The new Chinese owners of AC Milan "plan to invest in a stadium and could eventually list the team on a stock market to help revive its fortunes," the club's CEO-designate said, according to Segreti & Pollina of REUTERS. Marco Fassone, an experienced football exec hired by the Chinese-led consortium to "turn around the once high-flying and now loss-making AC Milan," said that it needed its own stadium but this "did not necessarily mean building a new one." He "implied it could buy into Milan's existing council-owned arena, San Siro." Fassone: "We want to give AC Milan a stadium in the short term. ... We know that in Italy it cannot happen straight away. ... Whether it's San Siro or a newly-built stadium, as long as the club can have its own stadium." Currently, AC Milan and Inter Milan, also Chinese-owned, rent the 80,000-seat San Siro Stadium from the Milan City Council. Fassone said that AC Milan "would also create in coming months a China-based company for marketing, licensing and commercial operations," which would feed into revenue growth (REUTERS, 4/15).
