A planned US$1 billion Real Madrid-branded resort in the United Arab Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah has been halted and the project may be switched to Abu Dhabi, a senior executive at the master developer and the club said on Thursday.
The 50-hectare attraction was to have been built on the man-made Marjan Island in Ras al-Khaimah, 105km north of Dubai.
Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and former World Player of the Year Zinedine Zidane, now an assistant to coach Carlo Ancelotti, attended the glitzy project launch in March last year.
Drawings were displayed for a 450-room hotel, a marina and yacht club and a Real Madrid museum, plus an amusement park and a 10,000-capacity stadium.
At the time, Louis-Armand de Rouge, chief executive of Real Madrid Resort Island, a Luxembourg-based company, said the complex would open in January 2015.
However, building work never started and Rouge’s company did not buy the land on which the resort was meant to be built, Michael Hernandez, project director of Marjan Island, said on Thursday.
He said the project had been “put on hold” and that Marjan Island had no commitments relating to the resort.
In the UAE, developers often prefer to describe mothballed projects as postponed or “on hold” rather than officially scrapping them, even if years pass without any work being conducted on them.
A Real spokeswoman said media reports in Spain that the project had been scrapped were untrue and there was a possibility the resort would now be built in Abu Dhabi.
South Korean giants T1, led by “Faker,” won their fifth League of Legends (LoL) world championship crown in London on Saturday, beating China’s Bilibili Gaming (BLG) in a thrilling final. The teams were locked at 2-2 at a packed O2 arena, but T1 clinched game five to make it back-to-back titles after nearly four hours of tense action. China’s BLG started strongly, taking the first game before T1 struck back to level. The Chinese team pulled ahead again at 2-1 only for their opponents to hit back again and go on to take the decider. Faker, who won the Most
The Major League Baseball World Series trophy is headed to Los Angeles, but the party is extending all the way to Japan. People milled around local train stations yesterday morning in Tokyo as newspaper extras were ready to roll off the presses, proclaiming Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto as world champions along with their Dodgers teammates after a stirring Game 5 victory over the New York Yankees. The 30-year-old is a national hero in Japan whose face adorns billboards and TV adverts all over the country. Ohtani this year became the first player in history to hit 50 home runs and
Amber Glenn overcame a fall and her own doubts to win a maiden Grand Prix figure skating title on Saturday at the Grand Prix de France. The American skater had the lead from Friday’s short program. That and the support of the crowd got her through a tough free skate in which she fell on a triple flip and put a hand onto the ice to steady herself on two other jumps. “I didn’t feel that great out there today, but I really tried, and the audience really got me through that last half when I was doubting myself,” Glenn
WORLD SERIES: ‘The individuals that were involved in that last night was a very small segment of the east Los Angeles community,’ the Los Angeles county sheriff said Rowdy crowds took to the streets of Los Angeles after the LA Dodgers won the Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series, setting a city bus on fire, breaking into stores and lighting fireworks. A dozen arrests were reported by police on Thursday, but officials said that most fans celebrated peacefully. Video showed revelers throwing objects at police in downtown LA as sirens blared and officers told them to leave the area on Wednesday night after the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the MLB World Series at Giants Stadium in New York. Another video showed someone standing atop
RSS