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.
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