If planning permission is granted, the stadium, which will be situated in Stanley Park, next to Anfield, will house about 76,000 supporters, making it as big as Old Trafford, United's recently expanded home and at present the largest ground in British club football.
Through gate receipts alone, Liverpool can expect to generate an extra £60 million over the course of a season, while the likelihood that the naming rights to the ground will be sold will yield "tens of millions" more. The extra revenue should also provide far more money for Rafael BenÍtez, the manager, to spend on players.
In October 2004, Arsenal sold the naming rights to their stadium at Ashburton Grove to Emirates Airlines for £100 million over a 15-year period and Liverpool can expect to strike a deal equally as lucrative.
"Naming rights is certainly a possibility," Rick Parry, the Liverpool chief executive, told The Times in Hong Kong yesterday. "It will have to be somebody whose name and reputation match our own. We're looking for someone who is world-class in their own field."
Liverpool expect the stadium, which received the backing of 90.5 per cent of supporters in a poll on the website of the Liverpool Echo, the local evening newspaper, yesterday, to be open in time for the start of the 2010-11 season - ten years after plans for a new ground were first touted.
The centre piece of the glass and steel dominated structure - which underwent a radical redesign after the takeover of the club by George Gillett Jr and Tom Hicks in February - will be the new 18,000-capacity single-tier Kop.
Aside from being a lot bigger than the existing Kop, which seats about 12,000, it will be significantly "steeper and tighter", although the club are confident that it will retain the atmosphere and traditions of the original. "The Kop will be the symphony stage playing to the symphony hall," Hicks said.
Permission has initially been sought for a 60,000-seat stadium, but if Liverpool City Council approves those plans, as expected, given that the environmental and transport issues have been addressed, the club will then, as work begins, submit a second planning application requesting that the ground is fitted out to its maximum capacity of about 76,000.
Parry believes that the new stadium, which has been redesigned by HKS, the Dallas-based architect, will give Liverpool greater financial muscle to rival the likes of United and Real commercially and in the pursuit of silverware.
"Hopefully it will give us more money to spend because it will generate greater revenues and that's the whole point with the extra capacity," Parry said. "Over time that will generate even more revenue. The aim is to make us more competitive.
"When we started this process about five or six years ago, we sat down and one of our concerns was that we were earning £1 million less than Manchester United every home game. Since then, United have increased their capacity twice, so the gap is significantly greater now. They are getting 30,000 more and have a greater corporate capacity, so it is now probably in the order of a couple of million pounds per home game.
"There's Arsenal as well, and you have to look on the Continent at what Real Madrid, Barcelona and AC Milan are doing."
Parry claimed that the cost of funding the stadium would not reduce the amount of money BenÍtez has to spend on players. "It's self-defeating otherwise," he said. "If you don't have a successful team then you won't fill a new stadium. They [Gillett and Hicks] understand the need to provide funding for players in the meantime."
To avoid controversy, an eight-metre hollow will be dug near Arkles Lane and Priory Road so that the height of the stadium does not breach planning laws and intrude on Stanley Park. It will mean that the pitch and many of the front-row seats, will be below ground level, while there could also be a car park underneath the stadium.
The ground - which will be the focal point of a wider regeneration process - will also feature presidential-style bunker suites among a range of top-class corporate facilities and include dedicated facilities for the Anfield Sport and Community Centre and Liverpool Hope University.