The rumours of possible investment in Milan from the Middle East pop up every now and again, but they certainly intensified last year when raids on the offices at the club’s headquarters yielded details of a presentation to PIF.
It stated that PIF – who are Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund – have a net worth of $861bn and they have the objective of reaching $1trillion by the end of 2025 thanks to investments in various areas. Thus, they were looking at potentially acquiring a stake in Milan.
Samaja spoke at the ‘Merger & Acquisition Summit 2025’, a meeting in which – together with Inter president Beppe Marotta and Lega Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo – many economic issues related to the world of Italian football were discussed at length.
Calciomercato.com relayed his comments, which began with an explanation as to why there has been such a rise in recent years in terms of American investment into Italian football.
“On the one hand, there is a soft aspect, which is the passion that Americans have in general for Italy, and the visibility aspect that owning a soccer team gives you,” he began
From a financial point of view, what those who made these investments looked at was the possibility of optimising the sustainability that Dr. Marotta was talking about from a management point of view.
The second thing is the issue of rights: if you look today at how much the rights of Italian soccer are worth, it is around a billion, those of the Premier League are 4 billion, those of the NBA have made an 11-year agreement for 77 billion dollars. These are crazy figures.
“When an American looks at our numbers, he sees potential, soccer is the most practiced sport in the world, why can’t we have higher numbers? This is a very important lever that pushed them
The third lever is the issue of stadiums: everyone hoped to optimize the management of the clubs through the stadium, unfortunately this didn’t work, due to bureaucracy. Compared to other countries, the processes are much, much longer, and this creates a disadvantage.
“When Berlusconi sold Milan or when Moratti sold Inter there were still many ‘bocchettoni’ [wealthy individuals who can own clubs alone], there were Russian oligarchs, there were the Chinese. Today unfortunately that world has become very rarefied.
There are two open worlds, the Arab one, which however already has its own with PSG and Manchester City. Perhaps Bahrain is missing, which through Investcorp also looked at Inter.
“PIF bought Newcastle, but it is not a team with which you can exercise that soft power that the Saudis intend to exercise through sport. The Saudis change their points of view very quickly, at the moment they are more focused on ensuring that every partnership has a return on the territory.
“Given the relationship between our government and the Saudi one, I would not rule out that in the future PIF could go back to looking at teams like Inter, Milan or Juventus.”
