Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group are not in the running to acquire the Boston Celtics. FSG had earlier this week been linked with a bid for the current NBA champions.

According to people familiar with the matter who the ECHO has spoken to, FSG are not among the bidding parties looking to purchase the Celtics from the Grousbeck family, who put the team up for sale last year at a valuation of between £4bn to £4.9bn.

NBC Sports had linked the Reds owners, who also hold controlling interests in the Boston Red Sox and Pittsburgh Penguins, with a potential play for the Celtics, but it is understood that the focus of FSG when it comes to their next acquisition in North American sport remains an NBA expansion franchise in Las Vegas, a project that FSG partner and basketball icon LeBron James is expected to helm when he retires.

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In September of last year, FSG CEO Sam Kennedy was quizzed on whether the Boston-based firm would seek to add the Celtics to their portfolio, to which he replied that they “were not on their radar right now.”

The desire for FSG to purchase an NBA team is well known, with senior FSG chiefs and investors having acknowledged it publicly over the past couple of years. FSG had loosely looked at the Minnesota Timberwolves as an option in 2023 but the plan has since turned to being the ownership group that gets an expansion franchise when it finally gets the green light from the NBA, which could well be in the next 18 months or so, with the plan to have one up and running in advance of 2030.

Vegas has long been the preferred choice. It has now become something of a Mecca for sports in the US, with an NFL franchise having arrived as well as the Formula One.

Huge amounts of capital have flooded into the Nevada city to aid its growth and development to support new teams, and plans for an ‘NBA ready’ arena on the outskirts of the city have already been presented. The Celtics are one of basketball’s most storied, and expensive, franchises.

While acquiring a team in Vegas wouldn’t be an awful lot cheaper, it would allow FSG and partners a blank canvas.

Owning the Red Sox already, and having taken plenty of heat from fans for the team’s lack of recent success, the appetite to own another major Boston sports franchise doesn’t seem high.

FSG remain on the hunt for another football club as part of their Michael Edwards-led project.

That is something that Edwards is at the forefront of, with FSG having expressed an interest in fallen French giants Bordeaux last year before passing on a takeover.

FSG continues to assess options in Europe in markets they feel could prove beneficial to Liverpool in the longer term via a multi-club model, with France, Spain and Portugal all looked at, as well as some interest in the South American market.