InterSpac President Carlo Cottarelli believes that his initiative to introduce fan shareholding at the Nerazzurri can bring financial stability to the club.
Speaking at the Social Football Summit, as reported by Calcio E Finanza, the economist and Inter fan outlined what he sees as the advantages to the ownership model put forward by his project.
Cottarrelli heads up the InterSpac project which aims to transition Inter away from having a single owner to a model that more closely resembles that of Bundesliga clubs, where fans are able to purchase shares and voting interest in the club.
The project is an ambitious one, but Cottarelli believes that it is feasible, and he also gave some explanations for how he sees its implementation benefiting the Nerazzurri.
“The fan shareholding model has three advantages that can improve the club’s financial situation,” he stated, “It can give stability to the capital introduced, because the fan does not change his mind, he remains forever.”
He went on that “The second advantage is that the capital provided by the fan does not come with the expectation of being remunerated, unlike the foreign owner or fund, so millions in expenses are saved in the form of interest.”
“The third is that a stronger bond is created between the fans and the club,” Cottarelli listed, “because wen one becomes a part-owner, they are more inclined to go and support the club at the stadium.”
“We believe that this could bring in more matchday, sponsor, and commercial revenues,” he explained. “Each year the fan is happy to make a small contribution, but this becomes a major contribution when multiplied by a significant number of fans.”
On finding an agreement with the current owners at the club, Suning and the Zhang family, he stated that “It is a very difficult project. What Zhang said makes sense, we are working with Deloitte to prepare a project which we will present to the club in due course.”
“You have to have a business plan,” he added, “but are things taking a little longer as far as institutional investors. It seems clear to me that a project such as ours would benefit from this.”
“When I speak of popular shareholding, I am not only speaking about the smaller ones, but also of the medium or large shareholders.”
