John W Henry, the principal owner of Liverpool, has acknowledged he knew "virtually nothing" of English football or the football club before his Fenway Sports Group took over at Anfield a year ago this Saturday. Tom Werner, the chairman of Fenway and now of Liverpool, said he too had barely heard of the club, but was aware of the "EPL" – English Premier League – and its popularity, and "certainly knew about Manchester United".

During three days of exclusive access in the United States with Henry, Werner and key executives of Fenway, which also owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team, they explained the prime attraction of buying Liverpool lay in the financial potential of the club's global following.

Lifelong fans of baseball, whose support is mostly restricted to the US, they began to take an interest in Liverpool after comprehending the scale of international interest in the Premier League on television and via the internet – and the prospects of being able to make money from it.

Asked what he knew about English football, and Liverpool, before an email from a Fenway Park employee alerted him to the Merseyside club's financial difficulties last August, Henry replied: "Very little. We knew virtually nothing about Liverpool Football Club nor EPL."

Henry said as Liverpool's difficult financial predicament was outlined to him last year, he saw parallels with the Red Sox, the MLB team Fenway bought in 2002. Before the takeover, the Red Sox had not won a World Series for 84 years, and the team's stadium, Fenway Park, was showing its age. Liverpool offered Henry a new challenge, to revitalise a football club as Fenway has with the Red Sox – although a spectacular September collapse this season has plunged the team into turmoil. He saw Liverpool as an opportunity to apply a similar strategy, but in an international sport with a following that hugely outstrips that of baseball.

Following that email, Henry and Werner attended a presentation given by Philip Hall, an executive at Inner Circle Sports, the New York‑based merchant bankers which specialises in the takeovers of English football clubs. Inner Circle acted for Tom Hicks and George Gillett when they bought Liverpool in 2007, and for Ellis Short when he took over at Sunderland. Werner said before that meeting with Inner Circle, who would become Fenway's financial advisers on buying Liverpool, he knew very little of the club: "I had been in sports so I was aware of the EPL and its strength globally," said Werner, an Emmy award-winning Los Angeles‑based television producer. "But I didn't know the inner workings of it. I certainly knew about Manchester United."

The Liverpool chairman said that he did not at the time believe buying the football club held any appeal for Fenway, which owns the Nascar motor racing team Roush. Of the meeting with Inner Circle, Werner recalled: "I wasn't paying too much attention. Frankly I was on my BlackBerry, dealing with more pressing issues. I thought there was no way John was going to drag us into that one."

Henry, however, found Liverpool compelling, particularly the club's supporter base in east Asia. This week Ian Ayre, whom Fenway appointed managing director at Liverpool, said he wanted the overseas TV rights sales, which the 20 Premier League clubs currently share equally, to be broken up so that clubs could fix their own deals individually.

Werner explained that baseball teams share a proportion of income from tickets, merchandising and broadcasting, to ensure more level competition between big and small teams. The Liverpool chairman said the amount of money they are forced to share, however, is a source of resentment: "We realise we are part of a league, but we feel the burden on the top is higher than appropriate. We feel we deserve the fruits of our labour. That is the difference with the EPL. If we can generate interest in Liverpool here and around the world, we will benefit from that."

Part one of David Conn's series with the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool owners can be read here