Rocco Commisso, the founder of Mediacom and owner of Italian soccer club ACF Fiorentina, has died. He was 76.
Both Mediacom and ACF Fiorentina confirmed the news in separate statements Friday, writing that the businessman passed after “a prolonged period of medical treatment.” However, no specific cause of death was shared.
Survived by his wife, Catherine, children Giuseppe and Marisa, and sisters Italia and Raffaelina, Commisso was remembered for his longstanding dedication to family, soccer and business.
“For his family, he was an example and a guiding light, a loyal and faithful man who, alongside his wife Catherine, reached the milestone of 50 years of marriage, and who was a strict yet loving father to his children, just as his character was: gentle and determined,” ACF Fiorentina wrote in their statement.
The club continued: “His love for Fiorentina was the greatest gift he gave himself, spending unforgettable days with the boys and girls of the youth teams, always offering a caring gesture and a smile to everyone. Tireless, he worked until his final days, dedicating himself to his companies, Mediacom and Fiorentina, and to their future.”
Per the club, which Commisso took over in 2019, “the Rocco B. Commisso Viola Park, the home of Fiorentina, will live forever bearing his name—an indelible symbol of his affection and his desire to look toward the future of young people.”
Before signing off the statement, the club shared that the Commisso family wished “to thank all those who stood by him during these delicate moments and is certain that the memory of Rocco will remain forever in the hearts of the many people who loved him and who shared both difficult and beautiful moments with him.”
Mediacom expanded on Commisso’s legacy with a statement of their own, praising the late businessman as “one of the most successful Italian immigrant entrepreneurs in our nation’s history.”
“A member of the prestigious Forbes 400, his illustrious career with the cable television industry spans nearly 50 years,” the company added, before highlighting how Commisso founded the company in the ’90s in order “to acquire and reinvigorate cable systems in the nation’s underserved smaller communities.”
Commisso was born in Calabria, Italy in 1949, but later immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 12. After graduating from Mount Saint Michael Academy in the Bronx in 1967, he attended Columbia University, where he earned both a BS degree in industrial engineering and an MBA degree from the Graduate Business School.
He worked at a number of financial institutions, including Chase Manhattan Bank (now J.P. Morgan Chase) and Royal Bank of Canada. Over the course of nearly a decade, Commisso worked as executive vice president, chief financial officer and director of Cablevision Industries Corporation.
In 1995, he founded Mediacom and led the company to become the fifth largest cable television provider. He also served on the boards of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, C-SPAN, CableLabs, Cyndx LLC and the National Italian American Foundation.
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