On September 29, the Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, presented the Spanish Golf Open trophy to Ángel Hidalgo. He did it as a representative of the city which had literally paid the amount of this prize and the others distributed by the tournament: the Town Hall paid the three million in cash that this competition awards to the first classified. In addition, the event took place in a facility owned by the municipality, the Country Club Villa de Madrid.
According to previous figures from Madrid City Hall, the advertising revenue from the event was 9 million euros, although the truth is that the majority of Madrid residents did not know about its celebration, and even less who was the one. winner. Among its benefits through complementary activities, the sports area highlighted that it had offered 30 children and young students from Madrid the opportunity to participate in a course taught by players from the competition. Also that the city’s service sector would benefit from the visit of golfers. The council also benefited from six VIP tables and 60 tickets each day of the four days of the event.
Madrid has hosted the Spanish Golf Open since Almeida’s arrival as mayor. The company that organizes it is Madrid Trophy Promotion, the same company that organizes the Madrid Tennis Open every year and for which it also receives a significant municipal subsidy. Concretely, the Town Hall paid a little more than three million euros this year (VAT included) for sponsorship of the tournament and will pay the sum of 3.27 million from 2025, according to the details of the agreement to which the newspaper had access. The amount will increase again in 2028 to almost 3.5 million, and will be repeated for two more years until 2030, when the agreement ends.
The agreement for the organization of the tournament that attracts the main figures of world tennis to Madrid also includes free advertising of the event in municipal spaces and the complete transfer of the Caja Mágica, also free of charge. But the biggest bill is paid by Madrid Destino, the municipal company that depends on the Culture and Sports sector. This year they had to pay 6.05 million euros to Madrid Trophy Promotion for the tournament to be held in Madrid and from next year the bill will rise to 6.53 million euros (taxes included). In exchange, the tournament offers a thousand tickets to City Hall and access to two VIP boxes.
The two events organized by this company represent the majority of the money invested by Madrid City Council in major events. The third is the subsidy of an additional three million euros which was granted to the Spanish Rugby Federation for the organization of the World Seven Series last June at the Metropolitan Stadium.
The list drawn up by this newspaper is completed by the half a million euros that the Spanish Badminton Federation spent to create the Madrid Spain Master, the 350,000 euros to host the final of the Vuelta Ciclista a España or the 250,000 euros spent on the Laureus Sports Awards gala, which took place last April.
In total, municipal spending on hosting sporting events compiled by Somos Madrid amounts to more than 17 million euros. At the same time, municipal subsidies for grassroots sports envisaged in this year’s game amount to 2.45 million, divided into two lines: the first (1.4 million) for training and competition of any level, and the second (1.05 million) for participation in official competitions by national and non-professional teams, in one of the three highest absolute national categories.
The comparison between the two expenditures is clearly unequal: if we add the two amounts, the grassroots sport receives 12%, while the rest of the expenditure goes to very specific sporting events, notably tennis. And then golf and rugby.
World capital of sport for 12,000 euros
Considering the figures that the City Hall manages in terms of sponsorship, one of the least expensive achievements has been that of obtaining the title of World Capital of Sports in 2022, of which the mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida and his team have ostentatiously praised. This result, however, had some nuances: the city was the only candidate and to present its candidacy, the Municipal Executive had to pay 12,000 euros.
Although the initiative was promoted by the Sports Directorate, then in the hands of Ciudadanos, the sports capital was another step in the commitment of the Almeida team to make Madrid the venue for major sporting events . The Olympic dream is not yet on the table, but the expensive celebration of the Laureus Awards (known as the Oscars of sport), the commitment to Formula 1 from 2026 (with an expenditure already of a million dollars from Ifema despite initial promises) and its role as host of the 2030 World Cup (perhaps with the final included) predicts a chain of macro-sporting events. The future Atlético de Madrid Sports City or the controversial renovation of the Bernabéu, a stadium which plans to host an NFL match in 2025, go in the same direction.
A line that the City Council has promoted with other direct actions, such as the transfer of the Vallehermoso Stadium from Chamberí to Los Bravos, an American football team only a few months old created by businessmen from the region. Thus, a space entirely dedicated to athletics until May began to share space with a sport that had practically no followers in Madrid.
In an adjacent establishment, the GoFit Vallehermoso gymnasium, users denounced the abnormal conditions they have to face, although privatized sports centers must also be governed by the rates set by the Town Hall. Thus, through waiting lists that are barely moving forward, they establish limited and stagnant quotas for prices for retirees, large families or part-time workers, despite the fact that municipal regulations indicate that these are reductions of general application for those who meet the conditions. With this, GoFit manages to charge the general rate to the vast majority of its users, compared to the discounted rate many of these people would pay at public gyms.
Another company, Viding Fitness, even exceeded the municipal rate at the Viding Alcántara Municipal Sports Center in Salamanca. The monthly adult subscription reaches €55 this year, when the amount set by the municipality is €47.45. From the sports sector, they justified the increases of Somos Madrid by a special provision in the specifications that this municipal sports center shares only with “two or three others in the city”, and which authorizes them to increase prices according to the CPI.
The model of privatized sports centers has been a headache in the management of Almeida’s government. After the abandonment of the five calls for tenders launched in 2023, most of the sports centers with swimming pools and gymnasiums promised by Madrid City Hall in the equipment plan until 2027 found themselves without a construction company.
Privatization was precisely the solution proposed by the former municipal councilor of Fuencarral-El Pardo, Javier Ramírez, for the Vicente del Bosque swimming pool, closed already for three summers. Neighborhood opposition and doubts from the city council stopped the mayor’s attempt to move Almeida in front of 30th Street, but did not speed up its implementation. The Town Hall hopes that in 2025, a facility that 132,000 people benefited from in 2021 (the second most requested municipal swimming pool that year) will be operational again.
The most used, those of Peñuelas in Arganzuela, also closed their doors this summer for improvement works. Its 85 available tickets sold out every day in one minute during the summer period. The situation is so rare that families in the region come to self-organize other summers in WhatsApp groups to exchange tickets that remain unused, due to the lack of a municipal reimbursement system. This year, however, users were forced to go to establishments located in other neighborhoods.
Added to these closures due to improvement work are the deficiencies of the establishments that open their doors. The latest to join us is the Carlos del Coso municipal hockey field, the only public field dedicated to this sport in Madrid. Opened just four years ago, the facility’s irrigation systems have been broken since June. This leads to “impossible to play matches and possible visible injuries,” according to Más Madrid city councilor Esther Gómez.
But no case is as symptomatic of abandonment as that of the Madrid Aquatic Center, the great symbol of the city’s Olympic failures. The Municipal Executive attributes the abandoned state of this facility promoted in 2004 to host the aquatic sports of the Games never organized in the capital to the errors of previous administrations. The work was stopped in 2010 and, after 14 years of abandonment, the Works zone has confirmed that it will not be integrated into the adjacent land which will constitute the future Sports City.
This project will be built on 205,000 square meters of plots loaned by the City Hall to Atlético de Madrid for 75 years in exchange for 53 million euros. But ultimately the Cité des Sports will also be dedicated to other businesses: it will house a hotel or a shopping center, as well as unusual sports betting such as a swimming pool with artificial waves for surfing.
