Why would you want to own a football club?
Let’s start with the fact that I’ve always been a fan. And Widzew has always been my team.
But you’re from Ełk, which is closer to Jagiellonia Białystok or Legia Warszawa…
When I was a kid and first got interested in football, there wasn’t a major club nearby. Widzew, on the other hand, was very successful—league titles, a European Cup semi-final, Boniek, Smolarek, Młynarczyk... Widzew was hugely popular across Poland, so I became a fan and stuck with them. Since the 1990s, with a few breaks, I’ve been going to matches. And since I managed to accomplish something in business along the way, at some point I started helping the club as a sponsor and chairman of the supervisory board. I got to know the club from the inside. Now I’ve decided to get more involved.
You became a majority shareholder straight away, although initially you were supposed to take 25% of the shares. What changed?
That was the original plan with the previous owner, Tomasz Stamirowski. As recently as last year, I thought a minority stake would be a good starting point. But once I started analysing the situation, I realised I didn’t want to be a passive shareholder unable to influence the club. I wanted to take responsibility for Widzew. It was an all-or-nothing decision.
Is the current setup—76% of the shares in your hands, 20% with Tomasz Stamirowski—the final arrangement?
I might increase my stake by capitalising the company, but I certainly don’t intend to reduce it. Widzew is a long-term project for me. I see it as a mission.
There were rumours about Pogoń Szczecin and Górnik Zabrze as options.
The truth is it was always about Widzew. I just couldn’t say that publicly as it would have weakened my negotiating position. Luckily, football clubs in Poland are illiquid assets, several are up for sale, and although valuation is tricky, it’s doable. Over time, supply will shrink as more entrepreneurs enter football for the long term.
So back to our first question: is Widzew a mission, a childhood dream come true, or an expensive toy?
Definitely not a toy. I treat the club as a business, albeit an unusual one. It’s a non-profit organisation, so any profits stay in the club rather than being paid out to me. The goal is to generate long-term value. There is only one Widzew, just like there is only one Poland. By taking over this club, I become part of a tradition and a brand that’s been built over decades. My job is to make that brand even stronger—by creating a larger, more professional and successful organisation. Of course, finances matter. I know we won’t do this in a year or two—it’s a longer process. Everything needs to be done wisely, with analysis, a market-driven approach, and a multi-year perspective.
Zbigniew Jakubas, who owns the Multico Group and recently bought Motor Lublin, said he devotes 80% of his time to football—his team says it’s even more. Are you worried football might consume you and take your focus off your main business, Panattoni Europe?
That’s definitely a possibility—football is incredibly emotional. Let’s be honest: building a football club is much more exciting than building warehouses (laughs). But that’s precisely why I don’t intend to get involved in Widzew operationally. I don’t want to be its president, just its owner. Day-to-day management will be handled by professionals.
Do you already have those people?
There are some promising individuals in the club.
Michał Święczewski, owner of x-kom and Raków Częstochowa, says that’s the biggest challenge in football. In his main business, he has no trouble finding top talent, but in football they’re in short supply. Zbigniew Jakubas also said he got more involved in Motor because he couldn’t find trustworthy managers.
That’s definitely a problem in our football scene. It’s not your typical business environment. Often, football executives are former players with no economics degree or corporate experience—just 20 years on the pitch. Many are only starting to take their first business steps around age 40. I understand that building a good management team might be a significant and time-consuming challenge.
Janusz Filipiak, the late founder of Comarch and longtime Cracovia owner, once said that had he known what Polish football was like, he’d never have gotten involved. Many businesspeople probably feel the same. Why do they often fail in football? And why do you think you might succeed?
Times have changed—2025 is not 2005. Polish football has become much more professional, and the top clubs now operate in a pretty normal way. Frankly, I don’t know what specific mistakes my predecessors made. Maybe they surrounded themselves with the wrong people, or lacked patience. I plan to listen carefully to advice and avoid hasty decisions. I want to bring my approach to risk management from my core business, where I always look for potential threats, not just potential gains. That’s the key to long-term success. I don’t want to overheat the Widzew topic. I’m not promising we’ll reach the top in a few years. I’ll probably make some bad calls, and others may take time to bear fruit. I just hope to make rational rather than emotional decisions.
That’s a thesis to be tested.
Exactly. Right now, we can only speculate.
Have the entrepreneurs now entering football become more professional too?
No doubt. Many businesspeople who started in the 1990s simply got lucky. If they tried launching businesses today, they might not succeed. But they took big risks back then, many building fortunes through civil partnerships. Now, it’s a different kind of people investing in football—better prepared, patient, aware of the risks. No serious entrepreneur would put 90% of their assets into a sports business—they wouldn’t sleep at night.
Football clubs can be money pits—Bogusław Cupiał spent over 200 million zloty on Wisła Kraków. Are you prepared to keep putting money in until the success comes?
I’m still new to the football business, so it’s hard to say. Of course, the plan is for the club to run efficiently, grow its revenues steadily, and not burn cash. But if there’s an opportunity to invest in something that will significantly increase its value, I’ll definitely consider it.
We wouldn’t be talking about football investments at all if not for the enormous success of Panattoni, which has given you the capital to make such ventures. Since 2005, you’ve been a minority partner of American developer Carl Panattoni. Why did he become interested in this part of Europe in the first place?
Carl simply wanted to expand into Europe. It didn’t work out in Western Europe, so he turned to Central Europe. He visited Prague, where he heard about a young, 29-year-old guy in Warsaw working in the warehouse real estate industry—me—who wasn’t getting enough room to grow in his current company. So he came to meet me.
How did those meetings go?
We met three days in a row. It quickly became clear that we agreed on most things and that his way of thinking matched mine. In the end, Carl suggested we work together. That’s how Panattoni Europe was born—in short.
That was a quick decision. Is that the effect of Carl Panattoni being an independent entrepreneur?
I think so. Entrepreneurs tend to take more risks than corporate developers. And they don’t only think about whether a country is mature enough for expansion. Besides, he didn’t risk much—just $5 million. Later, his team structured the investment agreements so they could pull out quickly if necessary.
Still, you must have convinced him somehow—he made you his partner straight away.
I was very ambitious. Carl quickly saw I was hungry for success and determined to change my life. I had no problem stepping out of my comfort zone and leaving a stable job. That terrified my family, but I wanted more—I felt I was hitting a glass ceiling that I had to break through. At the time, $5 million seemed like an unimaginable amount. I thought I’d only handle that kind of money at the end of my career.
How did the business take off so quickly? No other developer grew as fast as you did. You started alone in an empty office, and after three years you had a team of 120 people.
It definitely helped that we were a private company backed by entrepreneurs.
But most developers in Poland were also private investors. There had to be more to it.
We benefited a lot from transferring know-how from the U.S. and bringing an American business mindset. That matched well with my drive to move forward. And the full freedom I was given was also crucial—I never had a boss over me.
How did you handle scaling up so quickly?
The challenge was adapting fast and shifting my role. At the beginning, I did a lot myself. But after a few months, I had to start delegating more and more. I had to transition from operational management to strategic leadership very quickly. I was young, so I made a lot of mistakes along the way.
But none were serious enough to shake the business, unlike other American developers like the Golub family. Their Polish partner, Cezary Jarząbek, also had a lot of freedom, but he overreached and the Golub Gethouse business collapsed.
Most of my mistakes were operational. I didn’t make strategic ones. While learning and testing that American know-how about structuring deals, I quickly absorbed a key rule—limit your risk. That was also one of the most important factors behind our fast growth.
Sounds a bit paradoxical.
We simply didn’t focus on how much we were earning—we focused on how much risk we were taking. We never aimed for short-term profits. No one thought about taking on extra financing and increasing leverage to chase bigger returns. I prefer to limit risk because I don’t want one project to trip us up—the priority is to do lots of projects. I enjoy deals, new markets, action. And if you take on less risk, you can make up for lower margins with higher transaction volume.
Did anyone else operate like that?
No. At first, people saw our model as too light to work in the market. It looked like we didn’t have the money for serious operations. But we didn’t want to take on debt for our own book. We didn’t issue bonds. We worked exclusively with banks financing individual projects and with investors providing capital.
And what’s the difference for you between bonds and loans?
It’s about managing liquidity. Bonds have a fixed maturity date, and if a project takes longer than expected and isn’t sold on time, you have to roll over the bonds or reach into your own pocket. Banks, on the other hand, are prepared to extend loans—that’s their core business. With bond investors, that’s not always a given.
We understand you also never kept warehouse projects as your own assets—you liquidated them quickly.
That’s part of this light model where the key is to reduce investment risk and rotate projects quickly. That gave us huge momentum and allowed us to scale fast.
You also don’t contribute much of your own capital to projects. From what you’ve said, you usually go 50/50 with investors.
Yes, but keep in mind that most of the funding is debt capital. In our investments, loans cover about 65% of the project value, so our actual financial commitment is just a dozen or so percent.
So after paying all the costs and partners, how much profit is left?
Our share of project profits varies widely, from 30% to 50%.
Even though risk reduction is your priority, your investments are still quite profitable. Looking at public data for nearly a billion złoty worth of projects you did with Marvipol from 2017–2022, your profit margin was around 19%.
That’s an average, but profitability varies greatly, mainly depending on the duration of the investment and macroeconomic conditions. Some projects yield margins over 40%, others we settle for 10%. When interest rates fell, returns were excellent—when they rose, margins shrank.
Still, you created a model that allows you to grow quickly not only in Poland but throughout Europe.
Western markets are more mature and thus more saturated. There’s a lack of dynamic players. In Germany, for example, there are developers who only operate locally, around specific cities like Düsseldorf or Hamburg. Our volume-focused mindset was a totally different approach. We offered large-scale investments, and because we limited risk, investors knew they could earn more with us than with other players. We applied this same mechanism in other countries: the UK, Benelux, France, Spain, and so on.
And how did you attract partners? You expanded from Poland, but you weren’t perceived as a Polish company.
The main shareholder is an American developer. No one really investigated the company structure.
So that American identity gave you credibility and helped people understand your dynamic style.
It all happened naturally. At first, we didn’t lean into the Polish aspect, but now that we’re market leaders in many countries, we don’t hide it either.
You’ve reached a level where you’re doing €5.5 billion worth of investments annually. Naturally, that means you’re spread across Europe. What does your business look like geographically?
Poland accounts for about 20% of the business, the same as Germany. About 10% comes from the UK. Then we have several markets contributing 5–7%, like France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.
But Europe is no longer enough. You have an agreement with Carl Panattoni that lets you operate worldwide—except for North America. And now, cautiously and partly encouraged by Amazon, you're entering India.
Amazon is a key partner we’ve worked with for years, and there have been several times they encouraged us to enter a new market. We’ve opened several European countries with their needs in mind, and now we’re testing the Indian market for them too.
How’s it going?
I expected things to move faster, but it’s not a country geared for rapid growth. The main barriers are the quality of real estate, infrastructure, documentation, and the clarity of procedures. So far, we’re doing two projects—one in Delhi and one in Bangalore—and we’re launching a third. Progress is faster in Saudi Arabia, which, from a business perspective, is much closer to Europe. You can tell they’re adopting Western know-how.
So you still see growth potential in large markets, even though Panattoni is already the biggest player in Europe—several times larger than the runner-up. How much of the business do you actually own? You started with 25%, but recently mentioned 34%. Is that current?
That has changed over time. But many years ago, Carl Panattoni and I agreed on a 25% ownership stake and a 34% share of the dividends. And that’s what we stick to.
We know about the 34% from the media, where you’ve started to appear more often after years of silence. Lately, you’ve been very visible—Panattoni, Widzew, your foundation, interviews. What’s behind this media push?
It’s mainly about business. For years we were known only within our industry, because we’re the leader in Europe’s industrial real estate market. Outside the sector, it was different—even though our clients come from many industries. People would see our warehouses along highways but had no idea what Panattoni was. They thought it was an Italian or American company. We decided to show that it’s backed by Polish capital and a Polish man with a Polish-sounding name. I wanted to start promoting our country abroad and to shape Poland’s image. Creating the Robert Dobrzycki Foundation was part of that—it has an important mission to support social development and promote Poland, including Polish innovation and entrepreneurship, on the international stage. We focus mainly on science, culture, and business. That’s why it was time to step out of the shadows.
Maybe time for a rebrand—Panattoni & Dobrzycki?
No need. I have enormous respect for the man who gave me a chance all those years ago. I’m building my personal brand through the Robert Dobrzycki Foundation, where I want to support meaningful initiatives and the most talented Poles. Maybe one day, the President of the United States will visit Poland for economic talks instead of Qatar.
Isn’t this transformation taking you down a similar path as Rafał Brzoska, who’s gone far beyond his core business?
Everyone has their own style, ambitions, and interests. I’m lucky that I can do what excites me, and apart from growing the business, that includes Widzew and the foundation. I have no political ambitions.
For now…
Internal politics within the company is more than enough for me, honestly. And sport. Maybe someday sport on the international stage, if things go well with Widzew. But that’s it.
We feel a certain contradiction. On the one hand, you’re appearing more in the media, but on the other, you won’t share Panattoni Group’s financials with us—so we can’t include you on the rich list.
Being in the media doesn’t—and in my opinion shouldn’t—just be about flaunting wealth. For me, it’s mainly a tool for communicating values, goals, and responsibility. If we’re going to talk about business and scale, it’s worth showing what’s behind it: hard work, risk assessment, and vision. The media provide space to talk about what really matters—people, change, and the impact we want to have.
We know a few entrepreneurs with a lot of money who aren’t on the list.
But none of them seek public attention.
There are a few things here. First, Panattoni is a private business—it’s hard to value.
We could manage.
Second—have you seen Carl Panattoni on the global billionaire list?
No, we checked today.
Exactly. And I assure you, for years the American Forbes has been trying to get him on there.
So this is a mutual decision?
In a way, yes. We don’t want to be known for being on lists—we want to be known for what we do.
You say everyone has their own style. We heard you were bidding aggressively at Rafał Brzoska’s recent charity auction for a sculpture. Did it go for 8 million złoty?
6.8 million. It was a fierce auction.
That’s how everyone saw it.
I only later found out I was up against one of the biggest Czech entrepreneurs—that’s why it got so intense. I knew the money would go to the right cause.
So you won’t tell us how much money you have, but you don’t mind spending it.
I try to do so reasonably and thoughtfully. The most important thing is that I still have more than I spend. Let’s stick with that.
