According to a report in AS, Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium is to be renamed the Abu Dhabi Bernabéu.
Madrid signed a deal with the International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC), an Abu Dhabi based company, at the end of October 2014. Pérez suggested the agreement would enable Madrid to carry out the redevelopment of the Bernabéu.
Pérez did not reveal what the revamped stadium would be called when the IPIC deal was announced but said the agreement marked “the start of a long journey and the beginning of a strong partnership”.
The AS report has not been confirmed by Real Madrid, but the president Florentino Pérez was caught on camera admitting to a member of the regional government that the stadium will be called whatever the Abu Dhabi investment group IPIC want it to be called.
“We’ll call it IPIC Bernabéu or whatever they want … or CEPSA Bernabéu,” Pérez was overheard saying at a presentation with fellow sponsor Microsoft.
The deal was understood to be worth €3m [£2.25] a year until Madrid began work on redeveloping the stadium, when the annual paymebnt would increase to €20m a year. Real will bring in around €500milliion over the next 20 years by renaming the Bernabeu.
Real Madrid would follow Arsenal’s Emirates stadium and Manchester City’s Etihad stadium as being named after a sponsor from the region.
