(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The playbook for making sports teams more valuable is, in theory, quite straightforward: Invest adequately in the playing squad, improve commercial revenue with better stadiums and expanded merchandising, and bank on broadcasting rights becoming more expensive.

The practice tends to be more complicated, particularly in European soccer. Even if you execute the business plan perfectly, the final play — of finding an exit, a buyer who will crystallize the value ascribed to the club on paper — is often the hardest. After all, if the commercial potential is already being fully exploited, then the team’s subsequent worth is determined purely by on-field performance, which can fluctuate from one year to the next. That’s a risky proposition for any buyer.

Fenway Sports Group LLC may have found a solution: The owner of Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox and the English Premier League’s Liverpool Football Club is in talks to be acquired by the blank-check firm RedBall Acquisition Corp. The deal could see Fenway receiving close to $1.5 billion in return for a stake of between 20% and 25%, according to Axios.

It would be a very canny move for John W. Henry II, the billionaire who is Fenway’s biggest shareholder. In one fell swoop he would likely make back all the capital he spent acquiring the Red Sox and Liverpool, in return for selling a minority stake. The baseball franchise was valued at $660 million when Fenway bought it as part of a consortium in 2002. The company paid just 300 million pounds ($476 million at the time) for Liverpool in 2010. It also has a majority stake in the New England Sports Network, a cable station, the Nascar team Roush Fenway Racing and a management company that counts basketball star Lebron James among its clients.

Henry’s timing is impeccable because Liverpool is currently riding high. Whereas American sports franchises’ revenue streams depend relatively little on their teams’ form, and therefore enjoy more stable valuations, soccer teams’ fortunes quite literally rise or fall with their success in competitions.

Qualifying for European competitions can add 100 million pounds in annual revenue. English teams that fail to qualify can see sales drop by 20%, Deloitte estimates. If a team finishes toward the bottom of the Premier League and is relegated to the lower division, its income can drop to 57 million pounds a year, or 10% of the top clubs’ revenue, according to Deloitte. That’s one reason why Henry and the Glazer family, which controls Manchester United Plc, are shamelessly proposing a new league structure that would cement their financial dominance and reduce the likelihood of their teams getting relegated.