This got me thinking. Madrid spends tremendous amount on buying players and paying their salary. However they do get 70,000 spectators on average per match. So I wonder if Madrid are among the teams like Manchester United who earns god knows how much a season??? or teams who buys players to get them out of depth much like lazio few years ago.
Real Madrid is better than most EPL teams and I would agree that Real is the best team at this moment, however Real Madrid isn't near the top teams of EPL in terms of Finance...EPL can be watched all over the world and just imaging the income from the TV license per year. This income is shared among the teams. La liga only recently hit the states and in Australia, we can only watch 1-hour highlights per week. The Spanish economy has major impact to their football league as well. Most of Real's profit comes from the Champions League
Actually, the buying power of a lot of English clubs is greatly exaggerated. Barcelona are still the richest club in the world, no matter what the accountants' reports about Manchester United might say, and Real Madrid have a lot more sources of income than just European competition. Did you know that literally one percent of Spain's GDP goes towards soccer? That's one hell of a lot of money, and is bound to affect the amount of cash that the major Spanish clubs have to work with.
Spanish football It seems that they have a problem exporting their product. It's probably the strongest league in terms of football but are ways behind as far as marketing is concerned. I see Real changing that in the futur...
Real's butts were saved recently by selling a bunch of property in downtown Madrid to settle a lot of their debts. There was talk of them being relegated because they weren't meeting the financial requirements to play in La Liga. Now, that may have been a pretty hard thing to see occuring, especially with the political ramifications, it does show how poorly they've been ran as a business.
ManU always get top billing due to Income minus expenses. But the richest clubs are difinately the likes of Real, Barca, Inter, ACMilan and Juve. For christ sake, the owner of ACMilan is Silvio Berlsesconi (sp). How may billions of dollars is he worth?
I wonder if it would have been politically feasable to relegate Real. Instead, they were saved by a sweetheart land deal. Their forced relegation would have really shaken the foundations of European soccer. Sachin
Even following the usual rankings that only measure annual revenue (and not how much the club is actually worth), Real Madrid ranks second behind Manchester United and well ahead of Bayern Munich which is in 3rd. That method gives short shrift to Barcelona, AC Milan, et al.
That seems to come up with every discussion that we have regarding club finances. The fact of the matter is that, while Manchester United claim to be the richest club in the world, they don't have the spending power that any of the clubs owned by companies or multibillionaires do - ie, they may be richer than Juventus on paper, but Fiat eats Juve's operating costs for breakfast.
Much shorter than you'd think, and really, I think the only reason people pay any attention to them is so that Premier League fans can boast of having the 'richest club in the world' in their country when, really, all Manchester United can claim is having the highest annual revenue. A lot of people still maintain that Barcelona is the wealthiest club in the world.
http://tlc.discovery.com/tlcpages/newyork/1626.html Talk about sweetheart land deals, $24 in trinkets for an island. How much do you think Manhattan is worth now. Sort of like buying dry farmland, hold it for 50 years until a major European capital grows around it, and sell it for fair market value. Political influence? Perhaps, but not near as much as major US sports franchises get from cities to move or maintain a team in their city. Snub your noses all you want, but the truth is Perez took a team suffering from bad management and turned it around. Now, that's sweet! http://football.guardian.co.uk/Champions_League/Story/0,5764,792365,00.html Guardian link from the Madrid team forun thread, Season Preview Article.
When you sign a star player the club gains in its international projection and that translates into economic gains. Figo sells hundreds of thousands of shirts and, at €60 a shirt, we're talking of many millions of euros. Simple as that. Besides, the economic repercussions spread wider for a club like ours that owns franchises, sells licensed products, trades on the image of its players. With players like Figo in your club you cannot help but do good business. referenced
I dislike Real...from what I understand, the ruling party of Spain receives a fair amount of tax dollars from the public. The ruling party of Spain just happens to own real. Put two and two toigether and Real receives tax dollars. Thsi justifies their spending spree and lack of a real good youth system. Im sure this is at leats a little wrong...but how wrong?
Then I guess some of the richest soccer clubs in the world are in MLS because we've got Anschutz. If we're actually interested in which club brings in the most revenues, that would be Manchester Untied.
The Real Madrid sold its training ground in the downtown of the city. In this ground will be built a olimpic stadium and 4 office buildings (50 floors). 2 1/2 office buildings will belong to the Council and 1 1/2 to the Real Madrid. The Madrid Council win more money with this operation that the Real Madrid. They can built a olimpic stadium in the downtown of the city and they will win a big money with the 2 1/2 of the four buildings. For this the reason, the operation was approved for majority with the vote of almost all the political parties of Madrid. About the youth system, the Real Madrid have ones of the best in the world. A demostration of that is the players formed in the youth system that are in the first team: Casillas Raul Guti Cambiasso Portillo Pavon Raul Bravo Miñambres Carlos Sánchez Tote 10 of the 24 players And many many players that was formed in the Real Madrid youth teams are playing in almost every team in la liga. This teams have player formed in the Real Madrid Youth system: Deportivo de la Coruña - Victor Atletico de Madrid - Garcia Calvo Valencia - Cañizares, Mista Barcelona - Dani Valladolid - Aganzo Betis - Alfonso, Benjamin, Fernando Malaga - Contreras ,Fernando Sanz, Sandro, Canabal Racing de Santander - Morán Mallorca - Etto Rayo Vallecano -Dorado, Julio Alvarez Villareal - Victor Alaves - Tellez Atletic de Bilbao - Urzaiz And others that i don't remember.
I just hate it when people post ignorant posts that are not ignorant on the basis of one's understanding of something, but on a plain an simple lack of knowledge of the facts. Madrid Forever has written a good reply, but just to emphasise, yes Madrid got a lot of support during the Civil war when it was often perceived as Franco's team. I wasn't born then so I don't know but as far as I have read there is quite a lot of truth to the allegations. But while people still talk about the old days, Real Madrid is NOT the Spanish government club. It does not receive Government funding, and abusiness transaction with the municipal council is very different from receiving tax dollars out of Government largesse. Also, in a parliamentary democracy (which spain is, despite the monarchy), there is nothing that is permanently known as the ruling party. The ruling party doesn't rule forever, and by your logic, when the opposition party is in power, I guess the club would be really screwed!!!!! Even for now I don't know anything about Aznar's Partido Popular owning Real Madrid! As for the Real Madrid youth system, name one club in Spain with a better youth system.
Interesting thread. There was a book written about three years ago that dealt with the finances of Manchester United and their business. Does anyone remember the books title? I'll try a search. I remember looking at it then and now I am kicking myself for mot purchasing it. Thanks. Bill-DC
First off, Real has one of the best, if not the best youth system. Second, while they may not be owned or ruled by the ruling party of Spain, they have plenty of govenment support and associations by the Spanish politicians with Real are sometimes subtle, sometime not so subtle. Real's popularity and success make them a political helper. That is just the way politics and sport has developed in Spain.
Actually I remember reading Real Madrid turned the highest net profit in 2000, when they won their 2nd of the last 3 Champions League titles. They netted $32 million that year. I'm not sure what the numbers were in 2001 or 2002. quote from soccernutter ___________________________________________ Real's popularity and success make them a political helper. That is just the way politics and sport has developed in Spain. ___________________________________________ Change Spain to world and you would be right on.
This is true, barcelona is still the richest club, madrid can buy all the stars they want but what they truly lack is cohesiveness!