Gerry Cardinale is the Founder, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of RedBird Capital Partners, a private investment firm managing over $15 billion in assets across sports, media, entertainment, and financial services. Since founding RedBird in 2014, Cardinale has established RedBird as one of the world’s leading investors in premium intellectual property across the sports and media ecosystems, with a strategy focused on long-term value creation rather than short-term financial engineering. RedBird has assembled a portfolio of some of the world’s most iconic sports, media and entertainment assets, transforming them into businesses built to grow and adapt across the changing media and technology landscapes.
In partnership with the Ellison family, Cardinale helped lead the $30 billion Skydance-Paramount merger, which closed in August 2025. RedBird’s $2 billion commitment was the largest private equity investment in a Hollywood studio in history, with RedBird sharing control of the publicly traded company along with the Ellison family. In early 2026, Cardinale helped engineer Paramount’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery in a transformational deal that will define the future of media.
RedBird’s broader portfolio includes European football giant AC Milan; Banijay Entertainment, the world’s largest independent scripted and unscripted media production company; Fenway Sports Group (Boston Red Sox, Liverpool FC, PGA Golf, New England Sports Network); Artists Equity with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, which recently monetized Hollywood’s first artificial intelligence company for filmmaking; global live events platform MARI Group with Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro (Miami Tennis Open, Madrid Tennis Open, Frieze Art Fair, Ambassador Theater Group); Formula One’s Alpine racing team in partnership with Renault; and the United Football League, in partnership with Dwayne Johnson, Fox, ESPN, and entrepreneur Mike Repole.
RedBird is also one of the leading growth equity investors in financial services, with a dedicated investment team that has deployed over $2.2 billion across Insurance Services, Asset & Wealth Management and Financial Control Services. Notable investments include (i) Aquarian, a diversified life and annuity carrier and asset management platform with approximately $24 billion in assets that has grown more than 20x since RedBird’s investment in 2020; (ii) Arax, one of the fastest-growing wealth management platforms in the U.S., scaled to over ~$50 billion of AUM in three years; and (iii) Obra, a diversified alternative credit manager with over $8 billion in AUM.
In 2026, Cardinale was recognized by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential leaders in sports. An active voice in the ongoing dialogue around the future of sports, Cardinale was recently appointed by the President to the White House Committee on Reforming College Athletics which supported the work leading to the recent Congressional bipartisan bill for collegiate athletics reform. The landmark bill sets new rules to stabilize college sports, including codifying athletes’ rights to earn compensation for their NIL and protecting the future of women’s and Olympic sports.
Before founding RedBird, Cardinale spent two decades at Goldman Sachs, joining in 1992 in Hong Kong and Singapore before moving to New York, where he was a Partner helping lead the Firm’s private equity investment business. In 2001, Cardinale helped pioneer the regional sports network model with the creation of the YES Network with the New York Yankees. Cardinale led the largest private equity check written at the time to create the network, which he sold in 2013 to Fox for close to $4 billion.
Cardinale is a Trustee of the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City and a Trustee of the U.S. Rowing Foundation. His philanthropy has been dedicated to higher education, with focused commitments to Harvard University, Phillips Academy Andover, and the Rhodes Scholarships. In addition, Cardinale has made substantial commitments to international economic development and women’s empowerment through Matt Damon’s Water.org, an international nonprofit organization that helps low-income populations get access to safe water and improved sanitation through affordable financing.
Cardinale received an Honors B.A. from Harvard University, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude, and an M.Phil. in Politics and Political Theory from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.