This story starts ten years ago when my partner Michael Grieve and his family were on sabbatical in Spain. Among the many things Michael learned during that time was the immense interest in football (soccer) but also the reverence and massive fan support for one team in particular – Real Madrid. He made some contacts at the club and always thought that, based on our experience, with the other leagues in North America, that Real Madrid could do something similar!
Two years ago we started having conversations with some of the folks at Real Madrid. They envisioned a comprehensive memorabilia program involving not only the club but other assets and pieces within their organizations, starting first with their famous Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. At this point, we needed to bring in Pursuit 3 (P3), our long-time partner for our work with Olympic Auctions (London 2012 and Rio 2016). They specialize in managing large events and asset-based programs that create premium assets and experiences for fans while also managing ‘end-to-end’ solutions for their partners.
A year ago Michael, Jon Curliegh (President of P3), and I travelled to Spain to conclude an agreement with Real Madrid to do just that.
The last year has been a massive lift for both P3 and ourselves building one of the most comprehensive and complex memorabilia programs EVER!
A huge shout out to the many people (some of whom I will have missed here) who had the vision and perseverance to start the Official Memorabilia Program for one of the largest football clubs in the world from scratch. We would like to thank Jon Curleigh, Todd Brunel, Tania Paessler, and Gordon Macpherson from P3 who oversaw a team spanning four countries and two languages. Much of the design was performed by Cristina Folgueira and Juan Searle at Full Circle. The inventory and order management team was quarterbacked by Alastair at Workhorse. Seat production, 3D product creation, and on-demand production by Nagami. Finally a note to the many hours of hard work by the CDI team to bring the program to life including Kartik, Reggie, Ajay, Rahul, and Tejal, as well as my partners Saurabh and Michael.
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