Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez has outlined plans to sell 5 per cent of the club through a newly created subsidiary as part of a revolutionary push to bring in outside investors for the first time.
At the football club’s annual meeting on Sunday, Pérez told some of the 100,000 members who own it that he would let them vote on the plan at an extraordinary meeting in the near future, saying the new investors must “help us shield our heritage from external attacks”.
The plan represents the biggest change of ownership in the 123-year history of Real, a football club with a huge global fan base, hundreds of millions of social media followers and revenue of €1.1bn last year, the highest of any team in the world.
It comes as the financial stakes in football continue to rise. English Premier League clubs vastly outspent their Spanish rivals on new players this summer, while US investment group Apollo struck a deal this month to buy a majority stake in Real’s crosstown rival Atlético Madrid.
Pérez said the club would need to set up a new subsidiary that would be owned by existing members, or socios, and would sell a stake of “about 5 per cent” to an investor or investors.
Seeking to assuage potential concerns, he said the stakes of outside investors would be “symbolic” and “limited” and added that the new shareholders must “respect our values, contribute to the club’s growth and help us shield our heritage from external attacks”.
If the new shareholders wished to sell their stakes, Real Madrid would always have the first right of refusal to buy them, he said.
“We must avoid losing the ownership and control of the club’s destiny to a few individuals, as has been the case at other clubs,” Pérez said.
He said the corporate changes would “formally recognise” the existing 100,000 members as the “true owners” of the club, setting that number in stone and also putting a price on the value of membership.
“Holding a Real Madrid membership card will no longer be solely a sentimental matter,” Pérez said. “It will also have a tangible and real value.”
The billionaire businessman said that when he joined the club in 2000 it was practically bankrupt and “I even had to personally guarantee €147mn from my own assets to save” it.
With the planned ownership changes “no one will be able to dilute our status as owners or alter the balance that guarantees Real Madrid’s independence and stability”, Pérez said.
