2023-07-28 08:00:08
BarcelonaBarça is very close to announcing an agreement that will allow it to register the players it had pending in the League and thus be able to face the pre-season and the summer transfer market with more peace of mind. The footballers favored by this move will be the renewed Ronald Araujo, Gavi, Marcos Alonso, Sergi Roberto, Iñaki Peña and Alejandro Balde (the latter will now have a first team card) and the three new signings: Íñigo Martínez, Gündogan and Oriol Romeu. In addition, the operation could help the club to make more additions before the market closes.
The club presided over by Joan Laporta will make use of a new lever after selling last summer 25% of its television rights for the next 25 years to Sixth Street and 49% of Barça Studios for the same period of time to Socios. com and Orpheus Media, a company managed by businessman Jaume Roures. Then, these moves made it possible to bring in players like Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha or Jules Koundé.
Precisely, now Barça has reached an agreement with Socios.com and Orpheus Media to buy back and resell 16% (8% of each company) of this 49% (the maximum that the assembly gave permission), which it will mean about 60 million euros paid in immediately from a German investment fund, as he advanced The confidential. A year ago, the agreement with these two companies resulted in a total of 200 million for Barça’s accounts, reflected as financial income. But some media have recently reported that the payments to the Blaugrana entity by these two companies would have been delayed and this would have created problems for the club chaired by Laporta when registering players, because the League would have withheld registrations due to not being able to ensure compliance with the viability plan.
Dodge the change in the League’s regulations
In any case, both one company and the other have assured that this is not the case. “We are following the payment schedule that has been agreed with Barça,” Socios.com sources explain to ARA. For its part, Orpheus Media recently issued a statement in which it said that “the company is aware of its obligations with Barça and, therefore, has not breached any of the commitments acquired with the purchase of a stake in Barça Studios”.
On the other hand, the agreement with the German fund will avoid the change in regulations that the League carried out during the past year to limit the levers for signing. Since this is a new line of business that the club has created (dedicated to the multiverse, web 3 and NFTs), Barça will be able to use 100% of the income in whatever way it sees fit. On the other hand, if it had been a traditional asset, only 5% could have been used to renew or sign players.
A bad business
However, experts in the economy of the Barça club, such as financier Marc Ciria, believe that the operation is not as beneficial for Barça as it may seem at first glance. The executive president of Diagonal Asset Management said in a Twitter thread that with this maneuver “the club loses 8% of the initial valuation” of Barça Studios and that the German fund pays “the 60 million euros they had to pay current partners (Socios.com and Orpheus Media) to be able to register, but with a lower rating.” Thus, Ciria concludes that “it is bad business for Barça that allows registration and nothing else”.
In the absence of knowing the official figures of the operation, the loss of the initial valuation of Barça Studios would be around 8%. This percentage comes from a rule of three: if the initial sale of 49% of Barça Studios was 200 million euros, this means that 100% of Barça Studios was valued at 408 million last year. Therefore, the value of the 16% that will now be resold should be 65 million euros. But the information ofThe confidential assures that the resale will be done for about 60 million. If this is confirmed, the valuation of 100% of Barça Studios would now be 375 million and the club would lose 5 million in the 2023-2024 financial year due to the difference between the repurchase made for 65 million and the resale made for 60.
The maneuver was first discussed with Barça TV
Barça has been considering the possibility of using Barça Studios again as a lever for some time. In fact, as the ARA published in February, this movement of percentages had previously been studied to do it with the entry of Barça TV into this asset. Thus, the continuity of the club’s television (which finally stopped broadcasting on June 30 with 94 workers dismissed) and the obtaining of new income could have been ensured despite the new regulations of the League. Laporta himself, in an interview at the beginning of January with SER Catalunya, gave the example of the sale of “Barça TV content” as a possible lever.
The maneuver, in principle, would have increased the total value of Barça Studios and, therefore, the 49% that Orpheus Media and Socios.com had added until now would have decreased compared to the total. Since Laporta’s board has the permission of the partners to sell up to 49%, Barça TV’s entry into the audiovisual tailor’s drawer would have allowed the sale of an extra percentage to a third party. In addition, the absorption of the club’s television, the League would probably have considered it a new way of business because it entailed losses. That is to say, that Barça could have used 100% of the income to renew and sign players, if it had wanted to. But, in the end, this operation was discarded and Laporta decided to close down Barcelona television once the contract with Telefónica ended.
BLM, discarded with the sable
The initial intention of Laporta’s board was to use Barcelona Licensing & Merchandising (BLM), the Barcelona merchandising agency, as leverage this summer. The economic vice-president Eduard Romeu even expressed it publicly in a press conference. But the change in the regulations of the League overturned the plans. Since BLM is considered an ordinary income of Barça, the board chaired by Joan Laporta could only have used 5% of the total income to renew or sign players.
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