The new president and CEO of RCS Media Group has told Cyclingnews that the Italian company has no plans to sell the Giro d'Italia and the other major races organised by RCS Sport, believing that the Italian company has huge potential and can regain some of the ground it has lost to the Tour de France in the last 30 years.
Urbano Cairo enjoyed being in the spotlight at the presentation of the route of the 2017 Giro d'Italia in Milan on Tuesday evening. He posed for photographs with 2016 winner Vincenzo Nibali and revealed his passion for Italian cycling.
"I'm not a cycling expert but I've always loved the sport since I was a kid. I always watched the race when I was young and like lots of Italians in the late sixties and early seventies I was a fan of Felice Gimondi as he battled with Eddy Merckx. My dad even sponsored a team in the Milan Six and won it twice," he said during the Giro d'Italia presentation.
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Cairo launched an aggressive takeover bid to buy RCS Media Group earlier this year, leveraging his current media brands and television channel to convince shareholders to back his plans to shake up the influential but struggling Milan-based newspaper and magazine group. Cairo is famous for cutting costs and driving advertising revenue. He owns the Turin football club and developed his business acumen as a salesman for Silvio Berlusconi's company in the nineties.
There have been suggestions that Cairo might prefer to sell RCS Sport and the control of the Giro d'Italia to raise funds to invest in RCS Media Group's core business. He denied that is true.
"Sell RCS sport? No way. I'm not crazy…" he told Cyclingnews with a loud laugh, perhaps aware of the value of the Giro d'Italia despite its limited profitability.
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