FC Barcelona have approved the sale of a minority share of their licensing and merchandising division, Barcelona Licensing and Merchandising (BLM) and the cession of up to 25% of income generated from their LaLiga TV rights.
Both were passed by large majorities – 88% for BLM and 87% for the TV revenues.
Club president Joan Laporta said they expect to sell up to 49.9% of retail operation BLM for €200-300m and a minimum of €200m for every 10% of the LaLiga TV audiovisual rights for 25 years.
The Barça board hope this will enable them to finish the financial year without losses and increase their spending limit.
Vice president Juli Guiu made the presentation on BLM and assured that it is “100% owned by Barça” and that it is in charge of marketing the Barça brand through physical stores, online, sales through third parties (wholesalers) and the sale of licensed products. In total, he said, “we have more than 2,000 products for sale.”
Ahead of Thursday’s vote, the vice president for finance, Eduard Romeu, explained that Barça “have carried out an analysis and we start from a premise. We have met with the investors and we have told them that we are in a compromising situation. We tried to find the maximum figure that won’t do us any harm and that the investors will accept. Hence the 25%. The second internal exercise was what represents 25% of LaLiga’s television rights, approximately 5% of the club’s budget. We have set ourselves a lever that risk that doesn’t put our finances in danger in the coming years.”
Laporta argued that “if we make €165m a year through this item and this continues, we would bring in €41m less, at 25%, which is our limit. Why? Because we generate income that compensates for the millions that we will stop receiving in the next few years, we have already made the projection.”
“We want a Barça that can compete head to head with those state-owned clubs, or those clubs owned by billionaires,” Laporta added.
Laporta revealed in August the club’s debts totalled €1.35b – €673m of which is owed to banks. In December, Barça approved financial plans to renovate their Camp Nou stadium, including raising an additional €1.5b in debt.
In March 2022, the Catalan club signed a shirt and stadium sponsorship deal with audio streaming platform Spotify in an agreement worth €280m.
GSFN
