Gerry Cardinale: “Our investment in Toulouse is a great success”
Gerry Cardinale, the boss of RedBird, main shareholder of TFC, was recently the guest of the podcast Are you not having fun?. In particular, he made a very positive first assessment of his investment in TFC: “We have invested in European football in different ways. Our investment in Toulouse is a great success, thanks to Damien Comolli and Olivier Jaubert, and the culture of victory that people have built on the spot, with the supporters and the community. Toulouse, as you know, is a phenomenal city, with a phenomenal sports culture. We made this investment with data analysis as a principle, in partnership with Billy Beane and Luke Bornn (leading member of RedBird, editor’s note). We have the exclusive use of an analysis system with a company called Zelus. It’s as big a star as most of the biggest clubs in the world have. Since taking over the club we have generated a very significant net transfer surplus. Toulouse is a superb investment, a superb partnership. We are definitely going to build this team.“
The American leader was also questioned about the European-style promotion / relegation system, and the uncertainty it implies for investors. “This is a big question. The financial penalty for losing is extreme. We probably need to find a way to fix this. We often assume that it takes a huge amount of money to spend in order to win. With Billy Beane, we have the same vision of things. Billy is an avid football fan and has been dating European football for almost two decades. According to him, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to win, you have to be smarter than that and not necessarily sacrifice the team’s cash flow. Basically it’s like in Moneyball (movie based on Billy Beane’s success in baseball). And I believe in this method. There is clearly an arms race in football, especially among the big clubs, and it needs to be tempered. People should not imagine that shareholders have an endless amount of money and are going to keep spending. At some point there has to be some standardization.“