Gerry Cardinale reveals Billy Beane encouraged him to invest in European football and ultimately buy Milan, but many in the USA thought he was ‘crazy’ to invest in Italy.
Cardinale released an interview with Bloomberg’s podcast ‘The Deal’ explaining the steps that brought him to acquire Milan for €1.2 billion in 2022.
Cardinale, Founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Investment Officer of RedBird Capital Partners, started his journey in European football thanks to Billy Beane’s inspiration.
“He encouraged us to start taking a look at European football,” Cardinale said.
“I said, why would I look at European football? Any ecosystem with sovereign governments and Russian oligarchs should not be an ecosystem that I should even contemplate. He said: ‘You are missing the point. The transfer market and relegation, which are the fundamental pillars of economics in European football, are made for Money Ball. You buy low and sell high.’ So, we did a tutorial in European football, 150-200 teams, every club in the continent and England. After all this work, we decided to make our first control buy which was Toulouse in Ligue 1.”
Cardinale’s RedBird became a junior partner at Liverpool before acquiring Milan less than two years ago.
“Billy, there’s credit for being around Milan for several years,” continued Cardinale.
“We’ve been watching it. Every time I raised the concept of [buying] Milan internally or here in the States, everyone would say, ‘You are crazy; don’t invest in Italy.’ Ultimately, we were hanging around the hoop. Elliott owned Milan. Before, there was a Chinese owner, and the Chinese owner hit the wall, and Elliott came in, becoming the equity owner with Paul Singer.
“The thing that really changed it for me was meeting Paul and Gordon, his son, who really let the investment in,” the Milan owner continued.
“I can’t say enough good things about those guys. They did a phenomenal job in the four years they owned Milan, from 2018 to when we bought it in 2022, of cleaning it up. It’s impressive. Gordon Singer has tremendous expertise in soccer [football]. He did a great job in clinging it up all brushing, playing in defence and getting to a place where they could hand it over to us, so we could go on offence. I made the determination to keep them involved, so we are 100% the equity by converting them into a seller note.
“I think we paid a fair price relative to other prices you see; we brought around four times the revenue multiple. When we bought it, it was just slightly self-sustaining cash flow, and now we are meaningfully cash-positive. Obviously, performance helps. We made it to the Champions League semi-finals. When I took over, it was challenging because they had just won the Scudetto. I took a different approach than I typically do. For the first year, I did nothing. I just watched, absorbed, and understood. You are American, so you have to prove yourself. There is a public-private partnership in sports ownership over there you don’t see in the US.”
Cardinale also discussed his plans for Milan’s future, including building a new 70,000-seat stadium and explained the changes he’s made in his second year at the club, including reshuffling the sporting area and bringing in new players, including USMNT captain Christian Pulisic.
The Rossoneri play at San Siro on Saturday against Lecce before hosting Roma in the Europa League quarter-final first leg on Thursday, April 11. Milan currently sit second in the Serie A table, 14 points below table leaders Inter.