IREN Adds Real Madrid Sponsorship After Spanish Data Center Expansion
IREN has become an official sponsor of Real Madrid, adding another sports partnership months after the AI cloud provider entered Spain through an acquisition that brought approximately 490 megawatts of secured power.
The football club announced the agreement on Oct. 18. Its brief statement did not disclose the sponsorship’s value, duration or specific commercial rights.
The deal follows IREN’s acquisition of Spanish data-center developer Nostrum Group, completed June 15. That transaction added about 490 MW of secured, grid-connected power, an additional development pipeline and more than 50 employees across development, engineering, construction and operations.
IREN’s subsequent annual filing identified an approximately 300 MW site in Badajoz, in Spain’s Extremadura region, among the assets acquired. At the acquisition’s completion, Co-Chief Executive Officer Daniel Roberts cited Spain’s renewable energy resources and fiber connectivity as attractions for the company’s European expansion.
Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, also serves as executive chairman of ACS, the Spanish infrastructure group with a substantial data-center construction business. Juan Santamaría is ACS’s chief executive officer.
ACS outlined a target in November 2025 of €20 billion to €25 billion in revenue from data center engineering, procurement and construction management by 2030. At the time, it reported more than 9 gigawatts of installed IT capacity across projects in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The group is also expanding into developing and owning data-center assets, including through a partnership with Global Infrastructure Partners, part of BlackRock.
Pérez’s overlapping roles provide an industry connection, but the sponsorship announcement contains no reference to ACS or a construction agreement.
The agreement extends IREN’s use of sports sponsorships. In June, the company announced a multiyear partnership with Golden State that includes its badge on Warriors jerseys beginning with the 2026–27 season, alongside branding across other teams and Chase Center.
The marketing expansion accompanies a broader shift toward AI computing. IREN said in its annual filing that it aims to substantially complete the transition of its remaining bitcoin mining data center capacity to AI cloud services by the end of 2026.
