FC Barcelona has announced the activation of a new lever that will mean the income of 120 million euros. The club has reached an agreement with the German fund LIBERO Football Finance AG which, together with the private investment advisers of NIPA Capital B.V., based in the Netherlands, have become new partners of the Barça Vision platform by purchasing the 29 5% of their shares.
However, as club sources point out to this newspaper, Barcelona will now not enter the full 120 million euros. A series of deadlines have been agreed to make payments in installments. The same sources do specify that before August 31 the club will enter 60 million, an amount that allows the seven pending to register. For now, for Getafe, Barça prioritizes registering Gündogan and Araújo with the income from this lever. Iñaki Peña, Oriol Romeu, Sergi Roberto and Marcos Alonso will be missing, who will enter before August 31, although the club is pending to close the transfer of Dembélé to PSG that would allow some more registration.
Alejandro Balde and Lamine Yamal are also waiting. These last two signed a pre-renewal agreement before traveling to the tour. Balde until 2028 and Lamine Yamal until 2026. Both could play with a subsidiary file but with a salary from the first team.
Created in June 2023, Barça Vision brings together all the club's digital initiatives, NFT's and metaverse under the Bridgeburg Invest trademark. Barça Vision is also the subsidiary company of Barça Media, to which Barça Studios belongs, the production company that brings together all of Barcelona's audiovisual offer and its distribution through its social networks and other channels such as YouTube.
The club specifies that the sale of 29.5% of Barça Vision for 120 million euros to the German fund and to Dutch investors corresponding to a part of the stake that was in the hands of Socios.com and Orpheus Media, the two companies that a year ago they acquired 24.5% of the shares each of the production company Barça Studios.
Negotiations with the Dutch advisers who have acted as intermediaries for the club to reach an agreement with the German fund, began in mid-June when the club did not pay the 60 million euros it was supposed to receive from Orpheus Media and Socios.com. Both companies that paid 10 million each at the time they acquired their shares, asked to defer to the end of the year the payment of 30 million euros that each had to pay on June 15.
An option that LaLiga ruled out by announcing to Barcelona that it was withdrawing the 60 million that it had to enter from the feasibility plan. The club reacted by looking for new partners but insisted in the statement that Socios.com and Orpheus, as the Club's strategic technological partners, "will continue to play a leading role in FC Barcelona's Web3 strategy, contributing their knowledge and technological infrastructure to develop new opportunities through its channels and BAR Fan Token".
The activation of this new lever does not need the approval of the assembly of delegated partners that already approved the sale of 49% of Barça Studios in June 2022. However, there is another parallel agreement for which the club will need the OK of the assembly
And it is that in parallel, the FC Barcelona also announced this Friday an entente with Mountain
Said agreement is focused on allowing Barça Vision and Barça Media to access specific financing in the new US capital markets to accelerate the club's initiatives in the digital sector and to be able to disseminate Barça Media content to new audiences in strategic markets for the club Worldwide. This agreement represents a change in the legal structure of the club since it implies listing on the stock market.
FC Barcelona expects both businesses to become a significant source of income for the entity with an estimated valuation, according to the statement, of approximately 910 million euros.
The president of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta, assessed what these two operations mean for the entity: "This step we are taking now is a strategic move that provides us with new resources so that our platforms continue to grow at a time when demand for digital sports content is clearly expanding and reinforces the path of digital transformation started in 2022".
Barça Media is the branch of Barça Vision that includes the production company Barça Studios and is in charge of managing the club's audiovisual content, which has more than 520 million views on television and more than 440 million fans on social networks globally. .
With Barça Media, FC Barcelona wants to centralize the creation, production and marketing of digital content. Its mission is to produce dynamic content that can be broadcast through its own distribution channels and world leading external platforms such as Disney, DirecTV, Sony Pictures, Univision and DaZN to reach global audiences.
Barça Vision is the FC Barcelona platform under which the club wants to group all the initiatives associated with Web3, NFT's and Metaverso. In this sense, FC Barcelona has already taken different steps such as the official channel on Discord or the launch of the collection of 3,000 Barça NFTs that started on July 29, 2022 when the club auctioned the first NFT in history in New York. of the club It was Johan Cruyff's iconic goal of December 1973. Later, on June 28, he launched a second NFT inspired by Alexia Putellas.
