Dubai: UAE airlines sponsoring Spanish football jerseys and Spanish coaches joining UAE clubs. If you had noticed the love affair between Arab fans and Spanish football heating up a tad recently, you’ve not been imagining things. La Liga has just opened an office in Dubai to expand its relations with its majority fanbase.
To find out more, Gulf News met up with former Champions League winning Real Madrid defender Fernando Sanz, the new general director of La Liga’s new Middle East and North Africa office. Incidentally, he is the son of former Real president Lorenzo and brother-in-law of fellow player and Dubai Sports City coach Michel Salgado. Following are the excerpts of a freewheeling chat:
GULF NEWS: Why has La Liga set up a Dubai office?
FERNANDO SANZ: The El Classico between Real Madrid and Barcelona attracts a global audience of 400 million people, that’s three times the size of the Super Bowl’s viewership. Of that number 87 million viewers are from the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region. There are 350 million people in the Mena region of which 126 million watch La Liga matches at some point over the course of a season. Most of them are under the age of 25. The future is bright. That’s the real drive behind being here to reach out and engage our audience.
How are you going to “engage” your Mena audience?
We have many intentions. We want to be proactive with local media to enable readers to stay informed on La Liga, while also launching an Arabic version of our own website that will assist fans with any questions they may have on how to travel to Spain and attend a match. We will also work with hotels and airlines to promote packages. Then we will look to host events and bring players and former players over here to share in the La Liga experience. It’s the players who personalise the value of football and they are critical together with bringing their clubs here to engage the fans. We are 6000km away from Spain but the idea is to bring it closer.
Can you bring a match here?
It will be very difficult to hold a league match here. But definitely if factors align why not think about tournaments or friendlies. We also intend to promote special events and activities here around the sidelines of live La Liga broadcasts. The Royal Spanish Football Federation organise the national cup competitions not La Liga so we can’t comment on whether a cup final could come here but in terms of interest in Spanish football this region is huge. There’s been a lot of interest to bring Spanish cup competitions here, some serious and important offers so lets see. It’s out of our hands but the interest is there and we’ll see in the future.
Beyond the fans are you also here to court investors?
All situations are good for La Liga. If we are able to assist any party interested in investing and becoming part of the growth of Spanish football that’s definitely one other reason for being here. We are also here to service our current partners in the region like Emirates Airline, Qatar Airways, Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and etisalat. But let’s rewind, this is about the fans because at the end of the day the fans are the ones that drive the competition and make it attractive to investors and commercial brands in the first place.
Why have you waited so long to set up an office here?
There’s a new president of La Liga Javier Tebas. He’s been in office for two months now and one of his key mandates is global expansion. Dubai is one of two newly opened offices. The other is in Miami, which is a gateway to Central and South America. We also look to set up strategic offices in Asia and Europe. We cannot turn our heads to the fact that this region is massively interested in La Liga and it’s a two-way relationship. La Liga wants to be part of football development in this region as much as this region is of so much potential to us.
In exchange can you supply local clubs and academies with more Spanish expertise?
We are not forcing anything. It’s important to help develop football here and we will definitely try to contribute with our expertise if and when it is required, but it has to be a natural process. If we can offer and share access to players, coaches and managers, with the relevant background, when necessary, there are numerous possibilities.
