5 reasons why Real Madrid is one of the most famous clubs in the world

#3 Home to the best players in the world

Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the most famous players to wear the famous white jersey

A club as successful as Madrid is bound to attract top players and with its incredible revenue stream can afford to have multiple top players at the same time. Further, the club can even snap up top players from big clubs across different countries too due to their immense pulling power.

Madrid’s home stadium, Santiago Bernabeu, has seen some of the greatest players in the world play in it. Some of the biggest names include Alfredo Di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas – after whom the Puskas award for the best goal of the year is named, Hugo Sanchez, Raul, Iker Casillas, Cristiano Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, Gareth Bale and the list goes on.

If there are any doubts over how the club can manage to sign such players, then one needs to only look at the astronomical jersey sales. When Cristiano Ronaldo joined Los Blancos in 2009 for a then record-fee of £80 million, it took just under a year for Madrid to sell around 1.2 million shirts that generated about £100 million.

Although the entire income does not directly go in recouping the money spent as part of it goes to Adidas and Ronaldo as well, the club does earn a sizeable number.

Similar record sales were seen during the time of David Beckham, Zidane, Roberto Carlos and the Brazilian Ronaldo, and this explains how popular the club is. Another example is the recent buy of James Rodriguez in 2014, on the back of a terrific World Cup with Colombia, and the club was reported to have earned close to £20 million be selling shirt replicas in 48 hours after he was signed.

Thus, having the best players in the world definitely helped and keeps helping Madrid garner more revenue as well as an audience.