Inside the sales pitch that took Liverpool and Manchester United to a U.S. college town

Late in 2023, a delegation of senior Liverpool staff were visiting the college town of Columbia, South Carolina, when they wondered if it might be possible to work out early the following morning. Their hosts from the athletics department of the University of South Carolina swiftly sensed an opportunity.

Chance Miller, at the time the deputy athletics director at the University of South Carolina , arranged a personal 6am pick-up for the Liverpool staff and access to the South Carolina Gamecocks college football team’s weights room. The Gamecocks’ strength and conditioning coach, Luke Day, put the Liverpool staff through their paces. As for the soundtrack, Miller ensured that Liverpool’s anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone played in the background, before working through some classics from The Beatles.

It was all part of a mighty charm offensive that culminated in the University of South Carolina hosting its first major exhibition match between European football teams at the 77,599-seater Williams-Brice Stadium. On Saturday evening, Columbia, with a population of less than 140,000, will host one of the sport’s most famous rivalries when Liverpool face Manchester United for the final leg of their Rivals in Red tour of the United States, which has also seen both teams play against Arsenal. United faced Arsenal in Los Angeles and Liverpool played Mikel Arteta’s team in Philadelphia. This will be the first time any English Premier League team has played in Columbia.

Los Angeles, where more than 62,000 supporters attended United’s 2-1 defeat by Arsenal at SoFi stadium, and Philadelphia, where Lincoln Financial Field sold out for Wednesday evening’s match between Liverpool and Arsenal (which Liverpool won 2-1), are ranked No 2 and No 4 in media researchers Nielsen’s list of designated market area rankings. That is essentially a formula that lists the size of television markets within the U.S.

Columbia, however, ranks 76th and has no track record in hosting soccer events. This selection, therefore, represented a leap into the unknown.

According to Miller, who only recently departed the University of South Carolina to join Coastal Carolina University, thoughts turned to hosting these matches during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It really stretched us and the university because we were reducing attendance at our college football games,” he says. “It was the most difficult time in our professional careers because there was so much uncertainty; whether or not we were even going to play the games. So it was a question of: how are we going to be able to provide for our student athletes and for their wellbeing?

“When you are looking at the financials, big-time college athletics depends on football, basketball and baseball. Attendance, selling tickets, putting games on TV… it is essential to produce the revenue that helps us fund the rest of our sports, such as swimming, diving, track and field, tennis and golf. I kept sitting there thinking, ‘We have all these beautiful facilities. Our football stadium holds 75,000 people, but we only use it seven days a year’. So what could we do to diversify, produce revenue, and also just bring really cool events into the capital city of South Carolina?”

The conversation around this match started in autumn, when TEG, a live events promotion company, reached out to Miller. TEG have organised the Rivals in Red tour, as well as Wrexham’s tour of the west coast in the U.S. this summer. The company, which originated in Australia, has also brought the New Zealand rugby All Blacks to play Fiji in San Diego this year, as well as organising and promoting T20 cricket games on the east coast, including the hot-ticket India fixture against Pakistan in New Jersey.

(Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Miller says: “Hugh Nicholson from TEG reached out to me and his idea was to bring professional soccer at the highest level to some of these big university towns that had great followings of college football. I jumped all over it.”

Miller had another conversation that same night. “Carson, my eight-year-old son and Manchester United fan, is my soccer expert,” he laughs. “And I said, ‘Carson, what if I was able to get Manchester United and Liverpool to play in the stadium?’. He started screaming and running around the house. So I figured we had something successful in the works.”

Nicholson expands on the theory: “There’s been huge success with events at the University of Michigan with Real Madrid and Manchester United previously. I’ve always thought, when you look at college stadiums, they are absolutely massive, but they also have loyal fans and people that are passionate about their university, town and region.

“The teams were heading east at the end of the tour, so geographically it made sense. I immediately started looking into the Southeastern Conference for venues that had the size and scale that could accommodate a match of this magnitude, but also universities that had a loyal fan base who would really buy in and support.”

The University of South Carolina considered hosting other games this summer but eventually decided that if they were to be venturing into football, they ought to go big.

Miller said: “Let’s try to bring two of the top teams here, really sell it and show that the fanbase of college athletics will support something like this. What they liked more than anything is when we talked to the teams, we were able to show them that we have world-class facilities.

“We have some of the best grounds crew and turf management people in the industry. They came over here to look at our grounds and our turf guy, Clark Cox, he’s done some of the world’s biggest events. He’s done the Major League Baseball All-Star game. He’s worked at the Super Bowl and he was really able to show them that we can pull this off at the highest level.”

For United, it suited them well. The club wanted their pre-season to be commercially advantageous — the tour, as a ballpark figure, is worth around £15million to the club — but also performance-driven. This meant avoiding any exhausting zigzagging across the U.S.

Erik ten Hag’s team have used a single training base in Los Angeles and will fly into South Carolina on Friday for an overnight stay and then head straight back to Manchester after the game on Saturday.

The United squad in training in Los Angeles (Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images)

There were some logistics to resolve. Miller explains that college football teams traditionally leave the visiting team’s locker rooms in a less luxurious state than that of the home team, so as to really press home territorial advantage.

“When we looked at ours, we said, ‘We can’t put Liverpool or Manchester United in this’. So we actually ripped out the lockers, the carpet and the lighting and replaced it all to make it a whole lot nicer for them because this is something where we want to be able to say, ‘Hey, we’d love to have you back here in the future’.”

As for the pitch, there was no issue with the length of the college football field. The width was adequate but tight. Miller says: “The only modification we had to make inside the stadium is that our grounds crew purchased a little bit of ready-to-play grass, not for the actual playing surface, but just outside of the playing surface, so that there was a little bit more room for corner kicks because the way our stadium is, on both the east and west side, there’s a patch of concrete. It’s a natural grass turf, which is not common in the U.S., especially not at the professional level. I was watching Man United against Arsenal (in Los Angeles). I noticed that the TV commentators were talking about the turf having some dead spots and patchy spots in it. I don’t think you’re going to see that here.”

Officials from United and Liverpool’s operations, marketing and grounds teams made multiple trips to the facilities. They were taken to South Carolina’s college football team’s match against Kentucky Wildcats in November, where they discovered a bouncing atmosphere. The stadium, they were told, would be lit up in red when United and Liverpool are in town.

The match in November between South Carolina Gamecocks and Kentucky Wildcats (Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Dinner reservations were made, first at Halls Chophouse, a high-end steak restaurant, and then Di Vino Rosso, a white tablecloth Northern Italian joint.

A clear plan was presented, explaining the hotels available to teams in the college town, how and where pre and post-game meals would be prepared, how ownership groups and VIPs would be catered for in premium areas, and how the teams would travel in and out of the stadium. These games yield vast returns for European soccer teams, attracting multi-million-pound match fees, but also formulas for revenue sharing with the promoter on ticket sales, and sometimes for media rights, parking fees and merchandise sales.

A rental fee is paid by the promoter, in this case TEG, to the venue and Miller says the University of South Carolina in this case were paid between $400k-$500k for the usual operational and security costs of hosting an event, as well as a cut of the fees for the ticket sales, rather than a cut of the ticket sales themselves.

“Then we put a lot of data in front of them,” Miller said. “From our fan base, we have data from ticket sales, sponsorships and donations. And then we also have online retail partners in Fanatics (the sports apparel and fan equipment store). And we were able to cross-reference our data with Fanatics to create a Venn diagram of Gamecock fans, who also had purchased Manchester United or Liverpool gear. Our partnership with Ticketmaster was able to help us identify that as well.

“One of the concerns the team had was about coming to a smaller metropolitan area and if we were going to be able to sell enough tickets. We were able to show them that on a college football Saturday, we’re able to pull from four different major metropolitan areas within the southeast of the U.S. — Atlanta (Georgia), Charlotte (North Carolina), Jacksonville (Florida) and the Raleigh-Durham area (North Carolina).”

Tickets went on sale on Tuesday, March 27, at 9am. Miller recalls: “At 8.45am, I signed in just to see what the queue looked like. I was 14,000th in line. It brought home to me the level of excitement around Premier League soccer.”

Tickets sold at a lightning pace, faster even than when Beyonce previously played the same venue seven years ago. Of all tickets sold, 40% have been sold to fans from outside South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina. TEG promoter Nicholson says: “South Carolina is strategically positioned between Charlotte and Atlanta, so we expected there to be a significant amount of interest from two traditional soccer markets. The game sold out almost immediately. We’ve got folks coming from all 50 states in the United States as well as international fans.

“The the University of South Carolina alumni came through; as well as current students who wanted to be a part of the event. Even though the match sold through within 36 hours, we’ve continued to push just the awareness that this is coming. It is a big deal to the city of Columbia and the state of South Carolina. The governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, was tweeting about the match the day that we announced it. And if you want to talk about atypical, that’s about as good as it gets.”

The buzz is continuing. On Ticketmaster this week, the cheapest resale ticket appeared to be $89, but the vast majority were in substantial three figures and some were reselling for more than $1,000. This will be the biggest soccer crowd either North or South Carolina have ever seen.

The deal was signed early, which meant tickets for the match went on sale before rival fixtures — including Real Madrid vs Barcelona at MetLife Stadium, New Jersey, and Manchester City v Chelsea at Ohio Stadium, Columbus — which are taking place on the same day, as well as other showpiece fixtures slated in Charlotte, Atlanta and Raleigh across the summer. It will be the biggest-ever grossing event at Williams-Brice Stadium and the largest attendance for a non-American football event at the venue.

United, who have never played in the region before, have maximised the opportunity. They have established new official supporters’ clubs in North and South Carolina. Five thousand fans are expected at a free fan zone outside the stadium before the game, with the FA Cup, won in May against Manchester City, on display for supporters.

As for Miller’s young son Carson, he was first in line. “When we got the game, he was the first person I told.”

(Top photo: Lance King/Getty Images)