Napoli Basketball's Owner Wants to Buy Soccer 'King' and Build an Empire
On a Thursday morning in October, Matt Rizzetta isn't showing any signs of jet lag, which was a bit of a surprise. The founder of investment firm Underdog Global Partners hadn't 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's made to Italy this year alone.
But sitting inside a Midtown Manhattan studio, he's overflowing with enthusiasm as he prepares to talk his book, which begins and ends with one word these days- Napoli. "Napoli is exploding with tourism," Rizzetta said.
Hotels, hospitality, the restaurant business, infrastructure. There's just so much opportunity for growth over the next decade or so.
That 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't until Rizzetta branched out to European basketball a few years later that Napoli came into focus. Now, he's rethinking his firm's entire strategy.
Instead of seeking out small, high-upside investments-underdogs, if you will-wherever they might be, Rizzetta wants to focus his attention on the Southern Italian city, which he believes could be the El Dorado of sports markets. Over the past two years, Underdog has purchased control of both the men's and women's Napoli Basket clubs, struck a deal in principle for the city's volleyball teams and held other conversations around motorsports, rugby, water polo and real estate.
Rizzetta wants to consolidate all these assets under one roof, building a "multi-sport juggernaut under the Napoli umbrella," comparing the project to some of the most valuablesoccerclubs 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.
But it's hard to imagine Rizzetta achieving his vision without what he described as the city's "king asset"-SSC Napoli. The Serie 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's spotlight with another club, it's the only show in town. "Behind the club is a city with one of the most passionate fan bases in football, both in Italy and across its community abroad," Luigi De Siervo, the CEO of Serie A, said in an email.