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Negotiating Identities: National Identity Vs Global Branding and Cooperation in the Case of Real Madrid CF

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Negotiating Identities: National Identity Vs Global Branding and Cooperation in the Case of Real Madrid CF Competition and Cooperation in Social and Political Sciences – Adi & Achwan (Eds) © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62676-8 Negotiating identities: National identity vs global branding and cooperation in the case of Real Madrid CF V. Syamsi Department of English Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia ABSTRACT: Sport has taken on a more important role in the political realm. In the past, countries such as the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic linked the health of the state to its ability to perform successfully in the international sporting arena (Galeano, 2013; Kuper, 2006). In Spain, General Franco, military dictator from 1939 to 1975, used sport as a part of the state’s machinery. He used football to muster support, a sense of national identity, and nationalism from the Spaniards. While repressing the regional identities of the Basque Country and Catalonia (represented by the football clubs Athletic Bilbao and FC Barcelona, respectively), he used Real Madrid CF as a symbol of Spain. Hence, matches between Real Madrid CF and FC Barcelona have never been a mere game of football; they rep- resent a game between “oppressor” and “oppressed” political groups, a match with the highest audience in the world, dubbed El Clásico. In 2012, Real Madrid CF cooperated with the Bank of Abu Dhabi and the royal family of the United Arab Emirates and, in the process, removed the ‘Christian’ cross from its club crest because the project targeted a Muslim region. This paper analyses the conflicting interests involved and how identities compete and are negotiated. 1 INTRODUCTION Sport has been a huge magnet, attracting millions of spectators. The 2008 Beijing Olympics attracted an audience of 4.7 billion over the 17 days that the event was staged (Kennedy & Hills, 2009), equivalent to 70 per cent of the world population, making it the “most watched Games ever”, according to Nielsen Media Research (2008). To emphasise how popular sport is, World Cup USA 1994, Inc. released a booklet stating that the TV audience for the Italian World Cup was 25.6 billion (five times the world population), and that 31 billion are expected to watch the American World Cup (Kuper, 2006). Of all the different kinds of sports, foot- ball has been regarded as the most popular sport (Giulianotti & Robertson, 2004), with an estimate of 250 million people playing the game, and a further 1.4 million people attending matches in stadiums, while another 3.4 billion people become spectators through the variety of television channels that air the sport. Having a large number of fans can be a big advantage, and is in line with Tuñón (2012), who stated that: “in modern society, sports become important for the identification of indi- viduals with the communities to which they belong”. Through their identification with a sports team, people can express their identification with the city it represents or perhaps with a particular sub-group within it, such as a class or ethnic group (Dunning, 1999). Sport clubs, therefore, offer a sanctuary in which their fans can feel at home, a place where they belong. Tuñón (2012) adds that, from the very beginning, football has been a useful tool in stimu- lating symbolic integration in order to build state (“imagined communities”) identities. The development of football has not only served as a vehicle for a nation-state to internally organ- ise its communities; it also served to demonstrate its superiority to other nations in the field of symbolic disputes. Moreover, football’s ability to break through various social class barriers can create a feeling of common membership among people. Hobsbawm (in Tuñón, 2012) has argued that “after both World Wars, football turned into a mass spectacle where opposing 347 teams symbolised nation-states”. Hence, football can be used as a medium by which to build and show patriotism. Spain has a lot of football clubs, and each of them is representative of a city, region or even a nationality. This makes the domestic football championship a symbolic field for a competition of identity. Football matches update historical rivalries and serve as vehicles for attitudes of both supremacy and revenge (Tuñón, 2012). Tuñón explains further that, even today, football in Spain still maintains the ethno-territorial roots it showed during the twenti- eth century. This is what has subsequently been embodied as the symbolic importance of FC Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao and Real Madrid CF. However, of these three clubs, this paper will focus on the competition between the two largest in the Spanish league, La Liga: Real Madrid, its triumphs leading it to be considered as the perfect embodiment of the collective identity of the Spanish people, and Barcelona, a longstanding symbol of resistance toward Madrid for the local Catalan population. 2 EL CLÁSICO: THE EVERLASTING DOMESTIC COMPETITION AND FIERCE RIVALRY FC Barcelona has been used as a resistance identity by the Catalans; an identity generated by those actors in positions or conditions that are devalued and/or stigmatised by the logic of domination, thus creating trenches of resistance and survival on the basis of principles different from, or opposed to, those permeating the institutions of society (Castells, 1999). Thus was FC Barcelona used by the Catalans as a symbol of a resistance toward Madrid and Franco’s government of the 1940s and 1950s. Barcelo et al. (2014) state that “perhaps the most internationally famous as symbolising the substate national Catalan identity in Spain is FC Barcelona”. Founded in 1899, the club quickly became associated with Catalan identity, underlining Catalonia’s struggle against Spain; més que un club (something more than a club). For many Barcelona fans, the football club was a proxy where they could exhibit their sup- pressed identity. Indeed, FC Barcelona is more than just a club. It is a uniting factor for the Catalans that feel oppressed, a shrine for the Catalans to pray in and to realise their dream of independence. As a consequence, the competition between the two biggest clubs in Spain has always served as a battlefield for the identity of Spain. The match between the two clubs, which is known as El Clásico, is without doubt the most awaited match on the planet. This game is exaggeratedly described as the game that can stir emotions, and divide families, friends and even nations. It attracts the largest TV audience in the world in terms of football, and thus the biggest income from TV stations. Referring to its history throughout the previous cen- tury, El Clásico was frequently presented as a version of David vs Goliath, with Barcelona relishing its status as the David-like underdog and Real Madrid more than happy to play the role of the big guy (Balague, cited in Fitzpatrick, 2012). 3 REAL MADRID AND WORLD CONQUEST Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid CF, revolutionised the business model of running a football club (Carlin, 2012). His big idea from the start of his presidency in the year 2000 was to buy the very best players, Los Galácticos. He believed that if the club bought the very best players, the club would always win in the end because the players paid their own way. It is the same logic that is followed by Hollywood producers when they elect to pay vast sums of money to the top box-office actors to appear in their films. “We’re content provid- ers, just like a film studio,” explained Jose Angel Sanchez, Real Madrid’s director of market- ing, “Having a team with Zidane in it is like having a movie with Tom Cruise”. That is why Pérez broke the world transfer record to bring Figo to Real Madrid in 2000, Zidane in 2001, Ronaldo in 2002, Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009 (for €94 million, or $131.5 million) (Hughes, 2009), and Gareth Bale in 2012. Yet, each year the club’s profits grew. It turned out that the 348 recruitment of Los Galácticos has proved to increase the number of fans, and eventually the sales of replica shirts. As president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez was successful in transforming the club into a modern sport and media company; it has become a good model of a corporation pos- sessing a long-term vision that has been way ahead of its time. One of the fundamental pil- lars of this model has involved designing and implementing a new marketing strategy aimed at strengthening the value of the club’s brand (Callejo & Forcadell, 2006). By adopting this new model, Real Madrid increased its income from marketing, making it, from a marketing and business perspective, the leader in the football world. This new management model and strategy has drawn a lot of attention from other sports clubs, the economic press, and even the academic world in the field of business management. One of the strategies pursued by Pérez is the principle of espectáculo (spectacle) (Carlin, 2012). Pérez crushed longstanding orthodoxies, changing the whole conception of the game of football. He wanted to buy “Los Mejores”, “Quiero a los mejores”; “The best, I want the best; let the other teams get centre-halves and defensive midfielders: against us they are going to need them!” Rather than buying players that might better suit the club’s needs, Pérez bought the most expensive players because football is mainly about presenting espectáculo. With Real Madrid, football is beyond sport; it is business and entertainment for the entire football fan base. Landor, an American firm considered to be a leader in brand and design consultancy, was hired by a company that was interested in becoming a sponsor of Real Madrid to conduct a survey and study of the club.
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