Barcelona held a board meeting earlier this week to finalise financial figures for the 2023-24 season. In addition, they will make a budget plan for the 2024-2025 season. All will be presented to the club's owners on October 19.
During the meeting, President Joan Laporta emphasized the team's determination in the context of a financial crisis. In addition, the Camp Nou owner also listed new record revenues such as player sales and in the commercial sector (about 320 million Euros). Laporta also did not forget to mention that the team had cut 170 million Euros in salary funds and recorded a profit of 12 million Euros.
However, having to leave Camp Nou for a while caused the club to suffer a loss of about 100 million Euros. Not only that, the club also recorded a loss of 141 million Euros (before tax) for the project at its subsidiary Bridgeburg Invest (Barca Vision). Therefore, the actual figure must be a net loss of 91 million Euros.
In Barcelona's upcoming orientation, boosting revenue from player sales will be focused on, considering it an important annual budget revenue. Not only did the stars lose their form, the team also completely sold young players to make a profit.
Last summer, Barcelona hoped to sell the rights to use Barca Studios and earn about 100 million Euros. However, that project failed and caused one of the financial leverages that had been prepared to collapse. After many changes to the project's name, from Barca Studios, to Barca Media and now Barca Vision, the team still struggles in this area.
In the 2022-2023 period, the value of Barca Vision is about 400 million Euros. This number was once considered unrealistic because there are many virtual values such as the amount of money that investors have publicly contributed that have never appeared. Barcelona owns 51% of the shares in this company.
The loss recorded at Barca Vision will have a significant impact on the club's salary fund. In recent years, Barcelona has had a headache every summer with player registration. In the most recent transfer window, the team said goodbye to Ilkay Gundogan, Joao Felix, Joao Cancelo, Sergi Roberto and Marcos Alonso. Then they welcomed Dani Olmo and Pau Viktor.
Of these two new players, only Dani Olmo was given the advantage of "catching" through a narrow financial door, thereby being able to officially play for the home team at Camp Nou. The reason is that the former Leipzig star is "in a position" for Andreas Christensen to be injured. When Christensen returns, it is unclear what Olmo's situation will be like.
In a press conference on September 3, Laporta said Barcelona needed another 60 million Euros in salary space so that all players who arrived last summer could be registered normally.
There are many ways for Barcelona to handle this, the easiest way to do it is to renegotiate with Nike so that this sportswear company can increase the annual costs the team receives. Simply put, Barca wants to receive possible future profits in advance to solve the current problem.
Also in September, Laporta said that the Nike contract he is preparing to sign with Barcelona will be the most valuable shirt sponsorship contract in history. Nike has yet to make any official comments.
Back to the upcoming financial plan determination date of October 19, it is likely that Barcelona's boss will approve all plans that are being submitted because it states that the budget in the period of 2024-2025 will increase thanks to the commercial sector. As for the salary fund, the team will ensure to maintain it at 500 million Euros. The final profit is only about 5 million Euros, but at this time, not losing is already too lucky for Blaugrana.
At this time, the team's leadership is hoping that Camp Nou will soon return to operation so that the team can increase revenue. If it returns on January 26, 2025, all plans will not be delayed. The new capacity of Camp Nou is expected to be 104,000 seats, but to achieve this maximum capacity, it will still take until 2026 to be fully completed.
