2023-10-14 17:07:03
Start-ups are a melon that very few always get right. The purchases and some turn out well, others average and others bad. And to this day no one can say what will be Barça Media, after a year in which it seems that the project has gone through all three scenarios. The risk is high, for those who have already put in some money, but also for a FC Barcelona that has done an accounting ‘all-in’ with this operation to balance the accounts for 2022-2023 and try to improve the 2023-2024 photo.
Part by part. Joan Laporta’s board reached an initial agreement with Orpheus Media and Socios.com, by which each party bought 24.5% in exchange for 100 million euros. Of that amount, the club collected 20 million in total last year, another 20 million this summer and the other 160 million it is trying to guarantee its income with an agreement with multiple bands and new investors: on the one hand, the Libero fund, which failed to fulfill its commitment to pay 40 million before August 28 and has achieved a delay to do so before the end of the year; on the other, an investor based in Cyprus who, to those 20 million paid in August, will add 60 million between 2024 and 2025, as will Socios.com with the 50 million that would now remain to be paid.
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Whether paid or not, Joan Laporta’s board used the signed contracts to give themselves that income of 200 million euros in 2022-2023. And, in a risky move, but within what the accounting standard allows, another income of 208 million has been given for the valuation of the 51% that it retains of its audiovisual digital arm. And this is where the problems can come. If there is a reasonable doubt about whether the 160 million will be paid given what is happening, we must keep in mind that those 208 million are not money that will enter the club’s bank accounts. It is a purely accounting arrangement which adds as much as it can subtract if the Barça Media operation does not go ahead. And the collapse of the NFT market and the saturation of the supply of audiovisual content does not help.
Any renegotiation or non-payment with investors can lead to a new downward valuation, and that will require Laporta – or subsequent presidents – to write down as a loss what one day saved the accounts. Hence, getting Barça Media is no longer a reputational necessity after all the media noise and efforts made, but also an economic one. Any downward modification will require an extraordinary expense that the club’s accounts today cannot support, already stressed with “demanding” – optimistic – income forecasts and a reduction in spending that always remains below the objective.
Business friendships in Spanish sport
There is a cast of Spanish athletes who in the last two decades have earned a place in the history of national sports. A golden generation that now, when its career is not on the slopes, is finding its own spaces to continue leaving its mark in this industry. Furthermore, on many occasions by joining forces, as we have seen in recent days in the cases of Pau Gasol and Iker Casillas, two ambassadors who have been betting heavily on the development of the ‘sportstech’ ecosystem.
The bet is serious, since the two athletes and Telefónica’s innovation program have committed up to one million euros to accelerate innovative companies with attractive projects in the fields of sports, health and well-being. And they do it consistently, as both have their own investment vehicles to invest and accelerate these companies. And, most importantly, with two solvent teams behind to execute.
And, if we demanded of them in their prime sports that they be an example for future generations, I think it is important that this type of ‘off the pitch’ races be made visible so that the role of the athlete in the development of the sector is even more relevant in the world. which can be today.
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