Dubai: Eurostar Group, a Dubai-based diversified business conglomerate, has launched Real Madrid energy drink in the UAE. The company has recently acquired the exclusive rights to market and distribute the drink, branded by the football team Real Madrid C.F.

The new beverage is expected to heighten competition in the growing energy drink market in the country, where consumers drank about 16.1 million litres of energy drinks last year, data from the consultancy Euromonitor International show. This was worth about $121.6 million (Dh446.6 million). By 2014, this is expected to grow to 29.6 million litres worth $199.8 million, Euromonitor says.

“Energy drinks were pretty late to appear in the UAE. They were only really launched in 2000,” David Edwards,managing director of IMES Consulting Group in Dubai, said in a recent interview.

Founded in 1902, Real Madrid is a professional football club based in Madrid, Spain. 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 is the richest football club in terms of annual revenue, generating €513 million in 2012 and the second most valuable, worth €1.8 billion. It is one of three clubs to have never been relegated from the top flight of Spanish football, along with Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona. Real Madrid holds many long-standing rivalries, most notably El Clásico with FC Barcelona.

Raju T. Jethwani, Chairman of Eurostar Group says, “We are living in fast changing times, where technology takes the lead in the introduction of better lifestyles and a more direct-to-the-point way of doing business. Eurostar Group takes pride in its ability to bring forth products, solutions and services that are demanded by consumers and various verticals.”

As noted in the recently published Beverage Industry 2012 State of the Industry report, for the first time, energy drinks have outsold bottled water (for the 52 weeks ending April 15, 2012, in US supermarkets, drug, gas, convenience and mass merchandise retailers. During that period, energy drinks garnered more than $6.9 billion in sales for a 19.4 per cent increase over the previous year; bottled water saw $6.7 billion in sales for a 3.4 per cent increase.

Real Madrid Energy drinks are available at all leading retail outlets in the UAE.