Cardinale explains issues sports broadcasting faces and why the Super League emerged

Gerry Cardinale has once again spoken about the challenges that the sport sector is facing, and what he is having to deal with as the owner of RedBird Capital and AC Milan.

Over the last two days, the second edition of the ‘IMG X REDBIRD SUMMIT’ was held in Oxford, with Cardinale among those who spoke on stage to answer questions and share some of his experiences in the field. He spoke about the ‘opportunity to return Milan to where it was’.

In one of the panels attended by Cardinale – who with RedBird also controls the French club Toulouse – there was talk of piracy, but more generally of the situation of sports television rights and the coexistence between linear transmission (television) and streaming platforms.

“Everyone is jumping through hoops on linear assets, saying it’s all over, it’s all binary. More people are going to watch CBS tonight than Netflix , and that’s going to continue for the next 20 years,” Cardinale said (via Calcio e Finanza).

“There’s going to be different modulations in that trajectory, and there’s going to be convergence. The simple factor means that the reality is that most people aren’t going to subscribe to 18 different streaming services. That’s why there’s a value proposition in the bundle.

“There will be some who will do it, so the point is to have linear alongside streaming and offer a menu of opportunities to give intellectual property owners what they need. The same goes for distributors. Obviously, these skirmishes will continue to exist.”

Cardinale concluded his speech by mentioning the European Super League project that emerged a few years ago and was quickly reneged upon, but continues to threaten to peak its head out again.

“You see a sort of bubble in sports TV rights everywhere. You see it in America, in baseball, in Europe between the Premier League and the continent, and that’s why they got to the point of trying to create the Super League,” he continued.

“What the NFL has done is really the model to follow, because they’ve put it all together. College football is the second most popular sport in America, but it’s highly fragmented. They haven’t had the ability to go to market to monetise their intellectual property as a single package.”