In today's print edition, La Gazzetta dello Sport discusses the situation of the AC Milan club sale: a passage from Elliott to fellow American firm RedBird Capital Partners.
The founder and managing partner of the potential new buying company is Gerry Cardinale, a former banker at Goldman Sachs.
The confirmation arrives from the newspaper about the intentions from all parties to close the purchase of the club in the coming days.
As revealed yesterday by Gazzetta, Cardinale has visited the San Siro and Sesto San Giovanni areas to even take stock about where the club stands with the new stadium project. The American entrpreneur also shares the belief that a new modern facility for AC Milan is the key to go forward and maximise revenue.
With Gerry Cardinale, there is his associate and business partner Alec Scheiner. After an important past in the NFL, the former Vice President of the Dallas Cowboys then President of the Cleveland Browns has become a benchmark for investment in the sport industry for RedBird Capital Partners. He is also a supervisor of the partnership with Fenway Sports Group (the company which owns Liverpool), Scheiner is part of the board of directors of Toulouse and could also have a similar role at AC Milan, writes La Gazzetta dello Sport.
The goal for the potential new owners to turn AC Milan into an even bigger dynasty in terms of brand and image: make the club sustainable and maximise its profits by relying on media strategies also used for other investments, referring to XFL, the newborn football league that wants to compete with the NFL and to the YES network the media company that holds the local television rights, for the New York metropolitan area, of Yankees and Nets.
In a past interview, Alec Scheiner talked about sports investment and said the following:
"The biggest brands in world sport and the smallest ones have one thing in common, unlike other businesses, which is that they do not lose their 'customers'. Whoever supports a team remains its fan for life ».Loyalty to Milan fans worldwide will therefore become one of the objectives of RedBird. Now, Paolo Maldini and Frederic Massara, two architects of AC Milan's comeback to the top of Italian football, are awaiting a sit down with RedBird to understand the project. For this reason, Gerry Cardinale wants to move on and finalise the deal very soon.
