AC Milan’s new owner Gerry Cardinale has explained how he sees the project with the Rossoneri as being a hybrid between two other clubs that RedBird Capital have invested in.
RedBird have invested in plenty of sports-related activities recently such as India’s Dream Sports – a lucrative fantasy cricket competition – and Toulouse FC. They also bought a stake of just over 10% in Fenway Sports Group (FSG) – Liverpool’s owner for the last decade – for around $750m.
Now the challenge is to continue the excellent work done with Milan by the previous owners Elliott Management, who essentially inherited the club in 2018 after Yonghong Li’s failure to repay loans. They embarked on a path of containing costs, getting smarter with investments and boosting revenues, all of which has led to a much improved balance sheet.
Cardinale was present at the ‘Invest in Sports’ event in New York last night and he was asked about how previous investments and experiences will shape his plans for Milan, with his comments relayed by our colleagues at SempreMilan.it.
“Investing in Milan is a hybrid of the experiences I have had with Liverpool and Toulouse. Clubs are now entertainment companies. What I learned with the Yankees and the Red Sox is that you can’t always win. This is also the beauty of sport,” he said.
“Milan have won one Scudetto and the expectations are to do it again, but in the Champions League now we see that there is a big difference with the Premier League.
“An ownership with different clubs in different sports is interesting, I believe that in this way you can have strategic benefits. Through synergies you can grow. It’s all very theoretical but there is a logic in my opinion.”
