Erick Thohir opened today’s shareholders’ meeting by offering – together with everyone else present – a long applause to honorary president Massimo Moratti. He then outlined the latest developments regarding the restructuring of the club to the shareholders, and also discussed transfers. Indeed, he was very clear in associating these two topics, both during the meeting and when speaking to the press afterwards.
On the new company set up and the club’s strategies.
“The new company is similar to many companies that focus on sport and media: we’re creating a media company that will focus on increasing revenue from the media and sponsorships. We’ve recruited a new person [Luca Innocenti] for ticketing. If you look at the top 15 clubs in terms of revenue, the average is 260 million a year. For Inter to get to that level, one of the important things is ticketing. That’s why we’ve recruited this person, because he will create a business plan for us.”
“The most important thing for us is to build a team on the pitch but you also need to have a strong management. That’s why I said yesterday that we won’t stop recruiting because there are positions still available, for example a marketing director and an international sponsorships director. The deal we signed with Infront yesterday is for Europe, but not the rest of the world. It’s important to have more people to help in China, United States, Japan, South-East Asia, and Australia.”
“The same goes for marketing because when you look at Inter as a brand, it’s important to create a marketing team who can develop strategies for the club, to reach beyond Europe and go global. If the club is to reach 200 million, the media will play an important role for the company. Because the media, the websites and social media are areas where we can add more revenue, but it takes a while to develop.”
On Javier Zanetti
“The captain will be part of the club. As I keep saying, we want to focus on the last three games we have. I met Zanetti yesterday and we spoke about the fact that the team needs to focus on getting as many points as we can, but at the same time we had discussions about him studying English and management. I think it’s important that when he’s part of the club he understands not only the sport but also the management side. The most important thing is that he’s still a player at the moment and he can help us perform consistently over the next three games.”
Source: inter.it
