Inter Milan plans to start winning on balance sheet

One of Europe’s most storied soccer teams says it has a plan to turn a €140m deficit into a profit, and fast.

If Inter Milan, 18-time Italian champions and winners of three European Cups, can pull off a turnaround, it will accomplish a rare feat.

Few Italian soccer teams win games and earn money at the same time — current Italian champion Juventus is only starting to reap the financial benefits of its new stadium.

Michael Bolingbroke, Inter’s CEO, drew up a five-year roadmap to profitability in 2014, and early reports suggest the financial engineering is working.

The team, which recorded a €140m loss in the 2014-15 season, will on Friday report a loss of around €60m for the 2015-16 season, according to sources.

Chinese retailer Suning approved of Mr Bolingbroke’s vision enough to pay €270m for a majority stake in the team in July.

The new owners told the CEO “I want you to be consistently in the Champions League. And I want you to make money,” Mr Bolingbroke recalled.

“And your business plan says that within three years of my purchase, you will be profit positive? Great. Off you go.”

It will not be easy, particularly the way the team is currently playing. Inter has missed the Champions League, and the money that goes with it, for four seasons in a row.

This year, the club which won the Champions League, Italian League, and Italian Cup as recently as 2010, is 14th in Serie A after nine games, 10 points behind leaders Juventus.

Italian teams do not have as many ways to make money as their biggest rivals in other parts of Europe.

AC Milan, for example, lost close to €100m in each of the last two seasons; AS Roma lost €69m last season. Most do not own their own venues and so, as tenants, pay rent and must share the proceeds from concessions.

TV deals are less rich and clubs have overspent in the transfer market, relying on their owners to bail them out.

Inter’s plan to raise revenue through sponsorships leans heavily on Suning, a Chinese juggernaut with annual revenues of more than $20bn and more than 1,500 outlets.

Mr Bolingbroke said the team can get €20m a year in deals thanks to the retailer’s contacts in the world’s most-populous country, which has recently embarked on an unprecedented plan to grow its soccer industry.

Next month, the team will open a 12-person Inter sales office in Suning’s home city of Nanjing.

That move, Mr Bolingbroke believes, will lead to slew of regional sponsorship agreements and perhaps even a naming rights contract for its training apparel and its youth academy.