Milan’s two first-division soccer groups share a stadium, the , and the highest two spots within the Serie A standings. They every have American homeowners and fanatically loyal supporters. And each are among the many most iconic and profitable groups in historical past.
However that’s the place the similarities wane. As a result of whereas Inter Milan believes it has a narrative to inform, AC Milan has locked the doorways, drawn the drapes and brought the telephone off the hook.
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I do know this as a result of forward of final month’s I reached out to each golf equipment and requested if they could have a while to go to. AC Milan proved too busy to speak, however Inter Milan invited me to its coaching heart, hidden amongst farm fields and quiet pastures 45 minutes from the town. These humble environment proved to be at odds with the lofty international attain the workforce is attempting to construct.
“I might say it’s leveraging extra round Italian historical past after which the historical past of the membership,” Giorgio Ricci, Inter Milan’s chief income officer, stated of the picture the membership is attempting to market. “A metropolis like Milano is now an actual ambassador of that Italian tradition, from life-style to design to meals and no matter. However we [also] have the genuine historical past across the basis of this membership. It’s a narrative not of globalization however of internationalization.
“So there may be at all times this dualism between being very robust[ly] rooted within the metropolis of Milan, in the true core, and having this worldwide angle. It’s fairly a singular and successful mixture.”
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The Inter in Inter Milan, in spite of everything, is brief for Internazionale, Italian for worldwide.
“It shall be known as Internazionale, as a result of we’re brothers of the world,” stated Giorgio Muggiani when he helped begin the workforce in 1908. He later lent his skills as an artist and illustrator to the fascist motion of Benito Mussolini.
Inter Milan is within the fifth 12 months of its newest and boldest transition, one that’s taking it from being simply a soccer membership into being a way of life and fashion-focused model, a transition that, as Ricci stated, will commerce on its historical past as a world membership and its location in one of many style capitals of the world.
It’s a mannequin that was , which 9 years in the past started partnering with Dior, Jordan Model, Levi Strauss and others. Inter has teamed with Italian menswear model Canali, created a brand new digital ecosystem that has gained it a big enhance in video views and consumer engagement and has launched non-sporting merchandise equivalent to streetwear equipment to accompany the rebrand.
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“We’re a soccer membership,” Ricci stated. “However as a way to develop, we have to turn into a worldwide soccer model.”
And it has begun to do this. Deloitte, the British skilled companies firm which does an annual rating of soccer membership revenues, says Inter introduced in additional than $620 million in 2024-25, the newest season for which figures can be found. That’s eleventh greatest on the planet and a leap of about 70% and eight locations from the place the membership was a decade in the past, when it was simply the fourth-most-profitable membership in Italy.
Inter Milan’s Hakan Calhanoglu celebrates after scoring on a penalty shot in opposition to Genoa on Feb. 28. (Marco Luzzani / Getty Photographs)
In an effort to inform that story and proceed that progress, Inter collaborated with on a brief movie titled “My Title Is My Story,” through which Lee narrated the membership’s historical past and id, introducing it to a U.S. viewers throughout final summer season’s Membership World Cup.
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Inter isn’t going it alone although. All of Italian soccer is within the midst of a long-needed overhaul.
A era in the past, Serie A was the most effective soccer league on the planet. It had gamers like Roberto Baggio, , Alessandro Del Piero, Ronaldo, George Weah and and its rich, deep-pocketed homeowners despatched Italian groups to 9 Champions League finals between 1989-99.
Since then the league has struggled to market its product globally, misplaced a lot of its prime gamers to raised pay in different European leagues, discovered potential income streams closed off by getting older, crumbling infrastructure, and noticed its status and credibility broken by the 2006 Calciopoli scandal, which centered on the manipulation of referee appointments to favor sure golf equipment.
An inflow of U.S.-based homeowners helps flip that round. Eight of Serie A’s 20 groups have American homeowners and Ricci says they haven’t solely introduced much-needed funding to the league however they’ve introduced concepts on the right way to market Italian soccer.
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“Some are solely bringing cash, yeah. Others are bringing additionally a imaginative and prescient and an ambition,” Ricci stated. “Our possession is strictly bringing that. Bringing the North American tradition of not seeing solely constraints and boundaries within the growth of a undertaking [but] having the ambition, far-sighted[ness] and dealing on constructing a dream.
“That’s precisely what Serie A wants: a little bit of a dream and a little bit of a imaginative and prescient to dare a bit extra and never be too conservative. We’d like just a few main and having imaginative and prescient and bringing that dream.”
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An enormous a part of that dream and imaginative and prescient in Milan is a brand new stadium, one that can change the century-old San Siro with a 71,500-seat area on the heart of a $1.4-billion urban-regeneration plan funded primarily by RedBird Capital, AC Milan’s New York-based proprietor, and Oaktree Capital Administration, the Los Angeles-based firm that owns Inter Milan.
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For Inter Milan that funding, the membership hopes, will rework the game-day expertise not only for well-heeled company varieties however for the workforce’s diehard followers. I’m nonetheless ready to listen to what AC Milan’s plans are.
“I’m not solely speaking about company shoppers and issues like that,” Ricci stated. “That, in fact, will profit from a brand new state-of-the-art venue with the services, eating places, no matter. But in addition for normal [admission]. As quickly as they step into a brand new venue with higher seats, by way of sound, by way of video, audio and all of the leisure, we’re going to enhance the notion of every sort of spectator you’ve within the venue.”
Is it a bet? Certain, however then only a few issues in sports activities are a positive wager. But for Inter Milan, a minimum of, that imaginative and prescient and the story behind it are price telling.
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This story initially appeared in .