Real want early games

Afp, Madrid

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez wants to bring forward the club's matches, which are usually played at night, to the afternoon to boost its international television audience, especially in Asia, sports daily AS reported Thursday.

Perez will try to convince Spanish league officials and television stations to allow Real matches to be staged at 3 pm (1300 GMT) in winter and an hour later in the spring, a move which would likely lead to a drop in ratings for matches in Spain.

But the paper said the change would boost the live global audience for Real matches to 1.8 billion from the current 800 million, due largely to a jump in the number of viewers in Asia who would now be able to watch matches in the evenings.

Real has spent over 200 million euros (280 million dollars) on new recruits, including Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo, since Perez returned to the helm of the club last month and he sees the match timetable change as a way to make more profits off of the club's star signings, it added.

Real, like its mains rivals Barcelona, have stepped up their marketing efforts in recent years to develop their brand in Asia and repeat the success with English Premier League teams, which play in the afternoon, have had in the region with sales of jerseys and advertising revenues.

Ronaldo and Kaka are very popular throughout Asia. Barcelona's cross-town rivals Espanyol, meanwhile, have signed Japanese international midfielder Shunsuke Nakamura from Celtic in a move seen as an attempt to boost its Asian appeal.

Earlier this month the Tourism Panel, a trade body which groups about 30 major Spanish tourism-related companies, predicted that Real's recruitment of stars like Ronaldo and Kaka would lead a rise in the number of visitors from Asia to Spain.