Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the former Spanish Prime Minister, attended the Silk Road Economic Belt Cities International Forum 2015 in Yiwu China on Thursday. In his speech, he called on more Chinese investors to connect with Spanish football related entities.

Up until Zaperato’s forum speech, we have already seen a range of sports related associations among Chinese investors and Spanish football entities such as Wanda’s investment in Atletico Madrid, Qianbao’s sponsorships of Real Sociedad and Rayo Vallecano and Oppo’s partnership with current La Liga holders Barcelona FC.

Wanda’s connection with Atletico Madrid, in particular, is highly rated as a win-win deal by Zapatero. He argued that Wanda Group is a powerful consortium and Atletico Madrid, a top football club, consequently the partnership between them would benefit both sides.

Throughout his speech, Zapatero continued to encourage Chinese consortiums to invest money in football related Spanish entities. He stated that assets in Spain are of high quality and are inexpensive therefore the timing would be right for Chinese investors to take advantage of these opportunities.

To some extent, Zapatero argument about being the right time to invest in Spanish entities especially in football is persuasive. Wanda’s investment in Atletico Madrid marked the first time that Chinese investors have ever made a real bid for more presence in international football. Except for Wang Jianlin’s efforts in pouring funds into one of the top clubs in La Liga, we have also seen hundreds of Chinese individuals raise money to crowdfund SD Eibar who were promoted to La Liga’s top flight in 2014.

Additionally, with the popularity of Spanish football, Chinese investors would reach a larger audience with new markets especially in the vast Spanish-speaking countries. "If you invest in Spain, you're opening up a Spanish-speaking market with a population of 500 million, including Spain, Latin America and North Africa," said Zapatero.

Source: Tencent, Ecns

Edited and Proofread by Raymond Fitzpatrick