The board of FC Barcelona has decided to postpone the IPO operation of Barça Media, its future digital business subsidiary, as confirmed by sources close to the club. The operation intended for Barça Media to start trading 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 calendar for the operation.
The initial intention of the club presided over by Joan Laporta was to present the project already developed at the next members' meeting, called for the 21st of this same month, but in the end it has not been included in the agenda. Sources from the club have stated that "when necessary, a new extraordinary assembly will be convened", if the project matures.
The direct trigger for this rethinking has been the non-compliance with the payment schedule by one of the shareholders participating in the project, the German company Libero. He had acquired 9.8% of Barça Studios, the embryo of Barça Media, in exchange for a commitment to pay the club 40 million dollars by the August 21 deadline, which did not happen. At that time Barça and Libero agreed on a new agreement that set October 10, next Tuesday, as the deadline for payment, although the club reserved the right to undo the entire operation of the IPO if the money did not arrive by Sept. 8, according to filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Libero has not paid and therefore Barça can backtrack, a decision that club spokesmen say has not yet been taken, although they acknowledge that the project is currently at a standstill.
The operation does not have enough funds to start. Another of the project's partners, a Cypriot company, which owns 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 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 to use to land on the Nasdaq in New York through a merger, also approved a review of the schedule that was planned. It had initially been set 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 next year. After this schedule change, the volume of funds available to Mountain, and therefore susceptible to investment in the IPO operation, fell to less than $125 million and well below half than I had just six months before.
The IPO of Barça Media was one of the star measures of the board of the Blaugrana club to obtain new funds with which to deal with the delicate financial situation of the club, which has already accumulated three years of operating losses, compensated by the sale of assets .
