BarcelonaThe Kings League will be played with an audience in the stands at the Camp Nou next Sunday, March 26, coinciding with the stoppage of men’s professional football teams. It was announced by its creator, Gerard Piqué, and Barça’s executive president, Joan Laporta, on January 20 via Twitch. “It is important that we adapt to the new formats that young people demand to be entertained”, justified the Barça manager, who usually has a similar speech when he talks about the need to create the European Super League.
Under the agreement, the Camp Nou makes its more than 90,000 seats available for fans of the Kings League teams to follow on site the resolution of the first edition of this amateur football 7 tournament with breaking rules. The seats, which are distributed through the official Barça channel, are priced between 10 and 60 euros, and more than half have already been sold. On the other hand, the dimensions of the playing field, specific to 11-a-side football, will have to be reduced.
In his foray into Twitch, Laporta was full of praise for Piqué: “One of the nicest things is being able to have been his president this time.” However, he did not detail what benefits Barça would receive from ceding the Camp Nou to the Kings League. Nor did the club, hours after the announcement, know what impact it would have on the economy of the institution just a few months before the first men’s team left for Montjuïc for the works on Espai Barça. It should also be borne in mind that on the last weekend of March there is a Liga F classic which, by logical coincidence with the final four of the Kings League, will not be played at Aristides Maillol, but at the Johan Cruyff stadium.
Therefore, it is normal to wonder to what extent it is in the interest of the Barcelona leadership to park the bet on women’s football in order to be linked to the new project of Piqué, who closed the collaboration with Laporta in a meeting in an establishment in the upper part of Barcelona that the former player himself had advanced days before.
At the time of the announcement by streaming, Piqué was still listed in the official records of the League as a footballer of the first team of Barça. Although he announced his withdrawal at the beginning of November, he had not formalized the termination of the millionaire contract until June of the following year. There were only verbal intentions to waive emoluments coinciding with the months of commitment without the Barcelona player dressed in shorts – from November 2023 to June 2024 -, a gesture that in the current season only meant 5 million for the purposes of fair play finance.
But the procedure was finally consolidated on January 25, five days after Laporta appeared in the Chup Chup — program on Twitch about the Kings League — to proclaim that he would open the doors of the Camp Nou in the final of the tournament. They have not exceeded the figures for the termination or the rental of the stadium. Confidentiality agreements, in the private sphere, hold everything.
Thus, in the absence of explanations and concrete amounts in a framework of excessive salary mass and decreased income at Barça, the ARA took advantage of last Thursday’s appearance to ask the president if there was any relationship between the liquidation of the contract de Piqué and the agreement for the Kings League to be played at Camp Nou. “We have a good personal relationship with Gerard, who is also a part of the shield. The idea is good for both parties. In addition to bearing the costs of the stadium [200.000 euros]we will share the revenue of ticketing and sponsorships. But there is no connection between the termination of Gerard’s contract and the decision we have made about the Kings League,” Laporta said publicly.
In private, the leader has conveyed the same idea to his entourage, exasperated after this newspaper and other media reported in the summer that Piqué proposed to him to keep a part of Barça Studios in the midst of salary negotiations, when he was still a of the captains The publication of the news, the content of which had a similar precedent in the Bartomeu era, angered the ex-central player and his representative so much that the club had to deny it through a statement.
90 million between Griezmann and Piqué
As Mateu Alemany reported in Thursday’s press conference, Barça will save 90 million euros from the salaries of Piqué and Griezmann corresponding to the 2023-24 season. In the case of the Barcelona native, based on the figures published by the newspaper The world in September last year, he had to collect 40.80 million during the financial year between salary and deferrals of past years. So, according to this official version, the president of the Kings League would be giving up a good part of his contract next year, but not necessarily the postponements of previous seasons, as evidenced by the fact that his retirement in the middle of the year it has only accounted for 5 million positive in the calculation of the fair play of the League.
Even if the box office insists on disassociating the resolution of this contractual puzzle from the rental of the Camp Nou for the Kings League, the facts show that Barça is satisfied with Piqué and has made it easy for the new competition to have its great day in the stadium with the largest capacity in Europe. The club coordinates the sale of tickets and will undertake the opening of doors (supplies and personnel) in exchange for a percentage slightly higher than 50% of the box office and a portion of the income from sponsorship. “For sure it’s a good agreement. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t compensate us to open the Camp Nou”, resolve from Barça’s offices. “We cannot give details about a private pact between companies,” added Kosmos, the organizing company of the Kings League.