So why a stadium?
Simply said, it’s game day revenue. English and Spanish clubs of the same stature as Inter make more than twice – sometimes 4 time more – the amount of money that Inter take home on game day alone, plus they don’t have to pay a rental fee of over 10 million € a year for the privilege of earning so much less than other clubs in Europe.
Here’s some perspective for you: Inter can compete with the Manchester Uniteds and the Real Madrids in TV money. According to the famous Swiss Rambler article, in 2010 Real Madrid, the biggest earner in TV rights in Europe in 2010, made a little less than 40 million € more over a year than Inter made. However, in terms of game day revenue, it’s not quite so sanguine. Real, not even the table’s leaders in match day revenue totaled over a year are almost 4 times richer than Inter.
These numbers aren’t even taking into effect the real benefit to a stadium: scheduling friendlies, concerts, other sporting events, Inter Campus events for charitable tax breaks and normal events like conventions.
Okay so all the benefits of owning a stadium is pretty basic. I think we all got a pretty good handle on that. Here’s the hard part and hence the title of this article: selecting a model to follow that lets us build a stadium and maintain Champions League position.
Let’s dispel a thought right now: Moratti isn’t going to shell out his personal money to build a stadium. First of all, I don’t think he has half a billion € lying around in a lump sum. Neither do the board of directors. The money has to come from a bank. We all know, or should know that Moratti has been scouting locations for his new stadium and it looks like he’s found a likely candidate. Now he has said for years that he wants the basic setup that Bayern Munchen have. Fine.
Here’s hard part #2: Moratti needs to get his books in order – for a bank, sure, but also for UEFA which won’t wait for the Stadium to come to implement the Fair Play Directive. Remember (and this is why I have brought up the Swiss Rambler’s article ), Inter has been losing upwards of 150 million € plus every year. However those numbers are from before the Ibra sale. I would bet that since then wage redemption, player sales and trophy winnings basically earned us over 200 million € to help us get the house in order.
Consider this: all the players we sold over the past year and a half were basically replaced with Andrea Ranocchia, Mariga, Coutinho, Castellazzi, Andreolli and Biabiany equaling a cost of under 30 million for the 6 players, half of which is taken up by Ranocchia alone. Plus it should be noted that we aren’t paying Andreolli’s salary yet and Mariga, Coutinho, Biabiany and Castellazzi all make 1 m€ or less each (Castellazzi is the only one who makes 1 m€. The others make less than that).
So leading up to any sort of talk about bank financing for a stadium and Financial Fair play, Moratti and Branca are definitely dumping salaries or selling players – or doing both and replacing them with as many low wage earning young guys as they can find that won’t cost too much. Sound like any team in England in particular? And by low, I mean low. Mariga at about .8 m€ per year is quite a drop from Patrick Vieira who was on 5.5 m€ and remember at the time, Mariga was pretty much a direct replacement for Vieira.
So it’s clear that Moratti and Branca have started Inter’s Era of Financial Reform by upheaval of the personnel wages. If one’s goals are to run the team cheaply, then I would have to agree that this is the place to start. No longer are we going to pay a starter’s wage for a backup. Two seasons ago the top 15 earners for Inter according to La Gazzetta included Patrick Vieira at 5.5, Quaresma at 3.5, Mancini at 3.5 and Suazo at 3.5 m€ per year. Everyone else in the top 15 was a major contributor. As of right now, only Suazo is on that list. For those who are counting, that’s 16 million € in dead weight salary redeemed in 18 months.
Further, the wages at the top are down. Eto’o, our highest earner was earning 10.5 m€ two seasons ago. We have 7 players at or under a million € this season. We had 4 two seasons ago.