Football & business

Inter vs Napoli: for the Scudetto, a confrontation between two business models in football

Inter and Napoli, fighting for the title, represent two different approaches to football business. Balance sheet analysis and future strategies

by Marco Bellinazzo

23 May 2025

Giuseppe Marotta during The Prize giving ceremony winning the Scudetto after the Serie A soccer match between Inter and Lazio at the San Siro Stadium , north Italy - Sunday 19 , May , 2024. Sport - Soccer . (Photo by Spada/LaPresse)

3' min read

Key points

Inter's health
The Napoli situation

3' min read

Serie A has not experienced an evening like this for years. Inter and Napoli will compete for the Scudetto in the last 90 minutes (assuming it is enough) playing away to Como and at home against Cagliari, respectively.

Tonight's is not only the (long-distance) challenge between the two teams that have dominated the last three championships, but also between two sports companies that embody opposite forms of governance: on the one hand, a Los Angeles-based investment fund,

Oaktree, who recently took over the team's reins from a Chinese owner; on the other hand, an Italian presidency, that of Aurelio De Laurentiis, who for more than 20 years has been restoring the fortunes of a team that sank to Serie C after a resounding default.

Inter and Napoli today plastically represent the opposite poles of Italian football (and not only), but they are grappling with similar problems - infrastructural, international brand growth and development of the entertainment matrix of the business model - that will be indispensable to successfully resolve in order to try to remain at the top of an increasingly globalised and financially oriented Football Industry.

Inter's health

The two clubs arrive at today's sporting contest in good financial health.

Inter escaped the 'perfect storm' that hit the club between the pandemic (which caught Inter in an expansive face of investment in the market) and the Zhang family's divestment, costing the club 573 million red in four years, from 2019 to 2023 (an average of 150 million per year).

The 2023/24 season saw a record turnover (473 million) and a deficit of just 36 million. The exciting Champions League campaign, with the conquest of the final with PSG on 31 May, has brought a haul that is close to 200 million in revenues, including UEFA bonuses (over 135) and around 35 million in box-office receipts (raising the trophy would be worth another 6.5 million, to which another 4-5 million would be added for the possible UEFA Super Cup match), pushing the next budget into the black and the turnover well over the half-billion mark.

This is a not-to-be-missed boost to better face the crucial 2026/27 season in which it will be necessary to meet the maturity of the EUR 415 million bond (Oaktree has already repurchased EUR 15 million of it and is working on refinancing it so that it does not become a debt of less than 12 months' duration and thus impact the liquidity index) and to bring the net equity back into positive territory (negative at 30 June 2024 by EUR 66 million) after having benefited from like all Italian companies for which the government allowed this option during the Covid emergency, the five-year deferral of losses incurred in 2021 and 2022 (for EUR 341 million, largely already covered by capital injections).

In the summer, Inter is expected, in any case, to take two crucial steps: on the field, the World Club Championship (the winner will receive up to 125 million); and off, the purchase, together with Milan, of the San Siro area in order to finally speed up the process of building the new stadium.

Serie A, Napoli e Inter si giocano lo scudetto

The Napoli situation

Instead, in the last five seasons marked by the pandemic, Napoli managed to make an overall profit, with 130 million losses in the budgets from 2020 to 2022 and profits of 80 and 63 recorded in 2023 and 2024. The Scudetto season also set the Italian profit record and the turnover record for the Neapolitan club (excluding capital gains) of 275 million.

From the very beginning, De Laurentiis's 20-year-long management has been focused on economic-financial sustainability - the balance sheet as at 30 June 2024 shows liquid assets of 210.5 million and, consequently, a positive net financial position of 135 million -, privileging infrastructure investments (the new sports centre and the renovation of the Maradona stadium are its historical Achilles' heel), and those on the players' stock. Over the last 15 years, more than 1.2 billion has been invested in this asset. With an absolutely remarkable return considering, for example, that from 2020 to 2024 alone, capital gains of over 300 million have been achieved.

After the January 2025 sale of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia to Psg for 75 million, the equally lucrative sale of Victor Osimhen, the two heroes of the 2023 Scudetto, is on the horizon for the summer. The heart wants what the heart wants in Naples, but the wallet is always full.