The man who fixed Milan on the future of football

Forget the FA Cup semi final, or the clash between Chelsea and Barcelona in the women’s Champions League. The biggest game today takes place down in the fifth tier of English football, as Wrexham AFC look to secure promotion with a win over Boreham Wood.

Victory will end 15 years in the wilderness for Wrexham, a club now owned by two Hollywood actors. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have built a new football business model based on reality TV, social media, and big brand marketing. In doing so they have broken new ground in the world of global fan engagement. Much bigger clubs will be looking on enviously to see what they come up with next.

This week we’re looking at the world of betting ads in US sport but first we sat down with Ivan Gazidis, the man who took AC Milan back to the top. Do read on — Josh Noble, sports editor

Scoreboard meets . . . Ivan Gazidis

When Elliott Management took ownership of AC Milan in 2018, the Italian football club was struggling. The investment firm was better known for battles in the bond markets that led to the seizure of an Argentine naval vessel in 2012. But rather than attempt a quick trade, Elliott brought in former Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis. He led Milan back to its first Serie A title in over a decade, before departing at the end of last year after Elliott sold the Rossoneri (red and blacks) to Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird for €1.2bn.

We spoke to Gazidis this week about the state of play in modern football. The interview has been lightly edited for length.

Scoreboard: What’s the problem if the Premier League dominates European football?

I have no issue with saying the Premier League deserves it. They’ve done a great job. It’s not a moral judgement but it is an issue for the rest of European football. 

If the rich continue to get richer and we see more and more unsustainable investment in player salaries, agents fees, transfer fees, and so on, we might end up in a few years time at another rupture point, and that’s what I’m afraid of. That won’t be the same as the [European] Super League again, it’ll take some other form, but this is not healthy for the game.

What’s happening in European football is [that the] competitive balance in the domestic leagues, has been eroded. It’s even being eroded frankly, in the Premier League.

Do you have faith in Uefa’s recent financial reforms?

I’m not a big fan of the new reforms. For me, the expectation that exists in football, that we will have benefactor owners and that the teams will rely on somebody coming in who’s just going to pump money into the club . . .

[It] used to be the local millionaire investing back into the community . . . now, even billionaires struggle to compete.

We see the massive investments that are coming from the Middle East in particular, but elsewhere as well. And for any club that is looking to be sustainably managed, that’s a very, very difficult environment to compete in. Fans, of course, demand that their teams are competitive. But there’s a direct line between those types of pressures and that instability, and a lot of the issues that we see in the game. Clubs that end up bankrupt, end up in financial trouble, we end up with ownership that’s less than ideal, because if the environment is not stable, you’re unlikely to get the most stable ownership. Fans ultimately and the game in general pay a huge price for that.

What I’d love to see is tighter financial regulation, not with the expectation that football clubs will be normal businesses. I don’t believe that they are, I believe they’re social-cultural institutions. But what I would like to protect football clubs against is the absolute demand that they make huge losses every year.

Where do you stand on multi-club ownership?

I don’t believe multi-club ownership within a single competition helps with the credibility of that competition. I don’t know how you have a game between two clubs that have the same ownership and control playing against each other. Now Uefa may be coming to believe that that’s something they can’t control or it’s inevitable or there’s no way to stop that. But it’s pretty difficult to argue that [it] doesn’t affect the integrity of competition. So I don’t see how you can allow it within a single competition.

If you have somebody that controls two clubs that are playing against each other, how do you assure the public, even if the players are super competitive, the manager is super competitive, how do you assure the public that that’s the case? In judicial terms, there’s also the appearance of justice, the appearance of conflict, and so I think it’s a very, very dangerous path to walk down.

What do you think about the landscape of football investment?

If you’re coming from the US expecting that soccer is going to give you the types of protections that you would have in the US sports, you’re going to be in for a big surprise.

Having said that, even with all of the complexities and the lack of protections, and the jeopardy that exists in global soccer, there is still a strong feeling if you step back from the weeds and really look at the overall landscape, that soccer is the global game and it will find a way to capitalise on its enormous reach and power over the next decade or two. You know it’s not comparable to any of the US sports in terms of its potential.

In some senses, it’s a gamble or it’s a statement of belief in what the future of football can be, but of course, if football continues to be completely uncontrolled, if regulation continues to be poor in football, if the multi jurisdictional aspects of football create too many complexities, there’s also a lot of peril in these investments. I believe in the long-term value of the sport. I believe that our governance can and will improve.

What can be done about racism in football? 

We’ve seen this time and time again and it can feel very disheartening at times. And actually, it’s amplified in the modern era also by social media, where we see incredible amount of hate speech

One of the faults that I see in football is that there are clear issues and there is a temptation to ignore them, to sweep them under the carpet and imagine that nobody’s going to notice because it’s an ugly side of the game that nobody wants to acknowledge.

The first step often is just acknowledging it publicly and speaking about it, but not just through public channels and social media, but with very specific calls to action that people cannot resist.

I think we’ve seen a lot of progress in the English game. A big part of that progress has been the construction of new stadiums that are much more inclusive, much more welcoming. That enhances the environment and leads to the fans that are in the stadium paying more respect to that environment. It brings women back into the stadiums, it brings children into the stadiums.

It’s not that the issue has been solved in English football but Italian football has a long journey ahead of it in part because the stadiums are so rundown that the environment is just not conducive to a respectful atmosphere. The feeling is that anything goes, and that’s very damaging for Italian football.

The US sports pushback against betting ads

The rise of sports betting over the last five years has been well documented. Now, sports leagues are pushing back.

A consortium of the top US pro leagues, as well as television networks NBC and Fox, banded together this week to call for more restraint in sports betting advertisements, particularly for restricting such targets to adults and being more responsive to consumer complaints.

The leagues, including the NFL, MLB, NBA, WNBA, NHL, MLS, and NASCAR said — together with the networks — they are “committed to implement[ing] and maintain[ing] consumer protection policies” around sports wagering adverts.

The formation of the consortium, known as the Coalition for Responsible Sports Betting Advertising, comes a week after the Premier League said it will begin phasing out front-of-shirt sponsorships from gambling companies beginning with the 2025-26 season. 

Taken together, these decisions mark one of the most forceful hedges to date in the widespread proliferation of sports wagering, especially as global betting companies embark on massive marketing campaigns in new markets, such as the US. 

Since the US Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on sports betting in 2018, some 29 states and Washington DC have legalised the practice, with more states still reviewing their policies. The pandemic proved a catalyst for states looking to plug budget shortfalls with revenues secured by new taxes on sports wagering, and bookmakers in turn scrambled to market to a brand new class of consumers, spending billions in an all-out war with one another to capture market share.

But there are differences between the US market and that of the UK: the sheer size of America, along with the fractured market for betting legality, makes effective sponsorship and ad buying more complex. US sports leagues have only recently introduced kit sponsors, with far smaller real estate on jerseys than those seen in global football. 

Betting companies once cheered the adoption in 2021 of sports betting in populous states like New York, not only for the millions of potential new customers, but because it made television ad buying much simpler and cost-effective for wide swaths of the East Coast time zone. Two years on, wagering ads are almost overwhelming the sports viewing experience across leagues in the US, prompting the coalition formation.

It’s notable that NBC and Fox are signatories — the networks have rights to broadcast the Premier League, the NFL and MLB, among other sports — meaning the coalition will have input from more than one group of stakeholders in the industry. And with the UK government white paper review of the 2005 Gambling Act expected within weeks, it may be a turning point for the betting gold rush.

Highlights

• The media company founded by tennis star Naomi Osaka and agent Stuart Duguid, Hana Kuma, has announced a $5mn fundraise from the likes of Fenway Sports Group and Epic Games, among others. The funding round will allow the production studio to spin off from LeBron James’s SpringHill Company, its incubator, which will remain an investor in the studio.

• SeatGeek has filed confidential initial paperwork for an initial public offering, according to the Information. The ticket company previously abandoned plans to go public via a Spac set up by US baseball executive Billy Beane and Wall Street veteran Gerry Cardinale.

Transfer Market

• AS Roma named Lina Souloukou as chief executive and general manager of the Italian football club, which has been owned by Texas-based billionaire Daniel Friedkin since a €591mn deal in 2020. Born in Greece, Souloukou is a member of the executive board of the European Club Association, and former general manager of Greek side Olympiacos.

Final out

Major League Baseball is instituting some rule changes for this year, including a new pitch clock that is speeding up games. But apparently there’s some innovation happening at the T-ball level for youth as well. This week, a New Jersey child introduced a new way to stunt on the rest of her competitors: smacking a deft bunt straight up the middle, then cartwheeling her way to first base as the opposing team scrambled — and failed — to catch the ball. It’s almost too cute to be believed.