Financial Times: Stadium, TV rights and politicians – the obstacles Cardinale has met at Milan | OneFootball

Gerry Cardinale wishes to move AC Milan forward and to help Serie A modernise but he has so far been met by several obstacles within Italy, a report has detailed.

The Financial Times published some quotes from Cardinale, the founder of private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners, but they also spoke in their report about some of the negatives that he has encountered.

More broadly speaking, the businessman believes that the private equity sector’s move into sport had been ‘bad for the ecosystem’ because money was simply being parked in the sector with little effort to improve the performance of the underlying business.

It stems from the ‘rising value of media rights’ which has ‘driven a wave of private equity investment into leagues and teams across the world’, beyond US sports and into things like Indian cricket and European football.

The difference is that the value of Italian broadcast rights have dropped, part of a broader cooling of the market to show live football across the region, which is not good news for Cardinale having just invested.

Moreover, the FT report that Milan have ‘ambitious plans to build a new state of the art stadium’ to replace San Siro, and the fact that they posted a profit in the accounts for the first time in 17 years suggests the financial footing to carry out the project.

However, the stadium plans are ‘proving contentious, with local politicians keen for the two clubs to invest jointly in the existing facilities’.