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The Kai Tak Stadium in Hong Kong will play host to Liverpool v AC Milan in the summer(Image: Photo by Sean Chiu/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)

This week saw Liverpool announce their summer pre-season plans.

The Reds will be heading to Hong Kong and Japan ahead of the 2025/26 Premier League campaign.

Liverpool will be taking on AC Milan at the Kai Tak Stadium on Saturday, July 26, before making a first-ever visit to Japan, with the details of those fixtures to be announced in due course.



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It is a tour that leans heavily into commercial partnerships, with the club competing for the Standard Chartered Trophy in Hong Kong while activating on its recent partnership with Japan Airlines, the club’s official airline partner.

With the World Cup in North America a little over a year away, many clubs had seen this summer as the perfect opportunity to take themselves to the United States to get a foothold with the growing and increasingly valuable US audience.

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But with the Premier League Summer Series taking place, the FIFA Club World Cup, and access to venues at the right time because of this impactful for plans, as well as some potential fatigue from fans, the decision was made to visit Asia having spent last summer in the US.

“I think the balancing act of decision making where you want to go for pre-season tours is becoming more and more challenging,” Neil Joyce, CEO of CLV Group, a company that connects sports teams to global fans, told the ECHO.

“I think that in an ideal world you'd say a Premier League club, if they've been to the US in the last few years, they should go again because I think commitment to that market is an important thing to do.

“The flip side of it, there's a potential fatigue factor.

How much disposable income is there really to go around if everybody floods into the Club World Cup games?

On Club World Cup games, there's some fear that they won't sell out stadiums, so maybe there will be room to go for the Premier League Summer Series or actual individual tours.

“I think what's interesting from Liverpool's perspective, you've essentially got like a blank canvas almost by going into those Asian markets.

They also have a potential ace up their sleeve in the form of Japanese skipper and Reds midfielder, Wataru Endo.

Said Joyce: “In Japan, what if, as Liverpool, we looked at their audiences with the data we've got, they have a high level of indexing with interest and affinity for anime.

“Obviously, anime has evolved out of Japan.

"They should be looking to do some partnership work and create some content that they can actually globally distribute, because there's a huge global anime following.

“I think it's an opportunity not just in Japan, but globally to leverage content and create stories and characterisations that way as well.

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“They also have the fact that they have a star of Japanese football on their books who is held in huge regard in Japan.
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