Gerry Cardinale wants Milan to follow in the footsteps of the New York Yankees with a new stadium, warns success is ‘not about outspending’ PSG or Manchester City.
The American investor gave an interview with Fortune magazine and the headline was a jab at the problems surrounding Calcio culture in Italy, noting that his “nemesis is Italian bureaucracy.”
Plans with Inter to revamp the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, also known as San Siro for the area of the city, have faltered over the years, so both clubs are instead working on whole new arenas.
While some authorities are trying to prevent San Siro changes with the same laws that protect historic monuments, Cardinale insists it’s not too different to America.
“It’s time for Italy, and for Milan, to do what the Yankees did back in 2008,” Cardinale told Fortune.
“Old Yankee Stadium had been around forever. Babe Ruth was there, Joe DiMaggio was there, Mickey Mantle was there, Roger Maris was there. It was iconic. But they realized that it’s time now for a new version of that.”
Although he thinks their “chances are good” of getting a new stadium built, Cardinale is keeping a Plan B too.
“If the stadium doesn’t happen, we stay at San Siro.”
Milan are hardly the first club with foreign owners who thought getting new infrastructure built would be relatively simple, underestimating the sheer number of hoops they’d have to jump through.
“Those concepts are more familiar to American investors and I think that’s what attracted them to Serie A. They realize what the legacy is and the history here in some of these under-managed brands. They realized the potential to have a great investment on your hands, simply by professionalizing the ownership.”
Roma have been fighting this battle for 10 years now, first with Jim Pallotta and then the Friedkin family.
“I hope Dan Friedkin is able to get a stadium done,” Cardinale said. “I’ll certainly do everything I can to support him because Italy needs more live event entertainment infrastructure.
“If I had my druthers, I would help every single other owner in Serie A build a stadium, because it’s good for the ecosystem.”
It’s not just about matchday, but having bars, restaurants and club stores, then staging concerts and other events.
“One big macro thing in sports, in general, is you’ve had this massive escalation in these valuations in sports and none of the people and none of the infrastructure really has kept pace. I mean, these are all now mini Disneys—live event entertainment companies.”
When Cardinale arrived at Milan to take over from Elliott Management, he wanted to make clear this did not automatically mean a vast spending spree on the transfer market, the way Todd Boehly did at Chelsea.
“It’s not a question of outspending the other guy. It’s a question of spending an incremental dollar of capital better than anyone else.”
He points to the revenue from Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City is of a different level, double the current figures brought in by Milan.
Even just the salaries shelled out by these clubs are as much as Cardinale paid to purchase Milan.
“You’re never going to outspend that.”
Of course, there was also an investigation opened earlier this month into the takeover, with suggestions from the Italian Financial Police that Elliott were still the ‘real’ owners and not Cardinale’s RedBird.
“The notion that RedBird doesn’t own and control AC Milan is just false and contradicts all the evidence and facts,” RedBird spokespeople told Fortune.