Barcelona’s raised hopes for a full freedom in transfers
Barcelona’s performance, prospects and dynamics are always of interest to punters, as it is a club that concentrates enormous amounts of wagers by football lovers and fans and it is at the first top lines of bookmakers’ offerings. Simply go to Allbets and check this out! But Barcelona is in a difficult situation, due to its financial management problems at the moment and this is something that will certainly influence the club’s future.
La Liga’s Fair Financial Play (FFP) rules are strict and precise when it comes to placing limits on clubs’ spending and ability to register salaries and new signings. Barcelona has been experiencing first hand the strictness of these regulations, as it is struggling to get freedom from its imposed limits in the past few years.
Barcelona’s reckless financial management under the previous board, headed by Josep Maria Bartomeu, and enormous spending on transfers of players who were eventually not utilized in their fullest, on disproportionate salaries for new signings and on transfers of players who could not consistently fit the club, gradually led to its financial ‘disaster’. President Joan Laporta took over the lead of a club, whose financials were, according to his sayings, so bad and whose registered salaries for players were so unjustifiably high, that was on the edge of going down. The team had been, unnecessarily and irresponsibly, spending huge amounts of money on contracts, transfers and salaries that did not reflect the obtained or derived value from the footballers – many of whom were not even provided the chance to succeed.
And of course, such a careless allocation of resources, was not to be overlooked or missed by La Liga. Barcelona has been struggling in the last two years to find creative and out-of-the-box ways to fund the big transfers and contracts that it currently needs. Bringing at Camp Nou new signings and maintaining its top squad is just as critical as its ability to sustain a top position in the league.
Barcelona executives need to be able to overcome uncomfortable situations which have been pushing them to jeopardize the team’s success. Such situations were when Lionel Messi could not have his contract renewed because the club had been regulated by La Liga for FFP and so they were unable to spend big money on the best footballer or when players like Gerard Pique took a serious salary cut in order to enable the club to proceed with registering Memphis Depay, Eric Garcia and Rey Manaj for the 2021/22 season.
But Barcelona can now somewhat be relieved and become more optimistic for its future performance and competitiveness. On the one hand, La Liga’s de-burdening clubs from the Covid19 losses, by spreading these losses over five years and on the other hand Barca’s decisions to generate income sales. In fact, in mid June, the club decided that it will sell a 49.9% minority share of its BLM business (Barcelona Licensing and Merchandising) and also 25% of its La Liga audiovisual rights in an effort to restore its financial position and take on their freedom from the FFP limits. In doing so, it is hoped that Barcelona will manage to achieve a more sound financial situation and increase their spendings on transfers and new signings, while gradually expanding the limits.
Eventually, on June 30, it was made known that Barcelona agreed to sell 10% of its La Liga TV rights to Sixth Street, a global investment firm, for 25 years for 207.5 million euros. And this, added to the anticipated 200 to 300 million euros to be received from selling shares of BLM.
Will this be the solution to Barca’s shortcomings? Well, it remains to be seen. Some believe that this will give the Club the kick-off towards the next season and the seasons to come, while others believe that it is not a sustainable solution and it will hardly manage to deal with the financial problems and limits imposed on Barcelona. The Club hopes to get the best of its decision and get into the new season with a fresh new start.