Liverpool have been smart in the commercial partners they have linked up with

For major European clubs the commercial landscape has changed immeasurably in recent years.

The signing of commercial partnerships is now far more data driven for clubs such as Liverpool, with who they decide to engage with a decision based around much more than simply who pays the most.

Football clubs are big businesses now that seek more from their partnerships than a cheque and putting on some hospitality. That is true for commercial partners, too. They want to know the people they are reaching through sponsorship, they want to be engaged with the club and to maximise the potential of the relationship.

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A deeper look at Liverpool's corporate partners at present shows a roster of businesses that are not only valuable commercial partners, but businesses that can help the Reds scale their own operation and grow.

Nike is a prime example. The Nike deal was struck at a lower annual fee than the previous kit contract with New Balance, but with a 20 per cent slice of the sale of global merchandise, better distribution channels globally, and Nike's key links with the likes of Fenway Sports Group partner LeBron James and a host of top athletes and entertainers, it is a deal that could be worth three times what the current £30m per year guaranteed sum brings in the future.

Liverpool pride themselves on their ability to partner with blue chip companies, a marker of the health of the club on and off the pitch. In Standard Chartered, recently signed on for an extended deal as front-of-shirt sponsors worth more than £50m per season, and Expedia, they have two globally recognised brands that deliver cachet, and value, for both parties.

A look at other recent partnerships hints at the club's future direction. Partnerships with Boston-based Wasabi Technologies, the Reds' official cloud storage partner, and Extreme Networks have been inked to not only deliver commercial value but to enable the club to level up its digital approach and offering to fans.

Last year saw FSG take a slice of James and Maverick Carter's SpringHill Entertainment business, a 'culture company' that seeks to be at the vanguard of digital storytelling to grow brands. SpringHill are set to aid Liverpool's own efforts on that front, with owners FSG aiding their cause from the inside.

Last month saw the publishing of the annual Fan Relationship Index report from analysts at The CLV Group. The report highlighted some key areas where clubs could focus their energy to maximise their opportunities with both domestic and overseas fans, and how data can help drive those opportunities.

Speaking to the ECHO, CLV Group CEO Neil Joyce said: "If you started to plot the course around how you scale globally across digital and physical assets that you have, what makes most sense for your fans in these geographies? What type of fan are they and what propositions can you offer to them? How do you then stitch this eco-system together? These are the strategic questions along with how much money they are worth.

"You have to start with the fan engagement and the fan experience but what is the commercial reality against that? As you can't personalise at a one-to-one level and operationally scale it. There has to be a level up on the approach that you take. Building that road map that Liverpool have clearly done is absolutely where clubs need to start.

"Clubs need to understand their fans and data propositions, and what partnerships and what eco-systems do you need to create around that? It's kind of like telling the Disney story. Disney started off around content and making movies, then it was a theme park, then came the media business, streaming and them making acquisitions. They have strong corporate development teams and I'm pretty sure that some of the football clubs are looking at corporate development through a different lens now and not just how to create commercial partnerships.

"The questions are around how they get closer to fans, how do they not have to become like Amazon themselves as they aren't logistics businesses. Fanatics, for example, has a brilliant business as they spotted a gap in the market and they filled it. Football clubs don't want to become big logistics operations and Fanatics takes an element of that away for the clubs that it partners with."

Gerry Cardinale, the founder and managing partner of RedBird Capital Partners, owners of AC Milan and 11 per cent stakeholders in Liverpool owners FSG, spoke last year about the need for sports teams to think as themselves as "mini Disneys" in order to achieve growth. Through vertical markets, where businesses satisfy their needs by controlling a number of services that would have been outsourced, is seen in Disney through its evolution as a company, from making cartoon movies to running theme parks and becoming one of the world's biggest content companies with interests across the media and entertainment business.

But key to the success of all this is knowing your audience as best you can.

When Spotify and Barcelona inked a sponsorship deal for the shirt and stadium naming rights for the Spanish club earlier this year it was a deal worth less because of a lack of data the Catalan giants had on their fans. Barca had a fraction of the data that Liverpool held on their supporters, something that commercial partners want to know when they talk big numbers with clubs.

"It is the premise of the report," explained Joyce. "We have taken our heritage of working in data and helping people with data and insights and creating their first party data assets. Now, that is a term that isn't on the tip of people's tongues but it is really high on the agenda of all the big clubs now.

"Clubs have traded on their commercial deals by putting really good media packs together, and I'm not criticising them as it shows, for example, the number of people that watch Premier League football in the US and in China. But companies want more granular data now, they want to know who they are reaching by partnering with football clubs, and there is real value for clubs that focus on that.

"Clubs that focus on that and get that right will see the benefits of it as big businesses expect more than the traditional commercial deal. Liverpool, from what we have observed, have looked at sponsorship slightly differently to others and are therefore more progressed than others in looking at the revenue potential of sponsorship. Take the deal with Nike, there is much more upside and they are capturing that opportunity as they have seen the opportunity to connect Nike with Liverpool fans globally and get more product."