Madrid Pre Season Training Stage, Ireland, 2009
(27 Jul 2009)
PLATINUM ONE staged the first match in Tallaght Stadium to be shown live on Sky Sports. As the official pre-season partner of Real Madrid this summer the company needed to promote one game as part of its contract with the world’s greatest club. On Monday July 20th 11,000 people attended the match between local club, Shamrock Rovers and Madrid which saw Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema make their debuts for Madrid in a one nil win over their local rivals. It was Benzema who scored three minutes from time in an exciting game where the world’s most expensive player, Ronaldo had earlier made his first appearance for the Madristas.
This is the third year in succession that PLATINUM ONE has worked with a top Spanish club on the management of its pre-season, having fulfilled this role for FC Bareclona in 2007 and 2008 when the Catalan giants were based in St. Andrew’s in Scotland. In each of those years PLATINUM ONE had organised two matches for Barca but this year the challenge was to secure a stadium that could accommodate the match involving Real Madrid. The reconstruction of Lansdowne Road and the unavailability of the RDS arena meant that PLATINUM ONE had to work with South Dublin County Council which owns the newly opened Tallaght Stadium to turn it from its normal capacity of 3,000 to 11,000. The challenge was enormous. 7,500 temporary seats had to be built along with the appropriate infrastructure to support an attendance of well over three times the norm. The event was a spectacular success as described by one of the leading commentators on Irish football, Pat Dolan, in his column in The Star newspaper: “This night was about planning. Everything was meticulous. Platinum One knew their reputation depended on it. The people of Tallaght will never forget the day Madrid came to town”.