Florentino Perez Aims To Change Real Madrid Kick-Offs To Attract Audience Of 1b

Florentino Perez is already busy working overtime on more business strategies to recoup the €196 million investment on Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and Karim Benzema.

One of the big financial jackpots in football comes from television rights, and AS has reported that the construction magnet has drawn up plans to change the schedule of Real Madrid’s games at the Santiago Bernabeu to tap further into the Asian market.

It is believed that Perez will try to convince the different broadcasters in Spain to move the team’s kick-off to 15:00 CET during the winter months and 16:00 CET in spring time (anywhere between 20:00 to 22:00 in Asia).

Intereconomia TV reported a few days ago that Perez estimated that, based on current kick-off times, the global TV viewership of Madrid’s matches stands at around 800 million, but he anticipates that the early start time could boost the figures up to 1.8 billion, thanks largely to the massive audiences in China and Japan, where there is a fanatical following of Cristiano Ronaldo, as well as the fans in South America, who support Kaka.  

The White House president is said to have drawn encouragement from the English Premier League’s current TV schedule, where the big clash of the weekend is often held on Saturday at 12:45 GMT and at 15:00 GMT for the bulk of the fixtures. However, he had already come up with this idea during his first stint at the Bernabeu, but he ran into resistance from the LFP {Liga de Futbol Professional) as well as the TV broadcasters.

He is confident that the new timetable will not only benefit Madrid and the opposing team, but it will also broaden La Liga’s appeal to a wider market.

The only setback to this plan would be the disapproval of the paying members in Madrid to attend the games earlier than usual. At present, La Liga’s games are normally scheduled from 20:00 CET to 22:00 CET for Saturday’s round of matches, and 17:00 CET to 21:00 CET on Sundays.

Perez has already predicted that CR9 and Kaka will generate more than €90m of profit every year, a figure that will almost cover this summer’s triple Galacticos signing in two seasons.

KS Leong, Goal.com

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