The FC Barcelona board has decided to postpone the IPO of Barça Media, its future digital business subsidiary, as confirmed by sources close to the club. The operation intended for Barça Media to be listed before the end of the year on the technology market of the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq. At the moment there is no new schedule for the operation.
The initial intention of the club chaired by Joan Laporta was to present the project already prepared at the next members' meeting, called for the 21st of this month, but in the end it has not been included in the agenda. Club sources have stated that "when necessary a new extraordinary assembly will be called" if the project is more mature.
The direct trigger for this rethinking has been the failure to comply with the payment schedule by one of the shareholders participating in the project, the German company Libero. It had acquired 9.8% of Barça Studios, the embryo of Barça Media, in exchange for the commitment to pay the club 40 million dollars on the deadline of August 21, which did not happen. At that time, Barça and Libero agreed to a new agreement that set October 10, next Tuesday, as the deadline for payment, although the club reserved the right to undo the entire IPO operation if the money It did not arrive before September 8, according to the documentation sent to the North American stock market authority.
Libero has not paid, and therefore Barça can back out, a decision that the club's spokespersons assure has not been taken, although they recognize that the project is now stopped.
The operation does not have enough funds to start. Another of the partners in the project, a Cypriot company, owner of 19.7% of the shares of Barça Studios, and which agreed to pay 80 million, has only disbursed 20. For the other 60, a schedule was established with two payments of 30 each. one in June 2024 and June 2025.
At the same time, another key participant in the model, the company Mountain and Co., which Barça Media was going to use to land on the New York Nasdaq through a merger, also approved a review of the planned calendar. Initially, it planned to complete the IPO in the last quarter of this year, but after holding a meeting of its investors, it agreed to extend the limit until March of next year. After the change in the calendar, the volume of funds at Mountain's disposal, and therefore susceptible to investment in the IPO operation, fell to less than 125 million dollars and well below half of what it had just six months before.
The listing of Barça Media was one of the star measures of the Blaugrana club's board to obtain new funds with which to face the delicate economic situation of the club, which has already accumulated three years of operating losses, offset by the sales of heritage.
