Exclusive: Real Madrid branded island abandoned
RAK investment authority confirms that plans to build resort are indefinitely on hold
RAK Investment Authority had planned to develop a Real Madrid branded resort on Marjan Island.
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Plans for Real Madrid’s $1 billion fantasy island in Ras Al Khaimah have been abandoned due to lack of investment.
According to the RAK Investment Authority, one of the co-signatories behind the deal, the quasi-dystopian resort, on Marjan Island, which was set to include a 10,000-seater stadium and a Galacticos museum, was entirely dependent on funding from France and Luxembourg, which has since fallen through.
“Building won’t start any time soon,” a spokesman told Big Project ME’s sister magazine, Sports Talk. “Plans are indefinitely on hold. The resort stands no chance of opening in January 2015, if at all,” he said.
“We have been searching for funding over the past two months, but due to harsh economic times none has materialised. We haven’t totally abandoned the project, but it will need fresh backers, since we were banking on promised funds from France and Luxembourg. Even if we got some today nothing would be open until the end of 2016, at the earliest.”
Real Madrid are highly unlikely to wait, given they now have firm links in the region courtesy of their new $39 million shirt sponsor, Emirates Airline.
The tie-up with Ras Al Khaimah was intended to help the La Liga giants keep pace with Barcelona’s expansion in the Middle East, but the five-year Emirates deal – which will see Los Blancos come to the UAE in January to face either Paris Saint Germain or Arsenal in the Dubai Football Challenge – means there’s now far less reason to keep faith with the cash-strapped project.
“We only lent our brand to the Real Madrid Resort Island,” revealed club president Florentino Perez. “Real Madrid did not contribute financially. We hope the resort is completed in a timely and cost-effective manner, but right now that looks unlikely. We wanted a base in the UAE to bring us closer to our MENA and Asian fan base, but that may not be possible now.”
The only reason Real may still pursue the resort is because it offered a decent loophole around the stringent Financial Fair Play rules, which come into force in 2015. Madrid would have had the option to declare a profit on their share of the theme park revenue, which was intended to attract one million tourists per year.
This extremely ambitious boast was made by Louis-Armand de Rouge, the CEO of RAK Investment (not to be confused with the RAK Investment Authority) – another co-signatory on the deal.
A few months ago, Rouge told Sports Talk the resort would still open in January 2015 as planned, but couldn’t proffer an explanation as to why construction was yet to begin, although he did let slip that he was going on a “concerted drive in April to find backers”.
