The American owners of Liverpool F.C., one of soccer’s most storied teams, have hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to explore a sale of the club, a six-time European champion, according to two people with direct knowledge of the team’s plans.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the potential sale.
Word that Liverpool’s owners are mulling a potential sale comes only months after a group led by the California-based investment fund Clearlake paid a record $3 billion for Liverpool’s Premier League rival Chelsea. That deal was forced after Britain’s government slapped Chelsea’s former Russian billionaire owner with sanctions, but the sale price was high enough that it may have reset the market for the world’s biggest soccer teams.