The CEO of Milan George Furlanidirectly from the DLA Piper Sport Forum event package “The new challenge of football: combination of sporting and financial performance” expressed himself thus on the importance of the Growth Decree for Italian clubs:
“We made our first profit with the latest balance sheet after 17 years and this is part of a context of recovery starting from Elliott and a phase of growth with RedBird. In the last year we have strengthened the business part with new sponsors, new and renewals of partnerships, e-commerce, collaborations with companies such as the NY Yankees. Obviously economic success goes hand in hand with sporting success. Competitiveness yes, but not competitiveness at any cost. We are competitive and attentive to costs. Sports results bring revenues, but everything will be ruined if the Growth Decree were removed; without the decree it would be the destruction of Italian football. Since the Growth Decree has been in place we have found ourselves achieving great results in Europe as Italian football, because we are a talented business: we are under other markets on an economic level, we are in a difficult context. But let’s look: it is impossible to do a stadium project, there are limits on non-EU players, shorter contracts. The only lever that makes us competitive with the other European leagues is the Decree Growth. Our sponsors are foreign capital that enters Italy and which we then invest, the non-football projects are all financed by foreign money: when you can’t offer a good product without the best actors there is no point in making projects. To me it seems madness at a national economic level to remove the Growth Decree”
