Liverpool appoints video game executive and lifelong fan Peter Moore as new CEO

Lifelong Liverpool supporter and video game executive Peter Moore has been announced as the club’s new Chief Executive Officer. He replaces the outgoing Ian Ayre, who joined the club in 2007 and had been CEO since 2014 before leaving to take a position at 1860 Munich.

Moore makes the transition to the sports world after a prominent career in the video game industry. He’s worked for some of the biggest companies in gaming — like Sega, Microsoft and Electronic Arts — and been involved with some of the most popular consoles and games of the past two decades.

At Sega, Moore rose to the title of president and chief operating officer of the company’s American division. He was then hired by Microsoft to oversee the Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles, and played a key role in the brand’s recovery after the well-known debacle known as the Red Ring of Death.

Moore left Microsoft in 2007 to become the head of EA Sports, which soccer fans will know well from their FIFA titles, then took the role of “chief competition officer” with EA’s newly formed competitive gaming division in 2015, helping to oversee the company’s push into eSports.

In both roles at EA, he had ties to the sports industry, so the move to professional soccer actually makes a good deal of sense. He’s got managerial experience at large companies with passionate consumers, and that’s something his new job will provide just like his old ones. And if he was going to enter the sports world, it was always going to be at Liverpool — a conference room at EA’s headquarters was once painted red and named Anfield at his request.

Ayre’s leadership was crucial to Liverpool becoming a modern commercial power, as he oversaw the redevelopment of Anfield’s main stand and negotiated key sponsorship deals. However, he was criticized for his role in the so-called “transfer committee” during the managerial reign of Brendan Rodgers, when the club made a number of poor signings.

Moore will face the task of picking up where Ayre left off and improve Liverpool’s financial standing further. The club was ninth in the most recent Deloitte Money League, trailing Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, and Chelsea domestically. He’ll also have a short period of time to figure out how Liverpool should approach the summer transfer window, which will be crucial no matter how the rest of the season goes. The rest of the top six is in excellent shape, and he’s facing fierce competition if he wants to build a Liverpool that can win their first league title in the Premier League era.