We can easily state that Real Madrid are the most successful football club in the planet. On field, Real Madrid have won 11th Champions Leagues until now, have La Liga record trophies with 32 and were named as the best club in the Twentieth Century by FIFA. Off the pitch, Real Madrid are also successful, both financially and socially. According to Forbes, Real Madrid are the second most valuable sports team in the world -$3.65 bill-, only behind Dallas Cowboys -$4 bill-.
Steve G. Mandis has analyzed Los Blancos success in the must read book “The Real Madrid Way”, where he details why the Spanish team has to be seen as the best club in the world. According to the former Goldman Sachs worker, Real Madrid values “created the most successful sports team in the world”.
Mandis decided to analyze both on-pitch and off-field success in the last years and how Real Madrid came to find a great financial approach to sports. Because Los Blancos have always had the best players and have won a lot of titles but they haven’t achieved the success in all the fields until now. According to Mandis, “chasing the most talented (and most expensive) players can be a recipe for a winning record, but also financial disaster, as it was for Real Madrid in the late 1990s”.
However, when Florentino Pérez arrived to Real Madrid this was changed. Real Madrid continued buying the best players in the world -Luis Figo, Ronaldo, Beckham, Zidane, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale- but also found the financial and marketing success in a new business style.
Part of this success, he explained, it’s also because Real Madrid fans feel like they are part of a community and they share some values, no matter where they are. Andrew Hill wrote in Financial Times, how Real Madrid can achieve that some players like Cristiano Ronaldo can adjust his game for the “greater good” when Los Blancos, for instance, signed Gareth Bale, back in 2013. According to the FT, “The decision to buy clean-cut forward James Rodríguez in 2014 and spurn bad-boy striker Luis Suárez was a further sign of the weight the club puts on bringing in new players who fit the community”. And Real Madrid are the largest sports community in the world.
In ‘The Real Madrid Way’ you will find the “untold story of Real Madrid: one of the most incredible turnarounds in sports and business history”. Mandis investigated behind the scenes and gives some clarity of how Los Blancos have reached this prominent positions in the world of finance, marketing, culture and, of course, sports.
