It has been customary since Roman times for wealthy individuals to promote talented artists. Florentino Pérez is perpetuating the tradition. Lavish patron of the football arts, the Real Madrid president is building a collection at the Bernabéu to rival Spain’s most extravagant museum, the Prado’s: Raúl, Roberto Carlos, Luis Figo, Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane and — the freshest acquisition — David ”el Inglés” Beckham.
Pérez hasn’t spent one penny of his own money. He could, easily. He is a genius in the world of big business and the Spanish press puts his personal fortune at hundreds of millions.
He is the commanding figure in world football today. Everybody wants to watch the Real Madrid team that Pérez built (”el Florentin”, they call it in Spain).
And the world’s best players are queueing for the privilege of playing in it. Ronaldo asked if he could. So did Zidane. And Beckham. Ronaldinho would go like a shot.
All that glamour is backed by shrewd management. Pérez inherited a financial basket-case when he was elected in the summer of 2000, but a few weeks ago World Soccer magazine reliably pronounced Real the world’s richest club, leap-frogging Manchester United.
Yet the beauty of it all is that running Real is his ”hobby”. Despite that, or perhaps precisely because of the fans’ passion for the game, he is so good at what he does that none of his competitors in European football’s executive divisions appear to be in the same class.
Otherwise, how did he manage not only to prise Figo from Barcelona, Zidane from Juventus and Ronaldo from Internazionale, but to turn each of these expensive purchases into almost instant profit?
How did he pull off last week’s double daylight robbery — the ”easy” acquisition of Beckham from under Barcelona’s nose and from a purportedly marketing-savvy Manchester United at a price that, from Real’s point of view, was laughably low?
Zidane cost nearly twice as much two years ago and while (in the estimation of some) he may be twice the player, Beckham will provide Real Madrid with a lot more than twice the income the Frenchman does.
”The star players generate the greatest profits,” Pérez explained last week, still purring with delight at the acquisition of Beckham.
”A player of Beckham’s quality makes any team shine. An individual like him, with a presence so great beyond the world of sport, with such international resonance, reinforces our club’s objective — to project Real Madrid as a universal phenomenon.
”When I arrived three years ago Real Madrid was bringing in a regular, working income of €115-million,” Pérez explains. ”Next season we will be bringing in more than double that: €240-million. So what difference do all these star players make in real-money terms? The answer is, something quite extraordinary. We used to take in less than €30-million in ticket sales, now its nearer to €70-million. Everybody knows the passion for Real Madrid extends beyond Spain to the whole world.”
If less than a third of the money comes from ticket sales, where does the rest come from? ”Thirty percent from audio-visual rights,” Pérez replies. ”And 40% from merchandising deals with Adidas, Siemens, Pepsi and the Real Madrid image rights that are sold all over the world.
”It doesn’t matter if you go to Africa, Asia, the Americas or wherever: everybody recognises that Real Madrid is the top brand. People might say this sounds arrogant. But I believe it is the simple truth.”
Compared with Pérez’s day job, Real Madrid is small potatoes. A member of the political team that oversaw the delicate and successful transition from dictatorship to democracy on the death of General Franco in 1975, he quit politics for business 20 years ago, purchasing a bankrupt construction company, ACS, at a price of one peseta per share.
Today, aged 56, he presides over the biggest construction company in Spain and the third-biggest in Europe. Turnover is €12-billion. The company employs nearly 100 000 people and operates in 70 countries. ”That’s my job,” he says. ”Real Madrid is my hobby.”
Married with three children, he must be the most self-denying multi-millionaire alive. A far cry from Beckham, he does not even own a car and always, without exception, goes out into the world wearing a dark suit and blue shirt.
Always blue? ”It’s a colour that goes with everything.” Sort of — why complicate your life? ”Exactly,” he replies. And you don’t drink either? ”No. I am completely abstinent.”
Is it true that you’re not interested in food? ”Regrettably I have not had that good fortune, I have not known how to enjoy eating.” His favourite dish is fried egg and chips. As for hobbies beyond football he likes films, painting and sailing. And dogs.
”Yes. I’ve got three dogs. I love my dogs. I love them so much that I sometimes find it embarrassing to admit it, but they do actually condition my life.”
So Pérez is not as tough a cookie as he would seem to be. Yet he is ruthless in pursuit of commercial goals, otherwise he would not have been so economical with the truth two months ago when he ruled out any notion of signing Beckham.
Real Madrid is the outlet for his wild, inner man — it is the bright pink shirt, the three-star Michelin meal, the premier cru that he never allows himself in real life.
”All of us who love the game have a poetic, romantic connection with it, I would say,” he smiles. Watching games like those between Real Madrid and Manchester United in the Champions League is, for Pérez, what football is all about. ”They play quality football, constructive football, football to win — not the destructive football that is all about not losing, which is something else altogether.”
Pérez adds rather surprisingly that he would like to propose fans of Manchester United be awarded the Prince of Asturias prize, a sort of Spanish Nobel awarded every year. Why?
”It’s hard to come across fans like that. Truly. First, how they support their own team. But then they are also so generous in recognising the merits of their rivals.
”That’s the kind of thing that encourages you to keep going in football, because football is rivalry, it’s passion, but it’s also about the exaltation of those great human values the game brings out in people.”
Hearing Pérez talk of ”values and exaltation”, you can see why, for him, Real Madrid cannot be a privately owned business, why it remains a club owned by its members.
”No one believes in plcs [public limited companies] more than I do,” he says. ”But football, when you really come down to it, belongs in the sphere of human emotions.
”Real Madrid is a kind of religion for millions all over the world.” —