W INTERVIEW
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AN INTERVIEW WITH LFC'S
CHIEF EXECUTIVE PETER MOORE
Peter Moore was born in Sefton and now lives in Wirral. He is a business
executive best known for his former positions as Corporate Vice-
President of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business division,
overseeing the Xbox and Xbox 360 game consoles, and president of
SEGA of America. From 2007 to 2017, he was head of Electronic Arts'
EA Sports game division. He resigned from Electronic Arts in February
2017 to become CEO of Liverpool Football Club. Peter talks to Wirral
Life in an exclusive interview.
Where does your story begin?
I think it begins before I was born with Liverpudlian parents. My father
was a freight clerk on the docks who fought in WWII and my mother
was born in Boston Massachusetts. My grandad was a sailor in the Royal
Merchant Navy during WWI and WWII – in between he went looking
for work as a lot of scousers in those days did. He ended up in Boston in
the Quincy shipyards, where my mother was born on January 1st 1930 in
Quincy, Massachusetts. They didn’t stay long as the work ran out, so the
family came back – but my mum then had an American birth certificate
and so fast forward some thirty odd years later and I had a dual passport
as a result of it.
I was born at Sefton General Hospital. My dad had a pub, the Dryden Arms
on Dryden Street, just off Scottie Road, and we lived on Hurstlyn Road in
Allerton – around the corner from Paul McCartney. So I’m scouse born
and bred, and no matter where I’ve lived in the world, I’ve been immensely
proud of my heritage. We later moved to Garston where my dad had a pub
called the Gay Cavalier. My first recollection of anything happening there
was when I was four years of age and for whatever bizarre reason, standing
in the car park, and my dad said to me and my brother: “I’ve got one ticket
to see Liverpool, I can take one of you and I will give the other two shillings
and six pence” – my brother Andy said “I’ll take the half a crown” (as it was
known then) and I took the ticket. November 1959: we beat Leyton Orient
4-3; and I was sold. Shankly came the month after… I can still remember
the sounds, the crowd, the noise to this day.
We had the Gay Cavalier for about 5 years and then my dad got the
opportunity to get his own pub – the Red Lion - which is in a little village
called Marford between Wrexham and Chester; my family still lives there.
My dad’s business model was built on the cult of personality and being
a Liverpool fan – and this was the 70’s when LFC were just dominant –
so people would come from miles around to argue about football! They
didn’t go for the beer they went for the banter - he built a really successful
business on that model! We had that pub for 27 years.
Were there any decisive moments in your early life which you look back
on and think: yes, that played a key role in me going on the path that I
took?
I passed my 11 plus, which in one of those days was one of those moments
that would determine your path of life; and so went to an all-boys grammar
school in Wrexham, got my O levels, then my A levels - then I went to PE
college. That track was completely different as a result of passing my 11
plus than the track if I had got four or five of those questions wrong! I was
so fortunate… my life could have been so different!
Did you know what you wanted to be when you were growing up?
I always wanted to be a PE teacher. My PE teacher at Grove Park Grammar
School, Owen Edwards, was my hero. He was everything that I felt a man
should be; he was a mentor to me and became a friend of my parents – I
wanted to be him and that’s what I was going to be. I went to Madeley
College and got my PE degree from Keele University and set out for what I
thought was a lifetime career in teaching.
How long did you spend as a PE teacher?
My only teaching job was at Dinas Bran school in Llangollen, North
Wales. There is a famous international music festival in Llangollen – called
Eisteddfod - which means nothing (to my story) other than the school
closed early for summer and opened late to accommodate the festival. So,
in the summer months I went to America (Cleveland, Ohio) to play and
coach football for 3 months. I loved it! I taught in Llangollen for about four
years but kept going to America every summer.
At what stage did you decide to leave the UK behind and make a
permanent move to the US?
On December 14, 1980, I received a call from my former professor from
Madeley College, who asked me to come to California to run his soccer
schools in Long Beach stadium; and so off we went!
When I moved there, the first 18 months were tough: I was an immigrant
living in a trailer, inside the stadium on the running track! I was offered a
job and when you get there you realise the job wasn’t really what was being
portrayed! Then you need a real job but I was still not legal as I was trying
to get my Green Card. At the same time, I was saving every penny and
spent 18 months doing my Masters degree at California State University in
the evenings to stay legal in the country!
How did you end up working your way so high up the corporate ladder?
I was not making any money and was facing the reality of having to move
back. So, I applied for a job as a ‘commission only’ salesman for Patrick
USA selling football boots to retail stores. Keegan Gold boots paid my
rent! I had a big territory from Central California to the Mexican border
to Arizona. It built a work ethic: if you don’t sell, you don’t eat. I learned
how to work hard; I learned how to plan. It drew every ounce of who I was.
Pretty quickly I stood out to the President of the company and so he asked
me to be his National Sales Manager. The company was on a high and from
there I was really able to put a stamp on the company; in 1988, I become
President of the company at 33 years of age.
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