RAFAEL DE LOS SANTOS is Real Madrid's new media director. The club's recently-launched "Hala Madrid" show is available on Facebook's new Watch platform. De los Santos explained to SBD Global how Real Madrid decided to air the program on Facebook, how the club chose actor ORLANDO BLOOM to narrate the series and the ways he believes "Hala Madrid" stands out from recent documentary-style series like Amazon's "All or Nothing." The first episode of "Hala Madrid" has been viewed more than 1.8 million times, while the second has drawn more than 1.1 million views.
On building Real Madrid's int'l fanbase ...
Rafael de los Santos: If you look at our numbers on Facebook, you see that out of all the nearly 106 million fans that we have as followers on Facebook, less than 3% of that fanbase is in Spain. The rest of the followers are in different countries. We tend to think that people know Real Madrid on a day-to-day basis, but the reality is that sometimes people don't know the story of the club and the heritage of the club as well as the people that are born and raised in Madrid. With this documentary, we produced it in a way that was bringing the team and bringing the heritage of the team to people that are really far away. That was one of the things that we said was going to be very interesting for the fanbase that we have in other countries.
On the benefits of the show airing on Facebook Watch ...
De los Santos: What we want to do is reach as many people as possible. We have almost 106 million fans around the world on Facebook, so this is a massive global audience. Therefore it is pretty obvious for us that we needed to do something on this platform. At the very beginning, when we began thinking about producing this content, we never thought about a traditional media outlet. We always thought about the audience that we have, and where we have that audience.
On what makes "Hala Madrid" different from similar recent series ...
De los Santos: If you look at what we did in the past, we have never been granted this level of behind-the-scenes access to our club. That in itself and the way we depicted that in the documentary is very, very special. I can tell you that it was very, very tough to get the crews to go inside the sports city, to be able to follow the team, to be able to speak with the guys. Specifically in the moments when we were training and playing to win the Champions League. ... It was very, very unique. Beyond that, the quality of the storytelling and the way we've been doing it is what really stands out in this documentary. The people that we worked with was something that was very good for us. We had Emmy-winning writers, directors, producers and editors working on this documentary. ... It is not only the story of the club, we also wanted to tell the story of the city, and the people, and the football, and the way it has been exposed in the country and the culture.
On having Bloom narrate the series ...
De los Santos: [The narration] was going to be done by someone that is very, very close to the club and is an international personality. ... But for the documentary itself and the way it's going to be delivered and to the public that it's going to be delivered to, we believed that Orlando was going to be just amazing. At the beginning, we thought, "Orlando might have some other good things to do." But then they spoke with Orlando and he was really pleased to have the possibility of making this for Real Madrid. For us, after watching the documentary, it's a perfect fit. I don't know how big of a fan he is, but from the way he sounds, it's like having a great Madridista talking for the team.
On the early reactions to "Hala Madrid" ...
De los Santos: We've seen that the reaction has been amazing. We see the comments and we see that people are very engaged. They're very pleased to have this access to this type of content. You can consume content about Real Madrid in many different places and on many different platforms, but the level of access and the way everything has been put together -- how carefully everything has been done, how picky we were with everything that we've been doing -- it's something that has been very well-received by the audience in general. This was kind of a first experience for us, but I can assure that you it won't be the last one, because there are so many interesting things about Real Madrid that we can bring to the fans of Real Madrid.
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