AC Milan owner Gerry Cardinale has claimed that the fans are who he sees as his partners in Milan and he stressed the importance of taking this sort of project seriously.
At a time when the fans have voiced dissatisfaction with the RedBird Capital Group ownership of the club, Cardinale spoke from the stage of the Qatar Economic Forum at Bloomberg, with his comments relayed by Tribal Football.
The last two home games have been very quiet at San Siro and seen a lot fewer flags and banners because the ultras are protesting what they perceive to be a lack of ambition from the Milan ownership.
Cardinale has extended something of an olive branch to the fans by saying that the fans are his partners in Milan and he takes the situation very seriously.
“The answer is that in these years as owners of Milan we have experienced exactly what we expected. But knowing it theoretically and experiencing it firsthand, on your own skin, has differences. I say this because our ‘partners’ in AC Milan are the fans and I take this very seriously. In America team and club owners don’t have this type of ‘partnership’, but in European football it is something you have to take seriously,” Cardinale explained.
“In Italian football you have to take it very seriously, and I do. There’s an opportunity here, at least in our investment thesis, to professionalize how these things are handled. These are no longer ‘hobbies for rich people’, now you see that institutional capital is attracted to these situations because these are multi-billion dollar live event entertainment businesses. You have to have a balance. The fans obviously always want to win. The irony in sports is that if you win every year you make the competition less interesting.”
Cardinale went on to explain how you can foster success in the sporting world without losing sight of the human element and the financial nouse that is needed.
“The human element and its unpredictability is what makes these things so precious. But in any case it is obvious that you always set out to win the championship, to get as far as possible in the competition,” Cardinale said.
“To do this you need to find a balance between the short-term goal of winning every year and the long-term goal of sustainability and consistency in reducing volatility and variation in performance. These things shouldn’t just lead to income, that would be lazy, but should instead increase cash flow, which is a good thing. Reinvest cash flow to improve the team and win.”
Milan are trying to secure long-term success and this is what has angered some sections of the fanbase who think that Milan should be successful immediately given the size of the name.
“It’s a virtuous circle, no different from what happens in any other company. It’s just that here emotion takes over from time to time, and this is where the best thing we can do to steward this asset for Italy and for the fans is to make sure we set it up for long-term success. Then it’s obvious that we want to win every year. Here’s the interesting thing. We have never been a majority shareholder of such a large sporting entity before. We certainly went around them, like with the Yankees or the Cowboys, but that’s part of the learning process,” Cardinale said.