The six-year contract had been due to run to 2003 before this move to regain control over its broadcasting and commercial rights.
The club has already sold merchandising rights to the Adidas sportswear group in a 10-year deal worth $10m annually. Some television rights back under Real's control have also been sold, said Paco Zaragoza, a Madrid-based capital markets vice-president at Merrill Lynch, the US investment bank.
The rights repurchase is being financed partially by a Pta7.5bn loan from Merrill, which is now syndicating the facility to a wider group of borrowers, using the internet for that purpose for the first time in Europe.
About 20 UK institutional investors will be given a password to access the presentation given by Madrid on the Internet.
Merrill believes the internet could change the economics of investment road-shows, which are often limited by time and expense to a few venues such as London, Frankfurt, Zurich and Paris, bypassing smaller financial centres.
"This takes away the disadvantage for these investors and enables us to give them full access to this information," says Ryan Fayed, a Merrill vice-president for marketing and product development.
On-line meetings have been growing in popularity, either in a real-time text version, using technology such as Acuity's ichat, which Merrill already uses for its regular net events, or in video format, using software products such as Microsoft NetMeeting or Netscape's Conference.
Use of the internet is likely to be of increasing importance both to leading football clubs and financial institutions, as improved technology allows wider use of both video-conferencing - offering attractive business travel savings - and either live or delayed match broadcasts.
British clubs including Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Leeds have all been exploring the potential of internet broadcasting.
Real's 7 1/2 - year loan carries an interest rate of 115 basis points (1.15 percentage points) over three-month peseta Libor. It is guaranteed by the Adidas con-tract, although borrowers will have recourse to the club, which is owned by its members.
Reuters
The Spanish football club Real Madrid, which won the European Champions Cup last month for the first time in 32 years, has bought back part of the Canal Plus empire in Spain for Pta12bn ($80m) from Gesport.
