Club Finances

For those who were awaiting the club to establish a stadium sponsorship deal, the club today is signing a new deal with Legends, an American company. They are a “premium Experiences company that specializes in delivering holistic solutions for sports and entertainment organization and venues”. Apparently club will take in 400M per year with this deal.

The new stadium has been build with rotatable surfaces and configurations allowing for different events to be held in stadium.

And this deal doesn’t stop any potential stadium sponsorship. I’m sure not all of this additional revenue will be allocated to futbol team, but it certainly will enhance club’s financial capabilities, as will any sponsorship deal.

And all this is credited to Flo! What a fox!

Side note, the new stadium is really ugly from the outside

Clutch wrote:Side note, the new stadium is really ugly from the outside

And previous version wasn’t! Have you seen it with the “skin” on and lit up?

Is it official? Because I have been hearing about Madrid's 1bn Adidas deal for a little over 6 years now, so I have grown to be rather skeptical about any news surrounding sponsorship deals because I know most of them are BS.

If it's official then great.

The Demon of Carthage wrote:Is it official? Because I have been hearing about Madrid's 1bn Adidas deal for a little over 6 years now, so I have grown to be rather skeptical about any news surrounding sponsorship deals because I know most of them are BS.

If it's official then great.

DoC, the deal I mentioned is not a stadium sponsorship deal! It’s for staging other activities in Bernabeu, estimated add’l 400M annual revenue. Stadium sponsorship deal still hasn’t happened yet.

I actually know the guy working on this and I suspect he is the one that brought this ‘Legends’ deal together. He is a Canadian that was behind the sponsorship deal for the hockey / basketball stadium in Toronto Canada. That deal was 800M CAD.

Clutch wrote:Side note, the new stadium is really ugly from the outside

We need to wait and see how it looks and feels when it is done.

Because the stadium is not being built from the ground up but being covered with a "skin," that already brings limiting thematic and practical implications on the possibilities of the architecture from the inside and outside (there are also other conditioning factors of course, such as the stadium's location and its neighboring buildings). Sometimes the new design comes off to me as a bit of a superficial, anonymous, cliche pastiche of what may popularly be interpreted as avant-garde architectural sensibilities. When I look at the new skin I get reminded of well known iconic modernist landmarks such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim museum at Bilbao (both designed by Frank Gehry), for example, which themselves are two buildings with plenty of similarities but also plenty of differences, with a lot of thought and symbolism going into every inch of the outside and particularly the inside. I'm sure there's also plenty of thought behind the new Bernabeu skin and the interior changes but ultimately the design come off as a bit of a compromised facade to me that also has the danger of resembling a microwave too much.    

The Mercedes Benz Stadium sort of speaks to me as sharing some of the thematic architectural sensibilities of the New Bernabeu but more fledged out, from the outside at least. This is not a skin.



Then again, the sheer size of the Bernabeu, the metallic, silver, elegant textures of the titanium/metal exterior, and the modernist sensibilities of the design sometimes also speak to me of a forward thinking statement that speaks of a monumentalism and austerity that are befitting of the history and pretensions of the club. And I like that the design is palpably aiming for something more than just a "modern looking football stadium,"  it may come to be known as the Guggenheim of football stadiums (particularly because it is Real Madrid's stadium). I do think (and hope) that when it is set and done, the building will ultimately be at the very least functional in its sporting, economic, and aesthetic aspirations.





As for the finances bit, these kinds of things always require a lot of investigation and evidence to make sense of them. We'll see how much of a fox Perez really is with this stadium as time goes on and more information gets released.

Anyone keeping tabs on the stadium works? The exterior will be done pretty soon, prob no more than 3 months. I would think (and hope) that the stadium will be functional in its economic, iconic, and practical pretensions, and that would be no small feat. Not at all. Retractable roof and pitch + the monitor ring thing on the roof and other advancements added to an already mythic and storied stadium with an extraordinary seating capacity relative to most other big-club European stadiums.

As i've mentioned before though, the exterior (and interior) design is integrally restricted by the fact that the project is a redesign project of an old building set in the middle of a densely populated metropolis with complicated restrictions set by an apparently politically anal city governance body. I think the design of the exterior skin is a bit anonymous, derivative, and tired, there's plenty of modernist amoeba designs flooding the sporting arena that all look much the same already, although I think the fact that it's Madrid's stadium and that the exterior is draped in a suitably austere stainless steel provides a presence to the whole thing that should be... functional and appropriate to the club's pretensions, like I previously said in an older post.

The Guggenheim Madrid.

We'll see how the front of the stadium ends up looking though. It's steel panels are inclined in a way that lets us see inside the structure at day and especially during the night with help of internal light. It's a delicate balance between the skin displaying a nice thematic nod to the legendary classic stadium that lies inside the superficial steel skin and and the skin looking like a cheap (expensive, actually   ) layer of silk added to a brutalist sarcophagus.



Actually, as I read that back I am more convinced that it will all work out at the end.  

Looking good, the front side is the side that continues to leave me doubts because of how the steel panels end up looking up close and from the front due to their inclination.

Does this mean we have money for players in future? Or we'll continue playing guys out of position which has become normal routine?

The stadium project has little or no relationship to club finances. It has been run as a separate project with a large loan secured with a long term payback. I think it was 30 years. And there were funding deals with both International Petroleum and some American company helping with funding and stadium management for giving up 30% of stadium revenues for 20 years. Then there is the contract they signed for 400M to use stadium for other purposes and there still is a stadium sponsorship deal to come. The cost of stadium is more than paid for over the 30 years!

As to signing players, talk to Perez. At first, it was because they felt old guard was sufficient to continue (and they were right!) then covid hit and did have a definite hit on transfer capabilities for 2 years. But now club is back to normal finances and are participating within finance capabilities (they had more than 200M available last summer and probably same or more for the coming summer market). However they don’t have the budget that the oil state owned teams nor some of the television contract rich EPL teams and thus the approach being taken for the most part is youth potentials and selected players / club needs.

Gone are the days that Madrid can sign any player they want. I find people are critical of signings, but if it wasn’t for the Club prudent fiscal approach, they would likely be in same situation as Barca!

There is a new reality re signing capabilities that I feel most fans are totally ignorant  of their respective club’s signing ability.

You have a top tier of oil nation ownership who seem to have unlimited spending capabilities. They are joined by 3 or 4 rich EPL teams making this tier  6 or 7 teams.

You have a tier below of a couple of EPL teams such as Liverpool and Arsenal, maybe Tottenham that don’t have financial capabilities as strong as the Man U or Chelsea.

Then you have RMad and Bayern, who have lower budgets than the top 2 tiers, but are still wealthy enough to compete on a selective basis. Both have prudent fiscal approaches.

Then you have Barcelona and Atleti and top 2 or 3 Italian teams that have real financial issues, but desperately struggle to compete.

That’s it, at maximum 17 teams have financial capabilities to compete for top players!

All other clubs simply can not compete in this new reality for top players.

If you don’t believe this, just look at signings over last 2 to 3 years and see if you can find any team outside of these 17 teams participating for high valued players!

I think the EPL pool of top-tier teams is more than 3-4.

Their revenue is set to balloon exponentially over the next 3 years.  See the article here:  https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/premier-league-s-broadcast-income-to-reach-10bn-over-next-three-seasons-cm077wpvk

The issue with La Liga is only, and I mean ONLY, that you have someone like Tebas who is a nincompoop. If La Liga was run like a proper business, it would get the same media deals as the EPL.. but it is not. Such a shame.

sportsczy wrote:I think the EPL pool of top-tier teams is more than 3-4.

Their revenue is set to balloon exponentially over the next 3 years.  See the article here:  https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/premier-league-s-broadcast-income-to-reach-10bn-over-next-three-seasons-cm077wpvk

The issue with La Liga is only, and I mean ONLY, that you have someone like Tebas who is a nincompoop.  If La Liga was run like a proper business, it would get the same media deals as the EPL.. but it is not.  Such a shame.

Sports I agree for the most part, but I don’t agree that there are more teams in the EPL tier as you suggest. You have oil nation clubs in City and now Newcastle. You have Chelsea and ManU in the next tier. And then you have Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham. Who else? Look through the signings and tell me who else is in these top tiers! If you look at the big signings, it for the most part is owners not TV money that is making the signings.

If you are actually saying the list and the gap will grow because of additional tv money, I would agree with you of that potential, but that is not the current situation.

Edit: i wonder if this new problem for City will have any impact to tier 1 clubs; City, Newcastle, PSG?