"Serie A used to be the Premier League." Gerry Cardinale said it plainly, and he's not wrong — but the fact that it needs saying at all tells you everything about where Italian football stands right now.
The AC Milan owner made the comparison in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore, drawing a line between Serie A's decline and Hollywood's failure to see Netflix coming. The DVD-rental company asked to licence content. The studios laughed. Then streaming ate them alive. Cardinale's point is uncomfortable precisely because it's accurate.
The Hollywood parallel that Serie A can't ignore
RedBird — Cardinale's investment firm — just played a central role in the Skydance takeover of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery, committing around $6 billion to help build one of the biggest media conglomerates on the planet. So when he talks about entertainment industries that got complacent and paid for it, he's not theorising. He's speaking from inside the machine.
"Hollywood became complacent. It thought it was protected. Then a DVD seller came along asking to licence the content. Netflix was born and crushed them, because technology had changed." The parallel to Serie A writes itself: a league that dominated European football in the 1990s, went quiet, and has watched the Premier League's commercial gap widen into something that now looks structural rather than cyclical.
Whether RedBird's media footprint eventually intersects with Serie A broadcasting rights — domestically or internationally — is a live question. Cardinale was careful: "I don't know yet. I think DAZN is doing a great job. But anything is possible." Diplomatically vague. But he's not a man who makes $6 billion bets without thinking about synergies.
What Cardinale actually wants to change
His diagnosis is sharper than his prescription, which is true of most reform talk in Italian football. He wants the product improved, the international audience grown, and the resistance to change overcome. "In Italy, people are a bit wary of change," he said. "Italian football must innovate. It must change with a sense of urgency."
He's positioned himself as one of the drivers of that change — which makes Milan's long-running stadium saga all the more relevant. A modern ground is the most visible and bankable symbol of a club serious about revenue. Until that's resolved, the urgency sounds better in interviews than it looks in practice.
Serie A's betting markets have never recovered the global engagement they had when Ronaldo, Zidane, and Shevchenko were the names everyone wanted to watch. Cardinale knows the product has to get there again before the commercial story changes. Whether he's the man to force it through a league notorious for resisting exactly that kind of pressure — that's the real question.
"If you become complacent and fail to reinvent yourself, you'll be crushed by the competition." Milan know what that feels like. So does the whole league.
