You’ve probably heard of Real Madrid; after all, it is the most successful sports team on the planet. The soccer (or football, globally) club has more trophies than any other sports team, including 11 UEFA Champions League trophies. Real Madrid has over 80 million Facebook fans, and over 1.4 million people visited the Real Madrid Museum in 2014 alone. However, the story behind the triumph goes beyond the players and coaches. Generally unnoticed, a management team consisting mostly of outsiders took the team from near bankruptcy to the most valuable sports organization in the world.
So how did this team go from near bankruptcy to sports powerhouse? The impressive turnaround is thoroughly chronicled in Steven Mandis’s October 2016 book The Real Madrid Way: How Values Created the Most Valuable Sports Team on the Planet. Given unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to Real Madrid—from its management to its players—Mandis, who teaches at New York’s Columbia Business School, found that the key to Real Madrid’s success, both on and off the field, was its focus on values. Mandis’s book and his findings are featured in a recent Forbes article.
The Real Madrid Way is a fascinating account of the most successful sports team on the planet and how its focus on values made it so. BenBella is proud to have published The Real Madrid Way—congratulations on a fantastic book, Steven!