An American consortium has made an offer in the region of €2 billion to buy Napoli from the De Laurentiis family, but the club is understood to be not for sale. Negotiations, led on the investors’ side by Underdog Global Partners, began about six months ago and have stalled over several sticking points flagged by Aurelio De Laurentiis.
That makes the bid more than a routine takeover approach. De Laurentiis has controlled Napoli since 2004, when he rescued the club from bankruptcy in September of that year and took it over while it was still in the third tier. Since then, Napoli have climbed to the top of Italian football, ending a 33-year wait for the league title in 2023 and adding two Scudetti, three Coppe Italia and one Super Coppa under his ownership.
The proposal from the UGP-led group goes well beyond a change of hands. It includes a commitment to invest in infrastructure and an offer to privatise and redevelop the Stadio Diego Maradona, part of a broader plan to build a multi-sport operation around SSC Napoli and Napoli Basketball. UGP, or Underdog Global Partners, is already the majority owner of Campobasso, a club in Italy’s third tier, and bought a controlling stake in Napoli Basketball in May.
The investors also want to pursue an NBA Europe franchise if the league launches on a targeted timetable in 2027. That helps explain why this approach has been so ambitious, but also why it has run into resistance. De Laurentiis has not only been the architect of Napoli’s modern rise; he is widely regarded as the most successful owner in the club’s history, and the current stance from the club is that it is not for sale.
Even so, the bid lands in a market where American money has become increasingly familiar in Serie A. Eleven clubs in the division are foreign owned, nine of them by North American investors. Cagliari is 49 per cent held by an American consortium, Venezia recently announced additional U.S. investment from Tim Leiweke and last year Fininvest sold its stake in Monza to Beckett Layne Ventures.
For now, the gap between a €2 billion approach and a club that is said to be unavailable remains the central fact of the story. Unless De Laurentiis changes course, the offer may become another sign of how far American ownership has spread in Italy without yet reaching one of its most protected prizes.
