Peter Moore Game Changer

From the streets of postwar Liverpool to the boardrooms of some of the world’s biggest brands, Peter Moore has been on the front lines of the sneaker wars, the console wars and the battle for global club soccer supremacy at the helm of one of the world’s biggest clubs. This story of the epic journey of a publican’s son, who began his professional life as a physical education teacher in North Wales before risking it all to become an immigrant to the United States seeking better life opportunities, is a quintessential lesson in what’s possible when a motivated person can leverage personal assets and accompany them with an indefatigable can-do attitude. Moore traces a career that includes senior positions at Patrick Sports Shoes, Reebok, Sega, Xbox, EA and Liverpool FC, collecting along the way the hard lessons gleaned from valiant challenger brands, as well as personal insights acquired learning the landscape of each new industry he encountered. Over the span of a tumultuous era, he evolved from humble shoe salesman selling cleats out of the trunk of a Toyota Camry to the Chief Executive Officer of Liverpool Football Club, at a time when LFC were champions of everything and everywhere. With vivid reflections and candid confessions on an imperfect personal life, Moore takes the reader through the twists and turns—and inevitable good fortune— of successful spells in the high-stakes worlds of athletic footwear and apparel, as well as the challenge of a massive career change to the video-game industry at 44 years of age. Over the next two decades, he would be widely acknowledged as a legendary pioneer and figurehead in an industry that has become a $200 billion entertainment behemoth. Then, in a third act befitting his life in full, he finally returned to the city of birth to take on an entirely new challenge, becoming the CEO of Liverpool FC, the football club that he first saw play—and immediately fell in love with—in 1959. Along the way there are insights on how he evolved both personally and professionally, retaining the best aspects of what his TED Talk described as “The Power of Scouseness,” and put aside nagging doubts of imposter syndrome, to emerge with a legacy of front-foot leadership and success in some of the world’s most competitive industries.