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Real Madrid’s president Florentino Perez worked with a team of Disney executives including former CEO Michael Eisner on a plan to turn the world-famous football club into a theme park
Tom Anstey | Planet Attractions | 29 Nov 2022
Real Madrid is one of sport’s most valuable brands Credit: Real Madrid
Real Madrid president Florentino Perez hatched a wild plan to move the elite football club from the iconic Bernabeu stadium into the middle of a theme park dubbed ‘RealMadridLand’.
Revealed in a new book Messi vs Ronaldo by Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson, the plans were so advanced that Perez was in talks with a group of former Disney executives led by the company’s long-time former CEO, Michael Eisner.
According to the book, the park would have included a number of rides, including rollercoasters that would follow the trajectory of famous club goals, including Zinedine Zidane’s iconic volley in the 2002 UEFA Champions League Final.
The book says that the plan fell apart when it was discovered that Perez would need €2.5bn (US$2.59bn, £2.16bn) - 75% more than the €1.4bn (US$1.45bn, £1.21bn) budget he had secured to realise the audacious project. The move was motivated by the cost of keeping the squad together following a number of pay rises in the football club.
“In our world, we are as big as Disney,” said Perez, according to one of the book’s sources. “Real Madrid must do things like this because we are the number-one club, and the only way we will remain there is by always being the first big innovator.”
Eisner’s team spent three months studying the plan before pulling out over a number of concerns, including the scope of the project and its profitability.
Perez was also the first and only chairman of the breakaway European Super League, a failed project that would have seen some of the continent’s top clubs form a tournament designed to rival the UEFA Champions League.
Theme park
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