Group watching Liverpool football at home with Sonos Beam
Brand

Sonos x Liverpool Football Club: Champion Sound

Peter Macia

Guest Writer

In August 2021, Sonos became the official sound partner of Liverpool Football Club. It’s our first team partnership in sport and an absolute gamechanger. As we near the end of our first season with Liverpool FC, we recognize more than ever how Liverpool—the club and city—sound like nowhere else on earth.

On any given matchday, it starts with the scuffs and shuffles down Skerries Road and Arkles Lane as 50,000 people make their way to Anfield Stadium. Then the beeps and clacks of each supporter moving through the turnstiles, the local Scouse chatter between them, followed by the echoes of the stadium announcer around the ground as the players of Liverpool FC take the field to warm up. Slowly, as the stands fill, chants and songs charge the air. These are the sounds that make the heart beat a bit faster if you’re lucky enough to be there.

And then, a few minutes before kickoff, a bit of modern magic. Those of us who can’t be there in Anfield turn on our televisions to hear the song we’ve all been waiting for. When you walk through the storm, hold your head up high, the stirring opening lines of Gerry & The Pacemakers 1963 hit, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” Liverpool FC’s official anthem. The song suddenly seems to collapse the distance between wherever we are and this glorious, hallowed ground of sport. Within seconds Gerry Marsden’s velvety croon is overtaken by the roar of Liverpudlians singing every word, there to support their team through thick and thin. This is the distinctive shared experience that inspires Sonos’s partnership with LFC.

“Being in the stadium and singing the anthem of Liverpool is such an amazing feeling,” says Ian Cowen, a local supporter who’s been going to games since before he can remember. “The hairs on my neck still stand up each time I hear it.”

Sonos allows the rest of us around the globe to truly feel these same emotions at home, as they happen, like never before. Perhaps we sing along from Germany or Japan or California, but in the moment, we can be transported to this iconic ground near the River Mersey. Perhaps our hearts beat a little bit faster too.

LFC fan holding up a Liverpool banner at a match

The song ends. A brief hush, then the whistle. The rousing rumble of Anfield—the Kenny Dalglish, Anfield Road, and Main Stands, and of course, the legendary Kop—launches the players into action. There’s nothing like it.

Liverpool FC’s current coach, Jürgen Klopp, believes this sound and energy has the power to push the team forward. “The atmosphere at Anfield is the best I have ever experienced,” he says. “It should serve as an example to everyone about how supporters can influence a team and influence a game.” You can often see Klopp on the touchline exhorting the fans to make it even louder, a fitting frontman for what many pundits have taken to calling “heavy metal football” for its relentless and rollicking style of play.

But that hardly gives this team enough credit. They are a symphony to watch. An international squad—Senegalese, Egyptian, Brazilian, Dutch, Japanese, English—all coming together, defending and attacking as one, driven by the unmistakable spirit of Liverpool behind them.

This is not lost on those who have to watch their beloved Reds from home. The passion of Anfield comes clearly through the speakers, the lift it gives to the players visible as they battle to the very last second of every match.

“With millions of Reds globally, Liverpool FC’s sound sits well outside the walls of its stadium, reverberating through countless towns and cities, and creating a sense of community over shared moments of celebration, loss, or encouragement to keep fighting,” says Pete Pedersen, Sonos’s Vice president of Marketing.

Closeup of Liverpool match on TV with Sonos Beam

“Sound has always been an essential part of sports,” Pedersen adds. “It breathes energy into every game, whether it’s the music that players listen to while getting hyped for a match, the vibrating chants from fans in the stands, or recreating a stadium experience at home. Liverpool is also a city famously steeped in music. We wanted to embrace that heritage and connection.”

As part of our partnership with the club and to celebrate Liverpool’s deep musical roots, we’re installing Sonos products throughout Anfield Stadium, giving players and fans the best-sounding matchday experience ever. And for anyone who wants to get those matchday feelings any day of the week, Sonos Radio has created a special Anfield Pre-Match Anthems station, with music selected by players from the men’s and women’s first teams along with some VIP voiceover by Liverpool legend John Barnes and the latest hits from dance, hip hop, Afrobeats, and R&B.

In recent years, the club’s on-pitch successes have made it Liverpool’s greatest export since The Beatles. Since Klopp’s arrival in 2018, the team has harnessed the power of their support like no other. LFC won their first league title in 30 years in 2020, after capturing Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, and FIFA Club World Cup trophies in 2019, and have since added a League Cup in March of this year. The trophy case might need expanding soon if they can add another Premier League title, Champions League, and FA Cup by the end of May.

If they do, the fans, both home and away, will have played no small part, but even if no further silverware arrives, this season has already been triumphant, as fans finally returned to Anfield after more than a year away due to the pandemic.

The team’s star striker, Sadio Mané, has paid tribute to the importance of having them back.

“Like I have always said, the Liverpool fans are the best fans in the world,” Mané said. “It was fantastic to play in front of a full Anfield again. Having them back can be massive for us, and they can play a huge part in our success.”

Liverpool taking the field at the start of a match

Their return has meant just as much to the fans watching at home. Whether it’s that collective rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” or the unmistakable roar of the Kop, the sounds of Anfield are what make watching Liverpool FC so visceral and emotional. Sonos brings these sounds closer than ever. Whether you’re watching at home with Arc or Beam, or on-the-go with Move or Roam, every product allows fans across the globe to feel a little bit more of what makes Liverpool FC so special on matchdays.

Take it from legendary local Red, Paul Tremarco, who has owned the world-famous Arkles Pub across from Anfield since 1981. He’s been supporting Liverpool FC since 1966 and welcomes fans from around England and around the world every week with open arms. “Liverpool is a very, very vibrant, and a very, very welcoming city. Not just about football. It’s about culture, it’s about history, you know, it’s got everything. And I am very much a very proud Scouser,” he says. “For me, Liverpool Football Club—the ground, the atmosphere—we’re just unique. There’s no fans like Scousers. There’s no fans who sing as passionately as Liverpool FC fans. We’re the most passionate fans in the world.”

​​This passion and the marriage of music, sound, and sport are precisely what make the partnership between Sonos and Liverpool Football Club so harmonious. And now, through the power of Sonos, it is easier than ever to hear the game at home as if you were in Anfield. Whether you’re in a Liverpool living room or on the other side of the world, every wholehearted yell, every thud of foot against the ball, and every soft rattle of the net makes you feel as if you’re right there, part of this legendary club.

And for those in the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, and Norway, we’ve got a way to feel even closer. Sonos is offering you and your football club the opportunity to win a premium Sonos sound system to level-up your dressing room and amplify pre-game energy, just like Liverpool FC’s first team does at Anfield.

For your chance to win:

(1) Follow @sonos on Instagram

(2) Create an Instagram feed post (video or picture) showing your love for football

(3) Tell us your favorite song that gets you in the mood for the match in the caption

(4) Tag @sonos, @liverpoolfc, #FeelMoreLFC

Closeup of Sonos Move with Liverpool jerseys hanging above

Lue lisää