Andrea Radrizzani found himself in conversation with Kenny Dalglish. Somehow, the topic of
buying football club’s arose and, according to Radrizzani’s telling, the Liverpool icon
had only one recommendation for the wide-eyed Italian.
Leeds United.
Thirteen months later, Radrizzani would complete a takeover from Massimo Celino. In January
2017, he purchased an initial 50% of Celino’s stake. Before Spring had turned to Summer,
he’d acquired the rest, in addition to purchasing Elland Road for £20m from Teak Commercial
Ltd.
Three and half years later, following a generation of dysfunction, Marcelo Bielsa has brought
Premier League football back and the £65m Radrizzani has parted with looks like money
very well spent.
But who is he?
Now 45 years old, Radrizanni – who was born and raised in a town outside Milan – is
estimated to be worth nearly £500m, the bulk of which was raised through expertise in rights
distribution. He gained a degree in public relations from university and, before turning
30 and having left Italy to work in Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore and eventually London, he
became a founding partner of MP & Silva, a company specialising in acquiring and then
reselling the broadcasting rights to sporting events.
The company was formed in 2004 and began a quick ascent to becoming a major player in
the sporting world. Initially selling rights on behalf of a few select teams in Serie A,
by 2006 that portfolio had grown to comprise a majority of the clubs in the league.
Italian football would, in Radrizzani’s own words, become a flagship property for
MP & Silva.
But it was also a starting point. Over the next decade, Radrizzani and his partners would
expand the company’s interests, selling broad tranches of broadcasting rights from
major European football leagues all over the world, including to Asian and Middle Eastern
broadcasters.
MP & Silva would also expand beyond football. In 2011, the company was awarded the European
rights to the French Open over five years. In December 2013, it bought the rights to
distribute Formula One in the Middle East and north Asia and, in 2014, it paid $50m
to distribute the NFL in all European countries outside the UK and Germany.
In 2016, with MP & Silva independently valued at over $1bn, a controlling stake of 65% was
sold to a group of Chinese investors.
But Radrizzani’s interests and influence were already widening. He and MP & Silva had
worked with the Premier League’s Arsenal, helping to broaden the club’s presence with
their involvement in back-to-back tours to China & South East Asia. In 2016, he served
as an advisor to the Suning Group – owners of the Chinese Super League side Jiangsu Suning
– during their purchase of Inter Milan. Quoted in La Gazzetta dello Sport, Radrizzani
identified himself as the key influence behind the takeover and Suning’s decision to invest.
Most notably, in 2015, Radrizzani launched the Eleven Sports Network. Billed as ‘Netflix
for sports’ and created through the Aser Group, the investment company through which
Radrizzani would later buy Leeds United, Eleven launched with all sorts of regional variants
and with an aggression, optimism and entrepreneurial spirit characteristic of its founder’s career.
It expanded quickly across Western Europe. It acquired the rights to show Formula One,
Serie A, LaLiga and the Bundesliga in Poland. In Belgium, it continues to hold many of the
same rights, in addition to broadcasting UFC events and European ice hockey. In 2020, Eleven
also won a five-year contract to show the native Jupiler league, too.
Eleven employs a subscription model based on localising sport and adapting to specific
regional tastes. In Italy it won the rights to Serie C & D, in Portugal it acquired and
broadcast the World Padel Tennis Tour, and in Myanmar – where Leeds United would controversially
tour in 2018 – Eleven shows the national team’s football fixtures, as well as the
English FA Cup, Serie A and the Chinese Super League.
Eleven also holds the broadcasting rights to the Premier League in Taiwan and in Japan,
where it launched in 2019, it shows minor league baseball free-to-air. In the United
States, in addition to the World Surfing Championships, Belgian football, and specific NCAA sports,
subscribers also have access to bowling’s Weber Cup and the Ultimate Disk League.
Radrizzani did not enjoy the same success in the UK. In 2018, Eleven’s audacious acquisition
of La Liga and Serie A rights ended in quick failure, with the packages relinquished amid
a failure to secure distribution deals with the native broadcasters and complaints about
rampant piracy.
Radrizzani’s Aser Group is also home to a range of different brands within the sports
and media industries which – in some cases – have been used to cross-pollinate each
other.
In 2019, for instance, NEO Studios – who are also under the Aser banner - produced
Take Us Home, a documentary based on Leeds United’s 2018-19 season, which was narrated
by Russell Crowe and released on Amazon Prime.
Among its future projects is also Ici C’est Paris: PSG, a documentary feature on Paris
Saint-Germain, who are owned by Qatari Sports Investments, whose chairman, Nasser al-Khelaifi,
is a long-time friend of Radrizzani.
Al-Khelaifi and Radrizzani worked together on deals for television rights packages in
the Middle East and have maintained a friendship ever since, giving rise to the assumption
that they would eventually collaborate more formally.
In 2018, 10% of Leeds United was purchased by 49er Enterprises, the investment arm of
San Francisco’s NFL franchise. In 2019, it was believed that QSI were also about to
become a stakeholder, when Radrizzani was pictured alongside al-Khelaifi at Parc des
Princes, during PSG’s Champions League game against Club Brugge.
According to The Times’ Martyn Ziegler, he was there to negotiate the terms of a terms
of a takeover, in a move which would allow Leeds to ‘compete with Manchester City’.
In a Spring 2020 interview with Sky Italia, however, Radrizzani acknowledged the rumours
and the friendship, but said that while their desire to potentially co-operate in football
remained, ‘there was nothing concrete at this time’. But that could change. In the
same interview, conducted during the recent lockdown, Radrizzani spoke of his “desire
to have a great Leeds that is a protagonist in the Premier League” and also promising
to “evaluate this (situation) when we are in that league”.
When he completed his takeover in 2017, Radrizzani announced that he was giving himself five
years to achieve promotion. He arrives after just three years, ahead of schedule, a sometimes
vague and contradictory character – prone to both compulsiveness, risk taking and careful