BLM, the lever that Laporta doesn’t want to touch

BarcelonaWhen, during the term of Josep Maria Bartomeu, the Barça Corporate was conceived, the jewel in the crown of this set of assets of the Barça entity was very clear: Barça Licensing & Merchandising (BLM), the shops and the retail of the club. In the background are Barça Studios (the audiovisual production company), the Barça Innovation Hub (the scientific research space) and the Barça Academies (Barça football schools around the world). BLM will close this fiscal year 2021-2022, the first with a certain return to normalcy after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with 56 million revenue. And the forecast of the Catalan entity, which has just opened its seventh store in the Sagrada Família, is that the figure will almost double in the 2022-2023 academic year.

Barça believes that BLM, which is currently set up as an independent company, still has a long way to go, especially in the international market. Right now 75% of the business is focused on the local market. This potential for growth aroused the interest of several companies once it became known that Barça intended to sell up to 49%. On June 16, the Assembly of Compromisers gave permission to the board of Joan Laporta to carry out this sale. In fact, weeks before this vote, everything seemed to indicate that BLM would be the lever that Barça would close before June 30 in order to end the year with profits.

As he explained at the time 2 Playbook, there were very advanced negotiations with the companies Fanatics and Investindustrial. But it all came down to wet paper, and finally Laporta saved the furniture by selling for 25 years on Sixth Street 10% of LaLiga’s television rights. Since then, the intentions of the Barça leadership have changed a lot. Club sources have told ARA that Barça rule out selling up to 49% of BLM for at least next year, as long as it can be afforded.

The head of this decision is Josep Maria Meseguer, the director of BLM since last April, who has the support of Laporta. One factor that Barça takes into account is that the value when selling an asset like this is calculated taking into account the last years, which have been conditioned by the pandemic. Therefore, he predicts that the sharp increase in business, which, if there is no downturn, there will be during the 2022-2023 academic year, will allow a much better agreement to be drawn up for Barça’s economic coffers in the future.

De Jong or Barça Studios in exchange for signings

Thus, right now the efforts of the Laporta board, with economic vice president Eduard Romeu working from Barcelona while the first men’s team is touring the United States, are mainly focused on selling 15% more of LaLiga’s television rights. This operation would allow the club to stop having a negative net worth, but to register players who have already been signed (Lewandowski, Raphinha, Kessie and Christensen) and those who intend to join during the rest of the summer would still need a another important effort.

Discarding the sale of up to 49% of BLM, there are only two options. The first is to transfer a key player from a sporting point of view like Frenkie de Jong, who apparently has no intention of leaving the Barça ship this summer. In fact, last morning he played the entire second half in the first game of the United States tour, which ended in Barça’s 0-6 victory over Inter Miami. The second option, which was advanced by Mundo Deportivo on Monday and confirmed by ARA, is the sale of up to 49% of Barça Studios, for which Laporta also has the approval of the assembly. In the budget of the course that has just closed, 50 million euros of revenue were foreseen for this operation, which was finally not achieved in that period. The idea is to include in the agreement the exploitation of assets such as NFTs (collectible digital files) and tokens (digital currencies).