Another 15 percent of Barcelona’s future rights revenues must be sold to generate another €300 million. Everything requires the approval of Goldman Sachs, the club’s largest institutional creditor. Lending for the Camp Nou reconstruction and debt refinancing last year brings loans to the US investment bank alone to somewhere between €1.5 billion and €2 billion. For their part, Real Madrid has sold 30 percent of 20 years of future stadium revenue to Sixth Street.
Real’s debt is still more than £1bn when liability for the rebuilding of their stadium is considered. The problem is bigger at Barcelona, where the hole was dug by previous president Josep Maria Bartomeu. With his sale tomorrow to finance today, Laporta has done nothing but keep digging.
Florentino Perez, the Real president, and his Liga counterpart Javier Tebas, can’t agree on much. But both will know that the league needs Barcelona to be strong so that everyone can thrive, and so the club can continue, book loans as revenue and somehow still comply with Financial Fair Play.
The big two of Spain, as well as the rest, have bet the house on a continued rise in the value of broadcasting rights. Nothing threatens that more than a Real Madrid title procession every season.
Barcelona has attracted two of the levers available to fund itself now. The third is the sale of 49 percent of their merchandising business. Can the club afford to allocate so much income to creditors in the future? Can it afford not to? The club needs the money to keep it competitive now.
Despite all the public disapproval, the three Super League rebels, along with A22 and Spain-based financiers Anas Laghrari and John Hahn, have committed themselves to the legal battle to defeat UEFA. They are trying, as they see it, to free the richest clubs to create their own league. They will soon be announcing a spokesperson to speak on behalf of the project they are creating. With every step, the defeated shell of the April 2021 Super League is patched up, refined and adapted to clamber out of the vault again.
The ESL is far from over. Next time, the ESL says, there will be no permanent members. The goal of the Rebels three is to throw off the Uefa monopoly, as they see it, and one day create the competition that will give them the share of revenue they think they deserve. The decision will come next year and no one needs more results than Barcelona, where the future is being sold.