LONDON, United Kingdom – An adviser involved in the redevelopment of Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu has joined African Collaborations Group (ACG), backing its ambition to turn sports venues into the centres of commercially viable districts across Africa.
Carlos Carrión, partner and director of Sports & Entertainment at Madrid-based advisory firm Senn Ferrero, joins ACG’s advisory board with more than 30 years of experience in the sports and entertainment business.
Announcing his appointment on Monday, ACG said his expertise would strengthen its ability to develop projects that combine stadiums with entertainment, hospitality, retail and community facilities, generating income beyond match days.
The appointment brings experience from one of football’s most ambitious stadium transformations to a different challenge: developing African venues whose revenues can sustain their operations and support the districts around them.
From Real Madrid to African sports infrastructure
Carrión’s career spans corporate sponsorship, international sports development and venue infrastructure.
According to his Senn Ferrero profile, he headed marketing and sponsorship for major telecommunications and banking brands before joining Real Madrid’s international development team and later contributing to the club’s infrastructure projects.
His work, including earlier stadium experience in Asia, led him to study and model more than 300 venues worldwide and work directly with over a dozen across three continents.
He has also advised on properties across football, Formula 1, MotoGP, Formula E and basketball. ACG says he has served as an external adviser to a leading European football club since 2018.
That experience is relevant to the group’s central proposition: a stadium’s business model should be built into its planning and design, with clear uses for the days when no match is taking place.
The Bernabéu’s revenue gains come at a price
The redeveloped Bernabéu illustrates both the commercial potential of that approach and the scale of investment it can demand.
Its transformation has created opportunities to earn income from hospitality, visitor experiences, restaurants, retail and events alongside football.
Real Madrid’s latest financial statement, published in July 2026, put cumulative investment in the redevelopment at approximately €1.408 billion, up from €1.347 billion a year earlier.
The club reported stadium revenue of €363 million in the 2025/26 financial year, compared with €175 million in 2018/19, the last season before construction began. That represents growth of 107%, although revenue alone does not establish the project’s overall return on investment.
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The financing also extends beyond conventional borrowing. Under an agreement announced in 2022 with investment firm Sixth Street and venue experiences company Legends, Real Madrid was to receive approximately €360 million.
Sixth Street acquired rights to participate in certain new stadium businesses for 20 years, while Legends brought expertise in operating stadiums, attractions and event spaces.
For African developers, the lesson is as much about financing and operating discipline as architectural ambition. A venue needs credible demand, manageable costs and a business model suited to its market.
ACG looks beyond standalone stadiums
ACG’s proposed model extends that thinking to entire districts.
The group wants to bring sport, entertainment, hospitality, retail and community activities into developments that remain active throughout the year. It aims to structure projects that governments, development finance institutions and private investors can assess and finance.
Founder and executive chairman Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard said Carrión’s appointment would strengthen the group’s technical, commercial and design capabilities.
“Carlos Carrión brings to our Advisory Board a genuinely rare capability: the current, hands-on expertise of building the world’s most advanced sports venue ecosystem. The Santiago Bernabéu redevelopment is the reference project for what a 21st-century venue and its business model can be, and the doctrine that shaped it, mixed-use, data-driven, revenue-diversified, designed for match and non-match days alike, is exactly the doctrine ACG is applying at district scale across the African continent,” he said.
ACG cites a projection that Africa’s sports economy could reach $20 billion by 2035. It argues that integrated infrastructure is needed to help turn that potential into investable projects.
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Its approach brings together governments, public-private partnership authorities, regulators, financiers, developers and venue operators, alongside sports bodies, broadcasters, academic institutions and host communities.
The intention is to carry projects from initial concept through feasibility studies, financing and delivery.
Sports leaders join the advisory board
Carrión joins a board that includes former FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura, former FIFA chief member associations officer Kenny Jean-Marie, former NBA Africa and Basketball Africa League executive Aïcha Diop, and Rugby Africa president Herbert Mensah.
ACG describes the board’s role as providing strategic guidance and testing the assumptions behind proposed developments, rather than managing daily operations.
Pompigne-Mognard, a Franco-Gabonese entrepreneur, also founded APO Group, the communications consultancy and press release distributor that circulates ACG’s announcements.
The advisory appointments give the organisation access to experience across sports governance, commercial partnerships and infrastructure. The next test is translating that expertise into projects with workable financing and clear local demand.
African projects will need local business models
The appointment announcement did not identify specific district projects, host cities or financing partners.
Those details will be critical. African markets differ widely in purchasing power, transport infrastructure, land availability and access to long-term capital. Real Madrid’s global audience and commercial reach also give the Bernabéu advantages that cannot simply be reproduced elsewhere.
Any African version will therefore need its own evidence of demand, realistic revenue forecasts and a clear account of how surrounding communities will benefit.
Carrión’s appointment signals the direction ACG wants to take: sports venues that anchor places where people can work, shop, gather and spend money throughout the year.
Whether that ambition succeeds will depend on what happens beyond the advisory board, when the plans reach investors, governments and the communities expected to host them.
