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Club Collector
: Investor
Gerry Cardinale
in New York
Photo:
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Gerry Cardinale
was recently asked
what he thinks of the ever increasing ratings of individual sports and football clubs .
Well, he said, there really isn't any real value for the brands, most investors just paid more than they did in the previous deal.
Of course, things cannot always go on like this, the prices for the teams cannot continue to rise.
But the high ratings showed one thing in the global media and culture business.
"This is the best content you can get. Sports are considered the new Hollywood."
With this attitude, the longtime Goldman Sachs banker and CEO of the New York investment firm Redbird Capital Partners has become one of the most influential sports investors in the world - who is now also heavily involved in European football.
Now he also takes over the majority of the traditional club AC Milan, which just won the Italian championship.
For allegedly around 1.3 billion euros, Redbird Capital is to take over the majority of the shares from US investor Elliott, as was announced on Tuesday.
Elliott Singer
's (77) hedge fund
took over the former club from ex-Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi
(85) in 2018 after a Chinese businessman jumped off.
Elliott is said to have invested more than 740 million euros in the club around superstar
Zlatan Ibrahimovic
(40) over the four years and remain on board as a minority shareholder.
The deal is expected to be finalized in the fall.
For Cardinale, it is not the first sports investment.
The Harvard graduate was with Goldman Sachs for more than 20 years, most recently as a partner at Wall Street Bank, where he helped steer the $100 billion private equity business of the merchant banking division.
During this time, among other things, he launched a marketing platform for the New York Yankees baseball team.
In 2014 he became self-employed – and bought into sports teams with Redbird.
This is how he became one of the most influential investors in European football.
Redbird has owned the majority of French first division club FC Toulouse since 2020.
In the spring of 2021, Cardinale joined Fenway Sports Holding in a spectacular $735 million deal – and has since been co-owner of Champions League finalists Liverpool FC around coach
Jürgen Klopp
(54).
Redbird owns 10 percent of the shares.
"Most people think investing in sports is buying teams," Cardinale said recently about his strategy.
For a long time he actually invested in everything but the teams and preferred to build media and marketing platforms around them.
Only in recent years has he become the owner himself.
He is concerned with the vertical integration of clubs, rights marketing, the betting business and the streaming and media business.
The teams as the owners of the trademark rights are the core.
Cardinale believes that sports brands are the most valuable thing in the media world.
Skillfully managed, you can earn money with them via all new digital channels.
The takeover of a new kind of American football league called XFL shows how far he goes.
In 2020, together with
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
(50) and his manager
Dany Garcia
, he acquired the rights to the league in order to expand it into a nationwide spectacle.
After postponements in the Corona period, it should start in 2023.
Despite all the euphoria, it is also clear to him that the value increases of the teams will not go on forever.
"That's not possible," says Gerry Cardinale.
If you look at the details of previous acquisitions, some of them were mistakes.