{"id":1049,"date":"2026-10-30T09:51:49","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T09:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2026-10-30T09:51:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T09:51:49","slug":"napoli-basketballs-owner-wants-to-buy-soccer-king-and-build-an-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/?p=1049","title":{"rendered":"Napoli Basketball\u2019s Owner Wants to Buy Soccer \u2018King\u2019 and Build an Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tOn a Thursday morning in October, Matt Rizzetta isn\u2019t showing any signs of jet lag, which was a bit of a surprise. The founder of investment firm Underdog Global Partners hadn\u2019t been back in New York City for more than a month, and you could forgive him some travel fatigue after the roughly 17 back-and-forth trips he\u2019s made to Italy this year alone. But sitting inside a Midtown Manhattan studio, he\u2019s overflowing with enthusiasm as he prepares to talk his book, which begins and ends with one word these days\u2014Napoli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNapoli is exploding with tourism,\u201d Rizzetta said. \u201cThe Amalfi Coast is there. Hotels, hospitality, the restaurant business, infrastructure. There\u2019s just so much opportunity for growth over the next decade or so.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat fixation is a relatively new development for the 44-year-old former marketing executive. When Rizzetta decided to give sports investing a go six years ago, the Italian American started by looking at opportunities in his ancestral homeland and led a group that bought the then-fifth-tier Campobasso FC in 2022. Yet it wasn\u2019t until Rizzetta branched out to European basketball a few years later that Napoli came into focus.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, he\u2019s rethinking his firm\u2019s entire strategy. Instead of seeking out small, high-upside investments\u2014underdogs, if you will\u2014wherever they might be, Rizzetta wants to focus his attention on the Southern Italian city, which he believes could be the \u201cEl Dorado\u201d of sports markets. Over the past two years, Underdog has purchased control of both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s Napoli Basket clubs, struck a deal in principle for the city\u2019s volleyball teams and held other conversations around motorsports, rugby, water polo and real estate.<\/p>\n

\n\tRizzetta wants to consolidate all these assets under one roof, building a \u201cmulti-sport juggernaut under the Napoli umbrella,\u201d comparing the project to some of the most valuable soccer<\/a> clubs in the world that own teams in other sports, like Real Madrid, FC Barcelona and Bayern Munich. In some ways, his aspirations line up more closely with the empires assembled by some American sports owners, like Ted Leonsis, who united the Washington Wizards, Capitals and Mystics under Monumental Sports, or Ryan Smith, who did so with the Utah Jazz and Mammoth.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut it\u2019s hard to imagine Rizzetta achieving his vision without what he described as the city\u2019s \u201cking asset\u201d\u2014SSC Napoli. The Serie A<\/a> club is one of the most historic sides in Italy, a four-time domestic league champion that was the home of soccer legend Diego Maradona for seven seasons. And, unlike many of its European counterparts that share a city\u2019s spotlight with another club, it\u2019s the only show in town.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBehind the club is a city with one of the most passionate fan bases in football, both in Italy and across its community abroad,\u201d Luigi De Siervo, the CEO of Serie A, said in an email.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the end of 2025, Underdog began a push to buy SSC Napoli from the De Laurentiis family, which purchased the club out of bankruptcy in 2004 and returned it to glory with two of the last four Serie A titles. As of this month, Rizzetta said those talks were ongoing. Yet after the Italian press caught wind of a meeting about a week ago between him and club president Aurelio De Laurentiis, the latter vehemently denied<\/a> Napoli was for sale.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf there is room to get a deal done, the two sides are said to be far apart on a price, according to a person familiar with the matter. De Laurentiis is asking for roughly $2.2 billion (\u20ac2 billion) and Underdog is between $1.1 billion (\u20ac1 billion) and $1.5 billion (\u20ac1.3 billion) strictly for the club, said the person, who was granted anonymity because the matter is private. Napoli ranked 30th on Sportico<\/em>\u2019s most recent list<\/a> of the 50 most valuable global soccer teams at $795 million on 2025 revenues of $204 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tRizzetta is \u201cconfident\u201d an agreement can be reached, though he wouldn\u2019t want the process to run too far into 2027 before considering alternatives.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, he\u2019s keeping with his plan: building his sports teams, working on real estate (like the arena Underdog is building for its basketball team) and adding any other deals to the pot that make sense. Then, Rizzetta wants to open his Napoli-centered vision to other investors, creating a diversified fund that he ambitiously believes could be worth more than $20 billion over the next 15 to 20 years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt took a lot of years of sweat and tears and blood to build these relationships and put our group in a position where we can execute on this,\u201d Rizzetta said. \u201cBut now we have nobody to blame but ourselves if we don\u2019t do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\tA new challenge\t<\/h3>\n

\n\tSports ownership was an unexpected second act for Rizzetta. Four years after graduating from Iona University in 2005, he launched a marketing and communications firm out of his basement\u2014the North 6th Agency. Just over a decade later, in 2020, Rizzetta decided to sell a majority stake in the business to private equity investors and family office types.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut at 37 years old, Rizzetta didn\u2019t have much interest in retiring. He didn\u2019t play golf, nor did he like black tie events. The push toward sports came from his wife, Daniela, who asked him, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you go do something that you love to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Rizzetta admits he did well, he didn\u2019t quite have the funds to go buy a piece of a team at the scale of his beloved New York Jets, especially since it was mostly just his capital at first. What he did have was the capability to take on an asset worth high seven figures or low eight figures, improve the enterprise on and off the field and take some money off the table a few years later.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe found his first target in a club that played about an hour from where his grandparents came from\u2014Campobasso FC. And because the project involved a team fighting their way back from the amateur tiers, included celebrity investors Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, and had its own documentary series on ESPN, Running With the Wolves<\/em>, the club has been referred to as the Italian version of Wrexham<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe then started acquiring other assets all over the world, all with this sort of underdog theme in mind where they were undervalued assets,\u201d Rizzetta said. \u201cMaybe they were mismanaged for one reason or another, maybe they weren\u2019t capitalized on from a commercial standpoint in the right way, but they had tons of potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Rizzetta deepened his roots in the soccer world, he would sometimes receive calls from American investor groups who wanted to buy into overseas sports teams. In 2025, a Texas-based consortium approached him to help them find a European basketball team to acquire. Rizzetta recommended Napoli\u2019s basketball team. The investors went in another direction.<\/p>\n

\n\tRizzetta didn\u2019t waste his due diligence. He bought a controlling stake in the Napoli Basket men\u2019s team in 2025, the same year he established Underdog to consolidate all his sports assets into one centralized structure. Already the club has started to gain momentum. He expects team revenues will be up about 30% this year from an estimated $12 million (\u20ac10 million) in the prior period to $18 million (\u20ac15 million). That should only climb higher with the $335 million (\u20ac300 million) arena the club is planning to build, seating 12,000 for basketball and an additional 3,000 for concerts.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Rizzetta is plotting an even more prominent trajectory for Napoli Basket. He landed meetings with the NBA<\/a>, amid its European efforts, and the EuroLeague<\/a>, which later conditionally approved the club as an expansion franchise as the competition overhauls its structure.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe EuroLeague route is considerably cheaper. The bid itself costs about $90 million (\u20ac80 million), and the total investment approaches $450 million (\u20ac400 million) when accounting for the stadium development and other expenses. Meanwhile, more than 20 existing basketball and soccer clubs submitted bids<\/a> in June for NBA Europe that came in at $500 million or higher.<\/p>\n

\n\tRizzetta is understandably coy about where his basketball team would land, but he did note that it\u2019s further along with EuroLeague.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWho knows?\u201d he said. \u201cI think the best move for everyone involved in the NBA and EuroLeague will tell you the same thing is for all sides to come together for the future of European basketball. I think that\u2019ll happen eventually, and hopefully Napoli basketball will be better on the other side of that than we are at the front end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\tThe top of the table\t<\/h3>\n

\n\tSynergies come with pairing sports teams, from centralizing operations to selling sponsorships across multiple clubs. But as bright European basketball\u2019s future looks right now, it\u2019s hard to imagine Rizzetta reaching his goal without a soccer team in the fold. AC Milan, for example, this week signed<\/a> a 20-year, $725 million (\u20ac650 million) stadium naming rights deal, setting a record in the category.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFootball is so dominant in Italy in comparison to other sports,\u201d Andrea Sartori, the founder and CEO of advisory firm Football Benchmark, said. \u201cWe need to be aware of the fact that in terms of prominence, exposure and also level of investment, what would go into the football team is just incomparable to any other sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf talks with SSC Napoli fizzle, Rizzetta has another plan. Underdog is in discussions to potentially acquire either Juve Stabia in Serie B or Real Aversa 1925 in Serie D, aiming to eventually relocate one of the clubs and rebrand it using the intellectual property of a now-defunct Napoli soccer club the firm bought earlier this year. With roughly $115 million (\u20ac100 million) dedicated to the strategy, it would add infrastructure, a youth academy and community initiatives in hopes of getting the club promoted to Serie A, where it would directly compete against SSC Napoli.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s precedent for such a big swing. Como 1907 was a third-division club when it changed hands in 2019. Less than a decade later, it has reached Serie A and is playing Champions League soccer this season. \u201cWith good management, with good ideas, a proper strategy, and of course the right financial resources, you can grow a club,\u201d Sartori said. \u201cIt\u2019s not easy, but it\u2019s not impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSSC Napoli, of course, is still what Rizzetta called the \u201clogical choice,\u201d and there\u2019s plenty that remains to be done. He\u2019s already lined up funding, a key task since Underdog only has around $335 million (\u20ac300 million) in assets under management, and a purchase of Napoli\u2019s size requires significantly more scale. The total spend, accounting for investments beyond the actual club, could top $2.2 billion (\u20ac2 billion).<\/p>\n

\n\tRizzetta is laying groundwork in case the deal does get over the line. Underdog has had conversations with the city for a public-private partnership that would allocate about $560 million (\u20ac500 million) in funding to renovate SSC Napoli\u2019s home venue, Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith many of his plans still up in the air, so is Rizzetta. On this day in October, he\u2019s due to fly back to Italy in less than 24 hours. But with each trans-Atlantic trip, his conviction for the project grows.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you win in Naples, it\u2019s not a difficult place to build a business,\u201d he said. \u201cThe business comes to you.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a Thursday morning in October, Matt Rizzetta isn\u2019t showing any signs of jet lag, which was a bit of a surprise. The founder of investment firm Underdog Global Partners hadn\u2019t been back in New York City for more than a month, and you could forgive him some travel fatigue after the roughly 17 back-and-forth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}