2023-08-11 13:12:11
FC Barcelona makes the leap to Wall Street. It will do so through its digital business Barca Media, which has just signed an agreement with Mountain & Co I Acquisition Corp to carry out the operation through a joint venture that would be valued at about 1,000 million dollars (about 910 million euro).
Specifically, Mountain & Co is a ‘Spac’ (special purpose acquisition company) of the specialized venture capital manager Mountain Partners. The ‘Spac’ are companies or companies without assets that issue their shares in the market to obtain financing and undertake a future purchase or merger of a company, with the aim of making it (in this case Barça Media) go public. .
As the newspaper ‘Expansión’ announced on July 7, the agreement reached between the parties means that the current shareholders of Barca Media (a company controlled by FC Barcelona) retain an 80% stake in the company after the final closure of the agreement, which is expected by the end of 2023 and which has yet to obtain the approval of the shareholders and partners of the two companies.
Barça Media operates the football club’s online video business and includes the property rights of the FC Barcelona brand in digital media and in e-Sports, a booming business that the club intends to turn into one of its biggest sources of income.
For now, the movement makes Barça the first major team in the Spanish League to approach the stock markets, where since October 2021 the Alicante club Intercity has already been listed, as the only one in the sector in the country, through the BME market. Growth for expanding companies.
The Spanish case is, in fact, completely anomalous compared to other European markets, where large teams have opted to go public in search of financing in difficult times for the sector. The first to do so was Tottenham Hotspur in the early eighties. And then came others like Galatasaray, Benfica, Juventus, Manchester United, Lazio or Ajax, among many others.
#Barça #leap #Wall #Street #digital #content #business