“Barcelona” passed off their own as someone else’s – Newspaper Kommersant No. 144 (7345) of 08/10/2022

The Spanish football club “Barcelona” is at risk of facing serious difficulties caused by the inability to register already purchased players. The Spanish league (La Liga) came to the conclusion that the Catalans cheated in reporting, podverg it so as to meet the requirements of the league’s financial regulations. In particular, they tried to give out their own money as income from the sale of the club’s assets. The Spanish league starts on Saturday. If Barcelona fails to meet La Liga demands in the coming days, they risk seeing key signings such as Robert Lewandowski ineligible to play for the team.

The Spanish football club Barcelona is approaching the start of the championship of Spain (the Catalans will start in the championship on Saturday with a match against Rayo Vallecano) in a difficult position. Recallthat in the wake of the pandemic, the Catalans felt the fall in income more sharply than other top clubs. At its peak, Barcelona’s debts exceeded €1 billion, which was mainly due to the excessively high salaries of football players. However, the new president of Barcelona, ​​Joan Laporta, seemed to be able to bring the club out of the acute phase of the crisis. That’s what the club thought. In reality, the situation is more complicated.

The Spanish championship has its own rather tough version of the financial fair play. La Liga, based on the reporting of clubs, sets for each of them a limit on spending on transfers and player salaries (calculated by the league based on data on expenses and future income of clubs).

For example, in March of this year, against the background of its debts, it was generally negative for Barcelona – minus € 144.5 million. And, for example, for Real Madrid, the figure was plus € 740 million. That is, in order to attract new players, the management Barcelona should have either drastically cut costs or increased revenues, but in reality, they should have done both.

With regard to reducing the salaries of players, the situation is ambiguous. For example, on Tuesday the portal sport.es reported that Gerard Piqué had agreed to renegotiate his contract downwards. But Clement Lenglet, Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Frenkie de Jong, who were also asked to moderate their appetites, are not yet compromising. But the processes aimed at increasing the club’s income seemed to be going well, which allowed Joan Laporte to conduct a transfer campaign as if the club’s financial situation was far from critical. During it, Barcelona managed to acquire, along with Milan midfielder Franck Kessier and Chelsea defender Andreas Christensen, who joined the team in free agent status, another defense player – Jules Kunde from Sevilla, a promising winger of Leeds, with enormous potential Rafinho and even the best player in the world according to the International Football Federation (FIFA), the main sniper of world football Robert Lewandowski from Bayern, having spent a total of almost €200 million on three transfers. The confidence that, despite such significant spending, Barcelona will meet the requirements of La Liga, Joan Laporte was given the fact that he managed to conclude a number of deals. In particular, the sale of a quarter of the club’s TV rights for the next 25 years and about the same share in Barca Studios, which creates creative content for the club. In total, they netted Barcelona over €600m. With a new sponsorship deal with Spotify, income from the sale of players and savings on their wages, the notional “plus” that La Liga would take into account when calculating the club’s spending cap would have to exceed € 850 million However, an audit by La Liga revealed that the situation is more complex.

The auditors found out, as reported by the radio station Cadena Copethat Barcelona used a ruse to sell the club’s television rights. It is legal, but nevertheless distorts the club’s accounts.

So, it turned out that Sixth Street, which was called the buyer of a quarter of the rights to the Catalans’ television broadcasts for € 517 million, acquired them indirectly – Locksley Investments was established to carry out the transaction. Formally, it was she who bought the rights to television broadcasts, and then resold them to Sixth Street for the next 25 years. And starting from 2026 of the contract, the rights will return to Barcelona, ​​for which she paid € 150 million, which then returned to her account. La Liga considered that the Catalans had in fact bought the rights from themselves and did not take into account a significant part of the club’s declared future income. The shortfall was enough for Barcelona to still not be eligible to sign new players.

Barcelona have disagreed with La Liga’s interpretation of their accounts, but in fact there is little the club can do. Is that once again to show the growth of income. There are tools for this. In particular, it is possible to sell another quarter of Barca Studios and a 49% stake in BLM, which is in charge of licensing products related to Barcelona. The board of directors has already issued the relevant mandates to the club’s management. However, even the estimated income of €100 million that these transactions can bring may not be enough to normalize the situation. Not to mention the fact that there is very little time left before the start of the Spanish Championship and it is extremely difficult to settle all the formalities in such a short time.

Alexander Petrov