Science and Emotion: The Enigma of John W Henry

MUCH is known about John W Henry’s life, it’s pretty difficult to own two of the biggest sporting institutions in the world and remain anonymous, but despite this, Henry remains somewhat of an enigma.

It has been 3 years since FSG, then known as NESV, purchased Liverpool Football Club. In that time John W Henry has assumed a distant role opting only to offer his input when it seems wholly necessary. It has proved a sensible and appropriate means of contributing to Liverpool’s success.

Meddlers have never been welcome in football, at Liverpool it cannot be countenanced. Tom Hicks and George Gillett were the closest Liverpool have come to interfering owners, they were protested against and ultimately jettisoned. A repeat would be most unwelcome.

Henry is clearly a man who pays attention to such details.

His first interview following the purchase of the club was from PR 101. He raised an issue which the supporters were already worried about in discussing that the stadium was something that they were going to research before acting. He stated that he had no promises to make, except that they would work hard to make the fans proud of the team and he hoped to deliver results. In effect, he used his time to try to manage expectations while stating the obvious aim for progress on and off the pitch.

It was perhaps a demonstration in what was to follow. Henry has become an important part of Liverpool’s public and media persona opting to weigh in only to push the abort button when disaster has approached the club. The open letter to Liverpool fans at the start of last season after failing to secure a striker was clearly an exercise in bomb disposal. John Henry accepted the mistake and promised to learn from it. He also offered a rationale about their decisions. Dempsey was not a player that would make the difference to Liverpool’s season, if it was not a good deal Liverpool would now walk away.

It was an education for the fans as much as for Henry and the lesson had been learned very well. The January window was executed with perfection. Deals were done early and the signings immediately improved the team. This summer, as deadline day approached Liverpool could relax, their deals were done and new recruits were confirmed early leaving all reds to a good night’s sleep.

He was next brought to focus when brushing away Arsenal’s interest in star striker Luis Suarez with the brilliant quip ‘What do you think they’re smoking over there?’ his subsequent confirmation that Luis Suarez would not be sold brought an end to the matter and made Liverpool look strong as well as cool in both senses of the word.

Yet, his ability to choose the right time to interject as well as his decisiveness are not the only examples of the attention he pays to his investments.

The most enlightening thing to read about Henry is in how he made his money. Now trading farming produce on future markets might not be a topic which will enthral or capture you. You’re not alone in that view. What is interesting are the principles by which Henry made his moves in the market. The next sentence is one which will resonate with much that you have read about Moneyball, sabermetrics and Liverpool Football Club. Henry applied a mathematical system to remove elements of emotion in deciding what markets to trade in.

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Effectively, John W Henry let science rule the heart in deciding how he would invest his money. The result was an overwhelming success for the Illinois born businessman. No wonder he was intrigued by the application of the same rules in the field of sport, one of the most emotional businesses that exists.

There is still an element of regret, doubt and emptiness when the words sport and business are so intertwined. No longer do people see the business of sport as simply the winning of competitive fixtures. The business of sport is in developing a brand, an identity and monetising it.

The remit of FSG is to obtain competitive advantages through merchandising, sponsorships and recruiting players and staff that perform equal to or greater than their value. Their means of taking Liverpool to the top is by removing the emotion from their decisions and using a system to yield the best results.

It is a method that has proved successful with the Boston Red Sox. Having bought the team, they appointed Theo Epstein at the age of 28 as the youngest General Manager in the history of the game. 2 years later they had won the World Series then repeated the trick in 2007. What would seem like a high risk move turned out to be an ingenious calculation. The inexperienced man guided the team right to the top.

The similarity with Liverpool is obvious. After terminating club hero Kenny Dalglish’s contract, Henry assessed Andre Villas-Boas and Roberto Martinez as potential managers but finally appointed Brendan Rodgers to take charge of Liverpool FC. All three of these were young managers and seemed like risky selections but they are now all faring well at their respective clubs. Henry has made a living out of making decisions that seem high risk at face value; in reality he has scrutinised the options to make the most cost effective choice.

Yet despite all the talk about money and investment, Henry himself after purchasing Liverpool labelled those looking to make profit from sports institutions as requiring ‘their heads examined’. In the strictest sense this is true. To remain competitive, clubs need constant investment so taking profit out of a club is counter productive. However Liverpool’s current value on Forbes’ assessment in April this year was £415m. Add Champions League football, a bigger stadium and greater TV deals and Liverpool could be worth £1bn in 2-3 years time. While that may seem ludicrous to some, the same measure valued Arsenal at £846m and Man Utd at over £2bn. Were Henry to sell at that price it would represent around a 300% return on a 5-6 year investment.

However, having bested the Curse of the Bambino placed on the Red Sox, John Henry has not simply looked to cash out and walk away. Perhaps his calculations suggest that the Red Sox’s peak value is yet to arrive but this doesn’t resonate with the man who longed to be a rock ‘n’ roll star in his youth. His resurrection of the Red Sox has been a benign one and so far it has been the same with Liverpool. Perhaps being a part of a sporting success is as good for the ego as it is for the wallet.

Perhaps it is a case of realising that boyhood dream of being at the top of sport. Given the same opportunity, many of us would love to run successful sports club. We have never had the ability to compete on the field – the next best thing is to manage or own the team and oversee the recovery. I myself will never amount to a sporting giant but if I had the finances, just like Mr Henry, I could have a World Series winning ring. I could pound my chest when my team won and as owner I would be wholly entitled to say ‘I won that’. And perhaps John Henry’s ego is such that his sole aim is to shatter the mantra of ‘there is no ‘I’ in team’ so emphatically.

But when it comes down to it all, I am not John W Henry. I have no sporting prowess and I have no financial might. So what that leaves me with is a team I can dream on a team called Liverpool FC and if they win the Premier League or any trophy I will bang my chest and shout ‘we won it’ because a shared dream is worth much more than an individual one. But perhaps that is what Mr Henry is chasing anyway – just a way in which he can share dreams with so many other people through sport. To apply science over emotion for emotional gain.

You may say that I’m the dreamer but I’m not the only one.

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