The Israeli philanthropist Atletico Madrid shareholder who did not like football and now celebrates twice

If in the shirt of the new champion of the Spanish league, the Atlético de Madrid, the advertising of the Israeli platform appears “Plus 500”, the club further strengthened the bond with this country with the arrival in 2017 of the billionaire Idán Ofer, who ended up being the third shareholder and although he confesses that before football was indifferent to him, now he is immersed in his world and believes that there is the business of the future.

Ofer, born in Haifa in 1955, is businessman and philanthropist based in London and one of the greatest fortunes of his country, and in 2018 he kept 32 percent of Atlético de Madrid shares by acquiring in 2018 the 17 percent that belonged to the Chinese company “Wanda” (which gave its name to the new Metropolitan Stadium), and already owned 15 percent since 2017 through his company Quantum Pacific, so it becomes the third shareholder of the club behind the president Enrique Cerezo and of Manuel Gil Marin – son of the late former president Jesus Gil and Gil-, which together make up the remaining 65 percent.

Ofer also owns 51 percent of the production company “Reshet”, which works with Channel 2 in Israel and seeks to give Atlético Madrid a greater projection, as he stated on the day he announced the purchase of shares in the club. “The consequences of this will be the expansion of the brand and that will bring benefits, such as being able to maintain the level of competitiveness and hire world stars.”

After thoroughly studying the football market, Ofer predicted that one of the keys is the business of selling television rights “Because it will change a lot in the coming years because by globalizing, the value will multiply by ten”, as stated on his first visit to the Wanda Metropolitano stadium.

“Atlético de Madrid is special,” he said at the time, “because nobody can buy shares of Real Madrid or Barcelona because they are clubs that belong to their fans. here I can develop business activity”.

Ofer, who is estimated by Forbes magazine to have a fortune close to 4000 million dollars, approached football when he decided to emigrate to England and became linked to the phenomenon of Premier League, because when he took his first steps in his new environment he admitted that “I was not very passionate about this sport, but I do see great business potential in it”.

His first recognized activity in football was when he acquired a replica of the Golden Balls of Cristiano Ronaldo for 600,000 euros at a charity auction.

Later came the purchase of part of the Atlético de Madrid share package, and added that of the Famalicao, a village club of 5000 inhabitants in Portugal, in partnership with the most powerful representative of the world’s footballers, the Portuguese Jorge Mendes, owner of the agency “Gestifute”, investigated by the Justice of his country for tax fraud in countries such as those of Iker Casillas O Danilo, and that he became a virtual sports director of the small club, although he does not appear officially.

The agent managed to get players to Famalicao as free or loaned by other clubs that did not take them into account, or promises that needed filming to gain experience, and all from entities in which Mendes has weight, the so-called clubs of the “Mendes team” (Atlético Madrid, Valencia, Benfica, Porto, Sporting Braga, West Ham or Wolverhampton), with short contracts and the idea of ​​revaluing them and then relocating them on the market.

The campus, which previously it was priced at 5 million euros and at the bottom of the second division table in 2018, it was worth 45 million euros just a year and a half later, and was already one of the cheerleaders of the first division league, in which he finished ninth in 2020/21.

The relationship between Mendes and Ofer was fundamental, for example, for the arrival of the young Portuguese star Joao Felix to Atlético Madrid for 126 million euros, which for the agent meant a commission of 36 million.

In 2021 the Brazilian arrived at Famalicao Lucas Henrique (Figueirense) and Portuguese Pepé (midfielder from the Benfica quarry that passed through the Olympiakos), the Ecuadorian Leonardo Campana (figure of the U-20 team that was third in the 2019 World Cup in Poland), Ruben Vinegar (from Wolverhampton), and the young Argentine central midfielder Joaquin Pereyra, of the inferiors of Rosario Central.

With the arrival of Ofer, Atlético de Madrid strengthened its bond with Israel (which already existed with the company “Plus 500” as a sponsor). The Mattresses they came to travel to play against him Beitar Jerusaalén at the Teddy Kollek stadium with all its stars as part of the last tributes to Yossi Benayun –ex Chelsea Y Liverpool-, who had announced his retirement from football.

Also Atlético de Madrid opened a soccer academy in Israel, when reaching an agreement with Hapoel Beer Sheva, with the idea of ​​supporting young people from the technical point of view and reinforcing the structure of their lower categories by implementing the work methodology of the rojiblanco club in the Spanish capital, as agreed by Ofer and Gil Marín, for the “colchoneros” and Alona Barkat, representative of the local entity.

“The main objective is to be open to all kinds of religions, cultures and that, in some way, we can integrate all people in a common project that is based on the values ​​of sport ”, Gil Marín said at the time.

These statements were not accidental. Ofer is a figure in Israel for the continuous donations of his family to museums, universities, hospitals and public welfare entities and for his peace initiatives between Israel and the Arab world and of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians in the various spheres of society.

Ofer usually supports the economy as a bridge for dialogue with Arab neighbors. In his meeting in 2011 with the president of the Palestinian National Authority Abu Mazen, on the Mukata of the city of Ramallah, Ofer claimed the alliance between companies of the two peoples and, for example, financed the visit to Israel of dozens of young Palestinians. “They had never been to Israel and in the end they told me that they saw another side of my country that it did not correspond to what they imagined from the stories they always heard ”, he commented.

In 2013 he established the scholarship fund “Sammy Ofer” for the John F. Kennedy School of Government on the Harvard University for emerging leaders of Israel Y Palestine.

Sammy Ofer, his late father, was always related to the world of maritime trade, either for merchandise or for the construction of boats. Had emigrated since Romania in 1922 and just two years old and grew up in the port of Haifa from Palestine Under British administration, he enlisted in the Royal Navy and after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 bought a cargo ship. At his death in 2011, his two sons inherited the largest fortune in the country, some 6 billion dollars.

Idan was educated by his father in business and investment. He studied at the main universities (Haifa, the London Bussines School, of which he is today one of his main advisers and donors, and Hong Kong, where he expanded his family’s oil businesses).

When donated $ 28 million -The highest figure in history- to the London Bussines School, He noted that he wanted the business school to continue to grow so that it could house future generations of leaders. His own foundation aims to ensure that “future Israeli entrepreneurs have the necessary tools to meet the challenges of globalization.”

Following in the footsteps of his father Sammy – a celebrity in Haifa, where the football stadium is named after him – Idan launched himself into the business world together with his brother Eyal with the 2007 purchase of the 55 percent of the shares of the state company “Israel Corporation”, when it was decided to privatize it, and it managed to expand to Asia, Europe and South America with items such as energy, technology and shipping.

While Eyal was directing from Monaco The family’s shipping interests, such as the Royal Caribbean pleasure cruise company, Idan made its way to Hong Kong, where he founded the Tanker Pacific, one of the leading marine tank companies. Both are listed on the stock exchanges London, New York, Singapore O Tel Aviv.

In the same 2007 that he bought the stock package of “Israel Corporation” lost $ 500 million by participating in “Better Place”, an electronic car business, although a little earlier he had founded “Pacific Drilling”, an ultra-deepwater drilling company, where he succeeded.

Ofer is the director of the macrogroup “Quantum Pacific” , which includes items such as transportation, energy, natural resources, medical and automotive technology).

He was married 4 times, now with Batia Ofer, philanthropist and member of the auction house advisory board Sotheby’s. He has five children, and to pass out his father’s modern art works (which included Picasso, Van Gogh, Dalí and Degas), had each one take out a piece of paper with the name of each work to raffle them from a bag. “We did it in a friendly way”, told the economic magazine “The Market”.

The newspaper “Financial Times” presents it as “A great and modest figure, small in stature and with a slight bear-like appearance” and reveals that “those who appreciate this reserved investor describe him as a Renaissance man with very different tastes ”, and that he usually wears a youthful outfit despite his age and social status, since he wears jeans and almost never ties.

KEEP READING: