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By – DaSilvaProd

Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (Spanish pronunciation: [reˈal maˈðɾið ˈkluβ ðe ˈfutβol] Royal Madrid Football Club), commonly known as Real Madrid, is a professional football club based in Madrid, Spain.

It was founded in 1902 as Madrid Football Club and has traditionally worn a white home kit since. The word Real is Spanish for royal and was bestowed to the club by King Alfonso XIII in 1920 together with the royal crown in the emblem. The club established itself as a major force in both Spanish and European football during the 1950s.

Unlike most European football clubs, Real Madrid’s members (socios) have owned and operated the club since its inception. The club is the world’s second most valuable football club, worth €1.4 billion,[4] and the richest in terms of annual revenue, generating €438.6 million in 2011.[5] Real Madrid holds many long-standing rivalries, most notably El Clásico with FC Barcelona. The team has played its home matches in the 85,454-capacity Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in downtown Madrid since 1947.

It is one of three clubs to have never been relegated from the top flight of Spanish football, along with Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona. In domestic competitions Real Madrid has won 18 Copas del Rey, 8 Supercopas de España, 1 Copa Eva Duarte, 1 Copa de la Liga, and a record 31 La Liga titles. Internationally it has won nine European Cup/UEFA Champions League titles and three Intercontinental Cups, both records, as well as two UEFA Cups, and one UEFA Super Cup.

It was under Florentino Pérez’s first presidency (2000–2006) that Real Madrid started its ambition of becoming the world’s richest professional football club.[87] The club ceded part of its training grounds to the city of Madrid in 2001, and sold the rest to four corporations: Repsol YPF, Mutua Automovilística de Madrid, Sacyr Vallehermoso and OHL. The sale eradicated the club’s debts, paving the way for it to buy the world’s most expensive players such as Zinédine Zidane, Luís Figo, Ronaldo and David Beckham. The city had previously rezoned the training grounds for development, a move which in turn increased their value, and then bought the site.[28] The EU-commission started an investigation into whether the city overpaid for the property, to be considered a form of state subsidy.[88]

The sale of the training ground for office buildings cleared Real Madrid’s debts of €270m and enabled the club to embark upon an unprecedented spending spree which brought big-name players to the club. In addition, profit from the sale was spent on a state-of-the-art training complex on the city’s outskirts.[89] Although Pérez’s policy resulted in increased financial success from the exploitation of the club’s high marketing potential around the world, especially in Asia, it came under increasing criticism for being too focused on marketing the Real Madrid brand, and not enough on the performances of the team.

By September 2007, Real Madrid was considered the most valuable football brand in Europe by BBDO.[90] In 2008, it was ranked the second most valuable club in football, with a value of €951 mil (£640 million / $1.285 billion),[91] only beaten by Manchester United, which was valued at €1.333 billion (£900 million).[92] In 2010, Real Madrid had the highest turnover in football worldwide.[93] In September 2009, Real Madrid’s management announced plans to open its own dedicated theme park by 2013.[94]

A study at Harvard University concluded that Real Madrid “is one of the 20 most important brand names and the only one in which its executives, the players, are well-known. We have some spectacular figures in regard to worldwide support of the club. There are an estimated 287 million people worldwide who follow Real Madrid.”[95] In 2010, Forbes evaluated Real Madrid’s worth to be around €992 million (USD $1,323 million), ranking them second after Manchester United, based on figures from the 2008–09 season.[96][97] According to Deloitte, Real Madrid had a recorded revenue of €401 million in the same period, ranking first.[98]

Along with FC Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao, and Osasuna, Real Madrid is organised as a

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