What future for Inter Milan?

Is Inter Milan up for sale? Inter should represent an enticing opportunity. There is a prestige and scarcity value in being part of a select group of ‘legacy’ clubs. Inter have won the Champions League as many times as Manchester United (three) and more recently, too (2010).

They are the only team in Italy to have done the treble and, now COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted, the club pulls in huge crowds at San Siro, averaging more than 70,000 a game with millions of fans around the world and more than 20 million followers on social media. Brand-wise, the club’s original concept — Internazionale, brothers of the world — should transcend Italy.

Two years after the end of exclusive talks between Inter and private equity group BC Partners, valuations of football clubs have only climbed further, with the admittedly unique circumstance around the £2.3billion sale of Chelsea establishing a new benchmark. In Italy, the watermark has instead been set by Inter’s ‘cousins’, AC Milan, who went for €1.2billion last summer. RedBird Capital needed a vendor loan from the hedge fund Elliott to complete the acquisition, which, in terms of a fee, was at the top of the market — a price that would be difficult to achieve nine months later.

Forbes considers the club worth €942m — on the face of it, not bad for Suning considering it paid €270m for the club in 2016.

As chief executive Giuseppe Marotta keeps saying in justification of the club’s new path towards sustainability, Inter’s owners have invested more than €700m, a number he presumably gets to by adding together the purchase price and €549m in shareholder funding. The club is the most indebted in Italy, which is important because this gets priced into any prospective sale.

Take, for example, the €415m bond Inter refinanced until 2027 this time last year. The interest on it leapt from 4.875 per cent back when money was cheap to 6.75 per cent, which is still a better rate than if they needed to go to the market now. The bond forms part of Inter’s total liabilities, which amount to €871m in the club’s latest set of books.

Inter booked record revenues in 2022 of €440m, but still made a €140m loss despite selling Achraf Hakimi to PSG and Romelu Lukaku to Chelsea as well as reaching the knockout stages of the Champions League. The squad is the oldest in Serie A

There is always TV money to fall back on (although it remains to be seen if the next domestic and international Serie A rights tender bounces back after shrinking by 12 per cent last time around).

Then there is commercial and sponsorship revenue. Even in that case, Inter are looking for a new front-of-shirt sponsor after DigitalBits, the cryptocurrency firm that committed to pay the club €80m over three years, missed a €24m payment as well as additional performance bonuses. That follows Inter writing off money they couldn’t collect from Chinese sponsors.

How Inter’s existing owners fund a new stadium remains to be seen. Yet the plans to build one, were they deemed realistic, would give the club more appeal to a buyer. Without a Super League on the horizon, this is where a large chunk of the growth lies for the Milanesi.

Threat of financial calamity removed from Baggies

West Bromwich Albion had effectively been in decline ever since the club was sold to a Chinese consortium in August 2016, paying a figure north of £200m to buy former owner Jeremy Peace’s stake. Controlling shareholder Guochuan Lai’s ownership was fairly disastrous for the club, but his unloved tenure finally came to an end after Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel and his father Dr Kiran Patel, acquired an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the parent company of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. This change in ownership was urgently required, due to the numerous financial problems facing West Brom, including growing high-interest debt and serious cash flow concerns, following years of no investment from the former owner. Indeed, West Brom’s auditors had already rung the alarm bell in the 2021/22 accounts when they cast doubt on the club’s ability to continue as a going concern without making player s

Gold standard ground boosts Tottenham's income

The gold standard in European football grounds is the Tottenham Hotspur stadium in north London, a £1bn construction project completed in 2019. Its impact on the club’s finances has become increasingly clear as the effects of the pandemic have faded. Previously, the average fan would spend less than £2 inside the ground on a typical match day, but now that figure is about £16, thanks to new facilities including the longest bar in Europe and an on-site microbrewery. Capacity has gone up from 36,000 at the club’s previous home of White Hart Lane to 62,000. The new stadium — built on land adjacent to White Hart Lane — has opened the door to a broad range of other events that have helped to push commercial income up from €117mn in 2018 to €215mn in 2022. Last year, Tottenham hosted US singer Beyoncé for five nights on her global Renaissance tour, two NFL matches, as well as rugby games and heavyweight boxing bouts. Money brought in from football has gone up too. Match day income is

Spurs to sell minority stake

Tottenham Hotspur is in talks to sell a minority stake in a deal that could value it at up to £3.75 billion and pave the way for Joe Lewis and his family to sever ties with the Premier League football club. Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy is seeking an investment that values the club at between £3.5 billion and £3.75 billion, including debt. While the terms of any deal have not been finalised, City sources expect Spurs to sell about 10 per cent. The club is being advised by bankers from Rothschild on the sale. Tottenham wants to raise fresh capital for new player signings and to help fund the development of an academy for its women’s team, as well as a 30-storey hotel next to its north London stadium. The financier Amanda Staveley, who brokered the deal for Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to take over Newcastle United, is understood to be among the parties to have expressed an interest in Tottenham. Staveley’s fund, PCP Capital Partners, has raised about £500 million to depl

The Political Economy of Football V2

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