadcasting and also Ambani’s ambition to play a central role in a future dominated by digital.
The story of Asia’s richest man is hardly a rags-to-riches tale. Ambani is no real-life Slumdog Millionaire.
His father owned Reliance – best known by cricket lovers as the headline sponsor of the 1987 World Cup, which was held in India – a petrochemicals and oil refining company.
Ambani took control of the firm in 2005, three years after his father’s death – and set his sights on becoming a major player in the tech industry, something he has succeeded in doing through Jio, the mobile operator he launched in 2016. It has since grown to be the largest in India, and a company that Facebook ploughed $5.7bn (£4.86bn) into in April 2021.
Ambani’s financial clout means his power is almost unparalleled. One government official recently described Reliance as operating “as an independent state within a state”. Ministers are, he added, very “wary of Mukesh Ambani because he is so powerful and there is a sense that he needs to be handled with care.”
That would suggest that he’s a difficult man to say no to. Although that’s something FSG have managed to do without too much bother in the recent past. “These are people who are used to having things their own way,” says one key figure from the IPL’s earliest days. “Their wealth affords them a huge amount of power in India. What Mukesh Ambani wants, Mukesh Ambani generally gets.
“I remember one story of a franchise trying very hard to keep a player but being told in no uncertain terms that that player would be moving to the Mumbai Indians. Guess where he ended up?”
It’s the sort of negotiation approach that most Liverpool fans would approve of. First, though, he has to convince FSG that he’s their ideal buyer.
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