Gerry Cardinale’s plan to make Milan the capital of sports entertainment

It’s not just about Milan, and it’s not just about football. Gerry Cardinale, the owner of the Rossoneri club, is broadening his horizons and dreams of transforming Milan into one of the world’s capitals of sport and entertainment. It is no longer enough for him to be the owner of one of the world’s most famous football teams, the Italian club with the most titles in Europe and worldwide. He wants to build something bigger: a system capable of bringing together football, basketball, tennis, concerts and business. RedBird Capital Partners, the company that owns A.C. Milan, has in fact announced the launch of Milan Sports & Entertainment (MSE), a new holding company designed to bring together under one roof all the American fund’s investments in the Lombard capital. A sort of multinational sports entertainment company with Milan as its operational base and the world as its market.

At the heart of the project, of course, remains AC Milan, with its seven Champions League titles, 19 Serie A titles and a global community of over 650 million supporters. But the Rossoneri club is becoming the driving force behind a project that goes far beyond the ninety minutes of a match. The first piece of the jigsaw will be the new 71,500-seat Generali Stadium, designed by Foster + Partners and MANICA, set to become a venue that comes alive seven days a week, hosting football, concerts, events, dining, shops and luxury hospitality. The model is based on the American one, where the stadium is no longer just a venue for matches, but a revenue-generating machine operating all year round. It has only just been unveiled, but we will have to wait until 2031 to see it. It is a stadium, however, that will be shared with Inter and will change its colours every other week.

There’s more to life than football. Cardinale dreams of top-flight basketball. RedBird is considering the possibility of acquiring a Milan-based franchise in the future NBA Europe, the project through which the American professional league aims to establish a foothold in Europe. A move that could shift the balance of power in European basketball, although the NBA Europe project is still very much up in the air and co-existence with the EuroLeague will not be straightforward.

However, Cardinale also has another project to develop in the San Donato area, which had been purchased with a view to building the new stadium should the San Siro deal have fallen through. The idea is to create a new sports and entertainment hub featuring a new 20,000-seat arena, with the potential to bring major tennis events to Milan, such as a tournament or the Finals, which are currently hosted in Turin.

Leading this revolution will be Brett Yormark, appointed chief executive of the new holding company. A manager with over thirty years’ experience in American sport, he is currently commissioner of the Big 12 Conference, a role he will step down from at the end of January 2027. Yormark will report directly to Cardinale, who has known and worked with him for a quarter of a century. “We do not want to invest in a single club, a single sport or a single venue, but in an entire city,” is the essence of the strategy outlined by the founder of RedBird. The fund aims to bring to Milan the experience it has gained in the United States through organisations such as Legends Hospitality, On Location and Yes Network, building a platform capable of multiplying commercial opportunities within the sporting sector.

Four years after buying AC Milan, Cardinale is therefore renewing his commitment to Italy. Football remains at the heart of the venture, but a project is taking shape around it that looks to the NBA, tennis, concerts and the events business. It is based on a very American belief: in sport, winning is important, but keeping the show running all year round can become an even bigger business. However, he must not forget that the fans care about only one thing: winning. This is a concept he appears to have grasped in recent months, given his decision to stay closer to the club and adopt a more hands-on approach, bringing about a change of direction not seen during his early years as owner. Now, faced with this new global project, the fans will inevitably have to stop chanting against him, because the idea is that he has come to Milan to stay for the long term and try to Americanise it a little.