FC Barcelona will be on the field this Sunday for Elksaco. Elksaco can go a long way in deciding whether they and arch rival Real Madrid will finish the season as Laliga champions.
However, Sunday’s crunch game was intended to bring about something even more important. Barcelona executives had designated fixtures for their spectacular return to the famous Camp Noo Stadium after almost two years of renovation.
They hope that the 1.5 billion euro restructuring will increase game day revenue and ultimately help reduce financial pressure on Barcelona, primarily through heavy investments in new VIP seats.
However, the vast infrastructure project was plagued by delays, forcing a large number of Catalan clubs to host a six-kilometer road at the city’s Olympic Stadium, a temporary home.
Playing at the Olympic Stadium has around 40,000 seats less than Camp Nou, which increases revenues of around 100 million euros per year, exacerbating long-term economic troubles.
Music law has already been booked to play Olympic Stadium later this year, and interest payments related to the construction work at Camp Now that begins next summer will make builders compete against time to finish their work.
Despite being one of the biggest clubs in world football, Barcelona’s finances have been severely nervous since 2017 when it set out to acquire an unfairly judged player using revenue from Brazil’s Star Neymar’s record-breaking 222 million euros sales.
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Since then, the club has been punished for repeatedly violating Spanish football spending restrictions, with each team giving revenue-related budgets. Barcelona has been forced to offload star players, including Lionel Messi, and will not be able to sign new players this summer unless the club can generate fresh funds in the coming months.
Barcelona executives hope that by adding thousands of VIP seats to Camp Nou, they will help increase the club’s annual revenue by a third to 1.2 billion euros within five years.
Manel del Rio, Barcelona’s corporate director, oversees the club’s financial and commercial operations. He said upgrading Camp Nou – a sponsorship agreement with a music streaming company now known as Spotify Camp Nou, is “essential” to keep up with European rivals.
“The whole experience we’ve had to watch games at Spotify Camp Nou will be day and night compared to what we did before,” he said. “Stadiums are a big part of our DNA. It’s hard to assess how much we add to our brand (but) I think it has to be a big percentage.”
Despite cutting players’ wage bills by 25% last season, Barcelona still reported an annual net loss of 91 million euros. The club skated from fourth to sixth with revenue from Deloitte’s latest football club.
Football benchmark figures show that financial obligations, including stadium-related borrowings, were just under 1.3 billion euros as of June 2024. With 583 million euros stadium borrowings falling in 2028, Barcelona asked Goldman Sachs advisors to explore ways to reduce the interest costs on their debt.
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To ease short-term fiscal pressure, Barcelona attacked transactions that exchange long-term income for advance cash. In 2022, a quarter of its television revenue was sold to the US investment group Sixth Street over the next 25 years, raising over 500 million euros.
Meanwhile, controversy broke out over Barcelona’s initial efforts to monetize the revamped stadium.
In January, the club said it had sold 30-year rights to Camp Nou’s unfinished VIP box for 100 million euros. However, the Spanish league last month said the deal had appeared on Barcelona’s accounts, rekindling the legal battle over whether the club has enough headroom for enough budget to register all players.
Barcelona wrote in La Liga and expressed “surprise and digging” at the decision to publicly broadcast the conflict. However, this is not the first time that presumed asset sales have caused problems. Last year, Barcelona booked a fee of 141 million euros after receiving no payment from the sale of shares on its digital engagement platform.
Victor Font, a local tech entrepreneur who will face current club president Joan Laporta in 2021 and plans to do so again, said he is in a hurry to raise money with little concern about the long-term implications.
“Instead of covering these financial holes with strategic partners who can create a winning situation, they have been covered by unknown investors who are unable to even fulfill their commitments.
Despite the confusion from the pitch, Barcelona are enjoying a good season with it. The team is the top of La Liga and already won the Copa del Rey, and this week they were just seconds away from their first Champions League final since 2015.
Del Rio said Barcelona’s strong performance this season was built on young local talents such as 17-year-old Raminyarmal and Gavi, boosting ticket sales and partially offsetting shortages from temporary moves to the Olympic Stadium.
Ramin Yamal, 17-Yaaaordedge in Barcelona ©Nacho Twelve/Reuters
The renovation will bring the capacity within Campnoo to approximately 105,000, making it the largest soccer venue in Europe, and will increase the number of VIP seats by almost five times to 9,600.
Barcelona says that about 60% of VIP seats (up to 81,000 euros per season, up to 81,000 euros per season) are already on sale. The club expects game day revenue to increase by around 60% per year to at least 350 million euros.
“The market says there’s demand,” Del Rio said. “I think the club is trying to do well as long as we can go back here and fully utilize all our assets.”
Impressions of the artists in the upcoming VIP area of Campnoe ©FC Barcelona
However, construction delays mean that Barcelona will not return home until the end of summer. Even that target means playing soccer on a construction site. That means the new third tier of the stadium, which is above the two rings of the VIP seats, is not expected to close until early next year.
Font warns that, at least in the short term, the cost of service for construction-related debts risks engulfing increased revenues.
“Sometimes the club will tell you that the new stadium will become the Holy Grail, so that we can recover financially,” he said. “That’s half the truth.”
