RedBird founder, Gerry Cardinale, has granted an exclusive interview to the microphones of The Financial Times.
Here are his statements:
"Everything I’m wearing is Italian. Loro Piana," he says, gesturing from shoulders to shoes. "I was always proud of being Italian. My mother was Dorothy D’Annunzio."
In 1982 his father sent him to Santa Maria di Castellabate, a coastal town south of Naples, to trace his heritage. That was the year Italy won the Fifa World Cup...
"All of Italy just erupted . . . And that stuck with me."
On ownership rumors:
"What I’ve had to deal with over the last three years in Italy is something I’ve never dealt with before. I can’t even get on first base over here without the question being: do I really own the team, or does Elliott? That’s the most ridiculous thing in the world. It’s just frustrating. Because what I want is the benefit of the doubt that I’m trustworthy and that I care about this club, city and country, and that I’m a good steward . . . What I’ve learnt in three years is that I need to prove that," says Cardinale, who recently obtained Italian citizenship.
Cardinale also said:
"Everybody looks at me and assumes, you’re 'il presidente', you’re the new Berlusconi. The last thing I’m going to do is come here because I’m a wealthy guy and I just want to be a fanboy."
Cardinale wishes he had greater support from Italy’s government, including its Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, as he tries to help put Italian football back on the map as well as modernise live entertainment:
"I’m building a stadium and I want it to be an Italian product. Italian banks financing it, Italian companies competing for the naming rights, Italian retail and hospitality around it. In the US I could do this in my sleep. Here it’s not my ecosystem, there are language, political and cultural barriers."
Cardinale is building a new stadium — a modern arena to replace the decrepit one, doubling as a venue for live events and retail — and to bring an NBA Europe basketball franchise to Milan. He wishes the Italian prime minister’s team would approach it more like the Trump administration.
"Let me tell you: what I experienced with President Trump was off the charts. A game-changer. Trump is taking the lead in re-underwriting the public-private partnership. We have so much expertise in the private sector in America and the president is harnessing that for the country. That’s what I’m talking about over here in Italy. That’s what I want to see. I would like to get to a point where, if I’ve established enough credibility, I could go to Rome and sit down with Meloni or whoever and say: look, let’s have a plan for how we re-underwrite Serie A. Let’s make Serie A one of Italy’s greatest exports."
On partnerships with celebreties such as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, LeBron James’s SpringHill media company; Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on a new spring football league; and David Ellison, whom he helped build Skydance and then acquire Paramount and Warner:
"Celebrities don’t do anything for me. When you step back, and you sort of look at it from the top down, it looks like I’m a starf***er and I just go after these famous people . . . but I’m not. I don’t buy a Hollywood studio to go to the Oscars. I don’t buy a football team so I can go hang out in the locker room."
