In 2004, then Real Madrid head of marketing, now director general, Jose Angel Sanchez declared: “Eventually you may get just six global brand leaders. People will support a local side and one of the world’s big six. We have to position ourselves for that.”
Part prediction, part commercial mission statement, 10 years on, Madrid stand proud as the biggest global football brand, having overtaken the club whose methods they mirrored, Manchester United.
It is a sad reality to many but outside the football heartlands of mainland Europe and South America, essentially which clubs do the majority of fans support? Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Juventus and AC Milan with Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain perhaps now joining that elite.
The support is founded on success but has been shaped by aggressive marketing campaigns: shirt sales, pre-season tours and television coverage. With FIFA driving their vision of the ‘global game’, and a vacuum to be filled in terms of a club to support, there has been a scramble to win hearts and minds.
Madrid have traditionally concentrated on the Far East but their focus has recently switched to the Gulf, and, in particular, the UAE. In 2013, Madrid signed a five year shirt sponsorship deal with Emirates.
A lucrative agreement worth around €150m (Dh685m) that will also see Los Blancos play Milan in a friendly at 7he Sevens on December 30.
Last week the National Bank of Abu Dhabi began offering customers Real Madrid-branded credit and debit cards after the bank became the European champions’ banking partner in the UAE.
If you’ve been to JBR recently, you’d have noticed the Real Madrid cafe which sits on the boardwalk outside The Beach Mall – it’s surely only a matter of time before another opens in Abu Dhabi.
If Marca are to be believed, and as of today International Petroleum Investment Company are yet to comment on reports first published on September 21, the Abu Dhabi Royal Family-owned energy company will soon be announced as the successful bidder for the naming rights of the Santiago Bernabeu. The deal is said to be in the region of €450m to €500m (Dh2.1bn-Dh2.4bn).
Florentino Perez has admitted that plans for the Madrid resort island in Ras Al Khaimah have now been shifted to Abu Dhabi.
While on a smaller level, the club’s agreement with NBAD will see players and coaches hosting training sessions in the capital. This is a concentrated commercial targeting of the region by Perez in an effort to establish Real Madrid as the club of the Middle East.
The birth of a brand It’s easy to think of Real Madrid as a global brand but they have played catch-up to the Premier League, and, in particular, Manchester United, who set the bar for getting the most out of new markets.
Other Premier League clubs followed suit but Madrid, and Barcelona, have been largely slow to react. It wasn’t until Perez first took office in 2000 that ‘Brand Madrid’ first became a concept.
Perez’s Galacticos transfer policy of buying the most popular players in the world (David Beckham over Ronaldinho) and having them shoe-horned into the team may not have been overly successful on the pitch, but certainly struck a chord with the watching world.
Having developed those foundations, his second term as president, however, has seen him accelerate those methods even further.
As Madrid-based journalist and club member of 20 years, Eduardo Alvarez, explains: “The whole monetisation process started with Florentino Perez. Before him, there was no marketing department, the stadium was not even in a decent condition, even the club website was rubbish.
“You may not like what Perez has done regarding certain aspects of the club but, regarding business he has had an amazing vision in creating a global brand that is not just a well-known team but one that commercialises its products everywhere. He started by copying United’s strategy in Asia but now he’s taken it one step further.”
That next step has been bringing the on and the off-field aspects of the club even closer, to the extent that Madrid’s transfer activity in the last window was dictated by foreign markets.
Alvarez continues: “It sounds artificial but it’s a way of keeping the shirt sales high. Perez needs to have a good German player, a good French player, he needs to have a Brazilian… this is something that is discussed. They didn’t buy Toni Kroos because they necessarily needed a good central midfielder, they needed a German player who was better known than Sami Khedira, who could guarantee sales of X number of shirts.
“Jose Angel Sanchez sees the world divided in potential markets and you could say the work this summer was focused on places where Madrid’s sales were perhaps not as high as they expected.
“James Rodriguez would explain why they didn’t try to sign Radamel Falcao. They already have a Colombian, and a younger one, so why take the risk with an older player. You can instead sign a Mexican to help exploit a market of over 100 million people.”
The practice has also continued with their kit designs this season. The pink away shirt has been introduced primarily to sell to female supporters while the use of the Yohji Yamamoto-designed dragon on the black third kit for the Asian market. Even though dragons are synonymous with St George, or Sant Jordi, the patron saint of Catalonia, home to Barcelona. Perez is also understood to have an agreement with adidas that Madrid jerseys must be on sale in each one of their 2,740 stores worldwide.
Playing by the rules Financial Fair Play continues to cast a concerning shadow over Perez’s expensive tastes – Madrid have provided four of the world’s six most expensive transfers. But if they keep making so much money – the club posted record revenues of €603.9m for the last financial year – helping them service their estimated debt of ¤602m, UEFA should be tempered as FFP, at least for now, only covers losses.
Next for the club could be a marquee Asian signing or even one from the UAE. Omar Abdulrahman, for example, is a regular visitor to Spain and has often espoused his love of La Liga. Should such a transfer be brokered it’s difficult to see how they could fail to become the biggest club in the region.
Fernando Sanz, LFP general director in the MENA region and former Madrid defender, whose father Lorenzo preceded Perez as president, said: “People may not like it but this is football in 2014. It is a global game and Madrid are playing it very well.”
