Real Madrid Have Found The Promised Land, And Its Name Is 中国.

By: chris | September 24th, 2009

Never, ever forget: it’s always about the money.

When doctoring up a schedule for the week’s domestic games, what should be taken into consideration? Other games, such as the European variety, and the effects of travel should be paramount, and often they are. Then there are the wants and desires of the broadcast companies who pay big money so that we can enjoy some football and mediocre advertising. Now how about the wants and desires of one solitary country half way around the world? Sure, why not.

At least that’s what Real Madrid wants, and as we learned a few times this summer, what Real Madrid wants Real Madrid gets…for a (hefty) price, of course.

Real Madrid want earlier matches so that more fans in China can view them and the team can raise their profile there, club director Emilio Butragueno said on Thursday.

“We, as the Spanish league, believe the possibility of playing matches at a reasonable hour for China will help our competition a lot and also the Spanish teams, which will be better known,” Butragueno said at a discussion forum.

Madness, isn’t it? Switching up schedules for games taking place in Spain so that people in China can watch on television. If I were Spanish, I’d be throwing a one-man mini-revolt in between empanada breaks.

This smacks a bit of a rich club trying to get richer, which it is, but La Liga will still listen. Why? Simple: they stand to gain as much from financial and marketing standpoints as do the individual clubs – even those as large as Real Madrid. Asia is the new fertile ground for branding, the new territory waiting for television deals and satellite clubs and China is the biggest of them all (they’ve got a couple people, or so I’ve heard).

Real Madrid aren’t be the first one, plenty of Premiership clubs have made the Asian preseason tour an annual occurrence in order to fluff the coffers, and they certainly won’t be the last. But they will be, by brand names, one of the biggest. And one of the reasons they’re the biggest is they know how to make money. Federations like money. What’s to question?

For a competition like La Liga which is so worryingly top heavy – both on the pitch and in the bean counters’ room – this could be a simple way to bring in long-term foreign investment from a growing economic power and in-turn aid some of the middle-ground clubs which can’t drop €35m on a fourth string midfielder at the snap of a greasy finger. Or even those that can’t afford to join me in an empanada break.

Once again, Real Madrid sound arrogant, self-serving and plainly mad. But sometimes, that’s the way of the future.