Barça will lift the second lever this week, essential not only to be able to sign but also to be able to register. The azulgrana club, strangled by the economic management of Josep Maria Bartomeu, had to rush until the last moment to be able to register their signings last summer. This year’s ‘sudoku’ is considered difficult but he trusts that with some way out, together with a third lever, he can have the federative ‘ok’ to all his reinforcements.
The club made it known last Thursday that the departure of Frenkie De Jong It is key to be able to register Kessie, Sergi Roberto and Christensen. His departure would release 42 million wages. In order to register Raphinha and the ‘resigned’ Dembélé, Barça calculated that it would need to release an additional 25 and 30 million euros in the form of cuts in chips or more departures, in addition to activating the second economic lever.
To that should now be added Lewandowski’s file and that of the defenders that Xavi wants to incorporate (Koundé, Azpilicueta and Marcos Alonso).
Barça announced on June 30 an agreement with Sixth Street, an American investment fund based in San Francisco, which injects 207.5 million euros for the sale of 10% of the television rights of the League for the next 25 years. LaLiga’s proposal with CVC implied the transfer of the same percentage for more money, 270 million, but for twice the time, 50 years.
This week the board hopes to repeat the Sixth Street formula, selling 15% more for around 320 million, as this newspaper advanced, which would allow them to re-sign freely without the corsets established by LaLiga: in this way, Barça would leave the scheme behind from the 1×4 that he suffered last summer (he could only invest one euro for every four he saved) to go to 1×1, which would make the registrations of Lewandowski and company much more affordable.
Unique with salary limit
It should be remembered that the latest LaLiga report placed Barça as the only team with a negative salary margin (-144 million). The exit operation is currently stopped: the five discarded (Riqui Puig, Mingueza, Briaithwaite, Umtiti and Neto) still have not found a destination and the only ones for whom cash could be made would be the Dutch De Jong and Memphis Depay. It should be remembered that a unilateral dismissal would not release the wage bill, as recalled Mateu Alemany during the presentation of Raphinha.
Against this background, the club plans to activate a third lever, 49% of Barça Studios, which would be key to obtaining some 200 million. The club has considered more options to obtain additional income with which to sign players and further improve its financial situation. One of them would be the sale of 15% of the entity’s museum, one of the most visited in the city, for seven years for an amount that could reach 230 million euros.
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This facility provided in 2019, the year before the pandemic and the last year for which there is data, some 42 million revenues. In any case, it is a possibility “kept in the drawer” and on which no final decision has been made. What Laporta has ruled out for the moment is to activate the sale of BLM, which operates the ‘merchandising’ of the entity. LaLiga, which is attentive to Barça’s movements, will present the salary limits on July 31, despite the fact that they are not a fixed photo but are dynamically modulated based on the clubs’ movements.
Last year, the day before the first league game against Real Sociedad, Barça was able to sign up Memphis Depay, Eric Garcia and Rey Manaj thanks to the fact that Piqué lowered his salary “significantly”. Omen he could only be registered in LaLiga on the day of the end of the summer market thanks to the salary cuts of Busquets and Alba. In January, it was the restructuring of Umtiti’s salary that made it possible to make room for Ferran Torres to play two days later in the Super Cup. It will be necessary to see if the club rushes until August 13, the day of the league debut at home against Rayo Vallecano.