Real Madrid is battling to save a billion-euro project to make its stadium a world-class concert venue after being forced to halt music events that turned the football club into the world’s richest noisy neighbour.
The football club’s vision — backed by US investment firm Sixth Street — has been thrown into doubt by a battle with angry residents who have complained about intolerable noise from the concerts, which began this year as a €1.2bn stadium overhaul nears completion.
The stand-off is an embarrassing blow to Real Madrid, the world’s most valuable football club and a cornerstone of the Spanish establishment, which had billed the redesign of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium as its route to becoming a multi-use venue.
Neighbours labelled the stadium a “torture-drome” as they railed against noise pollution they said broke the law. Musicians who performed have been fined for their shows while a blame game has broken out over who is responsible.
José Manuel Paredes, a spokesperson for local residents, said Real Madrid had tried to replicate the US model of an out-of-town NFL stadium that doubles as a concert venue but in the middle of the EU’s second-most populous city.
“With an institution like Real Madrid and a stadium so exposed to the urban environment, I can’t get my head around the idea that nobody stopped to think about how it was going to affect neighbours in terms of something as sensitive as noise,” said Paredes, whose neighbours’ association has filed a legal complaint against the club.
“Either they knew it would be an issue and they didn’t care, or it’s a systemic failure of the whole decision-making process.”
The high point for the club was a pair of back-to-back Taylor Swift concerts in May for which the US artist sold more than 120,000 tickets.
But it was a low point for residents, who complained of noise that shook their homes, drowned out their televisions and stopped their children sleeping as the shows went on until almost midnight.
“It’s a crime,” said Claudia Martín, whose apartment overlooks the stadium. “Just like it’s a crime for an oil company to cause an oil spill at sea. But in this case, it’s invisible.”
In September, after more concerts, Real Madrid announced that it was “provisionally rescheduling” the music programme as “part of a raft of measures that the club is taking to ensure that the concerts comply strictly with the relevant municipal regulations”.
This month, Lola Índigo, a Spanish pop star, announced on Instagram that she would play at the stadium on June 14 next year. But Real Madrid swiftly corrected her, saying “the club is not in a position to guarantee any dates for concerts at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium”.
The concert freeze is a blow to Sixth Street and Legends, the live events business it owns, which struck a joint deal to invest €360mn in Real Madrid’s activities in 2022 when the stadium renovation had been under way for three years.
Florentino Pérez, president of Real Madrid, said at the time that the alliance “will be fundamental in providing unique experiences in a stadium where multiple events can be hosted throughout the year”.
Under the deal, Sixth Street acquired “the right to participate in the operation of certain new businesses of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium for 20 years”.
Sixth Street and Legends declined to comment.
The venue, which was originally completed in 1947, occupies one block of Chamartín, a bourgeois neighbourhood that has the highest net income per capita in Madrid.
The remodelling involved splitting the pitch into six detachable sections that can be stacked in a vast underground storage space while other events take place overhead. The architects kept the shell of the original stadium but put a retractable roof on top and wrapped it in curved stainless steel strips that have drawn comparisons with a spaceship.
The stadium is bordered on three sides by apartment blocks, a government office, a church and the San Agustín school.
Ildefonso Trigueros, a priest and the school’s headteacher, said schooling had been disrupted by hours-long daytime rehearsals, including for Taylor Swift’s concerts.
“You could hear absolutely everything,” he said. “A lot of children know the songs so they’d start singing along in class. It wasn’t very easy to teach.”
Documents filed on behalf of Real Madrid during the planning process in 2016 said “no significant changes are expected in the noise levels” generated by activity in and around the stadium.
The club has said it is the responsibility of concert promoters — not the club — to ensure events comply with municipal regulations on noise. Since April, Madrid’s city council has hit promoters with 24 penalties totalling €2.6mn for Bernabéu concerts that exceeded the decibel level permitted by local law.
But that has angered the promoters. Spain’s Association of Music Promoters said last month: “Responsibility for non-compliance with noise limits lies with the stadium and the competent authorities, who are responsible for ensuring adequate infrastructure and facilities . . . and granting the relevant permits.”
Manuel Carrasco, a flamenco-inspired singer who was fined almost €400,000, told a television talk show: “I don’t think we’re the ones to blame.”
The neighbours’ association, which includes 2,000 families and many fans of the football team, has accused the city council of siding with the club. It says the club’s municipal licence does not even allow it to host regular concerts — a claim that both the council and Real Madrid say is untrue.
In response to questions, the club pointed to comments Pérez made to a meeting of club members in late November, when he said that music events added “prestige” to Madrid’s image as a global city.
But he also sought to play down their financial importance. “The organisation of concerts is not a particularly lucrative activity for the club,” Pérez said. “We limit ourselves to renting out the stadium . . . The income from this would be around 1 per cent of our annual budget.”
The city council said it had met representatives of Real Madrid to ensure the club took steps to “minimise the inconvenience” for local residents. These include adding an extra layer to the steel wrapping, installing sound insulation in open areas, restricting rehearsals and ending concerts at 11pm.
José Antonio Almagro, an acoustic engineer at the University of Granada, said: “With a finished stadium like that, it’s very difficult to do anything architecturally to solve the problem because the result would be ugly. The easiest thing is to turn down the volume at the concerts.”
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