Everyone is focusing on this one sentence and ignoring everything else. The fact that they decided to buy Milan should make the statement completely pointless, but people love drama.
Indeed. The one sentence is scary, but it needs to be taken in context, and one need to take into account that 2 years have passed. Since then, they bought a team in France with the stated philosophy and took it to League 1. It looks to me that now they are buying a very different team, one that clearly does not fit the approach the dude was talking about 2 years ago. You buy a team like Milan (spending well over 1B) and then run as a midtable team (in the 6-11 range), the revenues will drop (no CL), the club value will drop. They are in the business of making money, not losing money, so I seriously doubt that is their plan.
So, what is their plan?
What I heard, which may be relevant:
- Build a group of teams. That may benefit us. For example if Tolouse becomes a feeder club for us, or if RedBird invests in youth programs / facilities. Then again it may hurt us if we become a feeder club for Liverpool. But I do not see how that helps them increase the value of their new asset (Milan), so I am hopeful.
- Building value from players. That was mentioned a couple of times. Not sure what that means, but that does not sound like selling Leao for cheap. Rather, promoting / marketing the image of players (like Leao). If done right, that may help us attract and retain talent.
- Challenges with fans as well as operating successfully outside the US. Emphasis on "partnership". That makes me hopeful they will retain MMM.
- Cash flow positive. That could be a problem, depending on what they intend to do.
- Yankees, not a great success in the last couple of decades. Baseball is different, they did not own the team (if I understand correctly they handle media and promotions), and the Yankees have enough of a fan base that they can make money even if they end up dead last. Different business, different business model.
Bottom line, who knows what will actually happen. But I go back to the fact that if they wanted a mid-table team to run using the "Udinese model", they had plenty of other options, did not need to invest well over 1B. And given they are investing that much money, it is doubtful they plan to lose money by reducing the value of their asset (which will happen for sure if they run us as a midtable team).
Net-net, the fact that they are out to make money will hopefully benefit us as well.