trip to the antipodes to plug the economic hole

BarcelonaThe elimination of Barça in the Europa League, relativized from a sporting point of view, is another hard economic blow for the Blaugrana entity. Joan Laporta’s board budgeted 20.2 million euros of earnings in Europe anticipating that Xavi Hernández’s team would reach, at least, the quarter-finals of the Champions League. Thus, once eliminated from this competition in the group stage, the hope was to advance as many rounds as possible in the Europa League. Conquering it would have meant a prize of 14.4 million euros. But after the defeat at Old Trafford against Manchester United, Barça will be far from these figures and will have to settle for 6.5 million for their two victories against Viktoria Pilsen and the draw with Inter from Milan In other words, the Barcelona club will enter 13.7 million less than budgeted.

“And being eliminated does not only involve this loss of income on the part of UEFA. You also stop entering for three more matches: the sale of tickets, the loss of sponsors’ bonuses and the loss of merchandising sales on match days and the days after,” a source close to Laporta explains to ARA.

Bearing this in mind, Barça is looking for solutions to reverse the situation, and the two most feasible ways of income are the holding of matches in distant territories and the search for new sponsors. In this sense, this newspaper has learned that Barça has received several offers to play friendlies before the 2022-2023 financial year closes on June 30.

The most interesting one, because it is the most abundant financially, is a proposal from Australia to play there once the current season ends. In other words, last year’s operation would be repeated. On May 25, 2022, Barça played a friendly in Sydney for which they took home around 5 million euros. And it is not ruled out that some other friendlies can be played before the end of the course, taking into account that, except for the semi-final tie of the Copa del Rey, Barça will now have free dates during the week.

Tour the United States

Then there will be a summer in which the players can have a relaxed holiday because there will be no World Cup, no European Cup, no America’s Cup, no Olympic Games. And, when they return, they will have to face a pre-season for which the club, according to this newspaper, is already well advanced in negotiations to go on a tour of the United States again like the pre-season of the current year.

In 2022 it was played in Miami, Las Vegas, Dallas and New York. The forecast for the summer of 2023 is to repeat New York and visit a Californian city. The other two stops have yet to be finalized. Beyond Barça, who is insisting a lot for this North American tour to be a reality is the company Socios.com, which owns 24.5% of Barça Studios after investing 100 million. It was one of the levers that allowed him to deal with signings in the past summer market.

The danger of small sponsors

Meanwhile, Barça is working on another route, the commercial one, which the club announced months ago would surpass the historic figure of 200 million in revenue this year. The problem is that, in March, the board and the commercial department led by Sergi Ricart have still not managed to close the main asset that remains free, the left sleeve of the men’s first team playing shirt. Once the offers from the world of cryptocurrencies have been ruled out, the Barcelona club has not yet reached an agreement with any leading company that satisfies its financial aspirations: between 15 and 20 million euros.

The alternative is to close regional sponsorships with companies of less entity to add up income of between 300,000 and 2 million per year. Some of the latest deals have been with TV channel Afizzionados, trading card brand Daka, travel membership club Travel + Leisure GO and gluten-free food brand ZENB. This search for sponsors is being done mainly through external agencies that act as intermediaries between the club and the company.

“The strategy of adding small sponsors causes your brand to lose value”, a source close to Barça’s commercial department explains to this newspaper. “These agreements allow sponsoring companies to basically use your shield. But what assets do you offer them if they’re all almost taken? – he asks himself. In addition, you as a club must have a relationship with these sponsors and travel to talk to their managers in person. If you have so many you can’t do it as it should and then the sponsors feel annoyed”, he adds.

On the other hand, this search for sponsors has been complicated by the outbreak of the Negreira case. “This means that the sponsors take you more in the negotiations and that some who are between yes and no finally opt for no”. In any case, he considers that the situation is not yet so serious “as for any sponsor with whom the club already has a contract to leave”. Instead, Danone North America terminated the regional sponsorship it had with Barça in the United States in 2021 after the arrest of ex-president Bartomeu on March 1 of that year as a result of Barçagate.