“The list of companies that are calling to organize events and concerts at the new Bernabéu is enormous, there are only a few days left in the year.” An authorized Real Madrid source expressed a few weeks ago informally what is brewing inside the club for a 2024 that will see the official birth of the renovated, expanded and beautified Santiago Bernabéu of the future. The entity has been opening the season with the inclusion of the white coliseum in a good handful of the most powerful world tours that will pass through Spain next summer and will expand it with the presence of the powerful NFL. In 2025, cruising speed will be reached in terms of the new Bernabéu as a multifunctional space that will go beyond being a very modern football stadium. It will be almost a living organism that will ‘beat’ when Madrid is not playing.
Experts in the sector have been taking into account the role of the glittering Madrid stadium as a player in the juicy business of live music. “Being in the center of a big city is a plus that the rest does not have,” these sources say. The references in Spain are evident. Montjuïc does not offer the same ease in terms of transportation, the new Camp Nou is currently at a disadvantage and the Metropolitan suffers from a double problem: the important distance to the tourist hubs of Madrid and a notably lower capacity. The business leaders have been warning about it. “Madrid is going to play a very important role” in the macro-concert pie, advanced Pino Sagliocco, the president of Live Nation Spain, last May. They are behind the expectedly most popular concert of the year, Taylor Swift’s and her The Eras Tour.
Although Madrid does not reveal what it costs to rent the new Bernabéu, there are elements to establish the potential cache. The Argentine rapper Duki, another of those who will perform in Chamartín (on June 8), closed a series of four concerts in his country at the Vélez stadium at the end of 2022 for a total amount of $300,000. The rent for a concert by a big name (Rosalía…) is costing, just for the venue, around 100,000 euros.
That figure appears repeated on numerous occasions. The public ownership (BSM, Barcelona de Serveis Municipals) that holds the reins of the Lluis Companys Stadium negotiated with Barça the rental of the venue while the new Camp Nou is being built for exactly that amount: €4M for 40 events.
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The Argentine ragpicker Duki, during a recent performance. A concert of his is confirmed for June 8, 2024.
The NFL comes with the checkbook
It’s not official yet, but all parties take it for granted. The new Bernabéu will host the best American football on the planet. The almighty NFL, the sports league that earns the most money from television on the planet (€11,000M annually), continues to expand its business in Europe. Madrid is part of that strategy. As London was before, with Tottenham as the great beneficiary. It reached an agreement at the time for 10 years (later extended to 15) with the NFL, which also made a very minor financial contribution in the construction of the stadium to seal the alliance.
Sources familiar with the type of commercial pacts that the NFL offers to football clubs that give up their stadiums indicate a key element: with the agreement, the club benefits from the sale of food, drink and merchandising carried out in its stadiums. enclosure. It’s no small thing. At the 2019 Raiders-Bears at the Tottenham stadium, the beer supplier publicly spoke of a world record for beer sales of more than 1 million pounds. A very succulent slice that raises the price to be received.
In the recent move of the NFL to Germany, the Munich city council entered as a negotiating party because it ordered a study that estimated the impact of hosting an American football game at 31.5 million euros. The American colossus provides all possible facilities. The NFL, for example, took care of the cost of replacing the grass after the Buccaneers-Seahawks in 2022, because it was unrecoverable. At the Bernabéu it would not be a problem, thanks to the hypogeum, the avant-garde work that allows the grass used by Real Madrid to be stored in the underground greenhouse. In Spain, two franchises will operate, the Miami Dolphins and the Chicago Bears, within the ‘distribution’ of audiovisual markets that the NFL made among its franchises through exclusive areas from January 2022. One (or both) will open the football melon in the new Bernabéu. A million-dollar business that will take shape, if everything follows current channels, in October 2025.
Barcelona, in check
Until now, Barcelona has had prominence because its location, near the south of France, makes it easier to fit into the routing (the route of the artists’ caravans) with which the promoters seek to travel less mileage. It is about maximizing the economic effort of moving the huge number of trucks with material and personnel that make up the macro tours. The central location of the Bernabéu alters the balance. It may be more expensive to travel to the capital but the attractiveness of the setting and its easy access and nearby presence of abundant accommodation and leisure areas will work as a magnet for ticket sales. You just have to look at the sold out records of Karol G, who sold all the tickets for his concert at the Bernabéu (July 20) in less than 15 minutes. In other words, the location of the Bernabéu will also allow more expensive tickets to be sold. And the profile of those attending these massive macro-concerts is to spend, and a lot. A recent study by The Wall Street Journal reveals that each Swiftie (Taylor Swift fan) will spend around $1,300 per concert between travel, accommodation, merchandising, and eating and drinking, both outside and inside the concert. A substantial slice.
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Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood, in the honor box of the Lluis Companys during the Clásico on October 28. Eric AlonsoGetty Images
One of the most desirable shows on the market is to get Bruce Springsteen. The Boss will come to Madrid in 2024… but to the Civitas Metropolitano. On a double date. The reason is his promoter, Doctor Music, who works with the rojiblanco stadium. There last summer he took Rammstein and also The Rolling Stones, who by the way played at the Bernabéu in 2014 and are in the midst of launching their first album with material in 18 years (‘Hackney Diamonds’). The red tongue waved in the last Classic, but the next time Jagger, Richards and Wood set foot in a Spanish stadium it could be Madrid’s. There is still no declaration of intent from the band regarding a new European tour, but the new Bernabéu is already, de facto, a new player on the board. And this has only just begun.
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2024-01-02 15:21:55
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