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Barça sells 10% of its television rights for 25 years to the Sixth Street fund

2022-06-28T15:02:07.334Z


The Barça club will get 200 million euros to save this year after two consecutive years of losses Against the clock, as happened with the signing of the guarantees that allowed the proclamation of Joan Laporta as president of FC Barcelona in March 2021, the Barça club will be able to close this Thursday, June 30, the financial year 2021-2022 with benefits and not with a negative balance that was estimated at 161 million. The change from negative to positive will be possible due to the agreemen


Against the clock, as happened with the signing of the guarantees that allowed the proclamation of Joan Laporta as president of FC Barcelona in March 2021, the Barça club will be able to close this Thursday, June 30, the financial year 2021-2022 with benefits and not with a negative balance that was estimated at 161 million.

The change from negative to positive will be possible due to the agreement that Barça finalizes with the Sixth Street investment fund, for which it will receive more than 200 million euros for the sale of 10% of the television rights for 25 years.

Sources from the Barça entity itself confirmed the news advanced by Cuatro and assured that initially the contract will be signed and presented in the next few hours at the Camp Nou.

While waiting to know the conditions of the operation, it is known from the last meeting that the investment fund will receive 10% of the League's payments for the retransmissions -about 16 million a year-, a circumstance that forces the club to limit the benefit from a certain percentage of revaluation, according to the economic vice president, Eduard Romeu.

Authorized by the commissioners, Barça has yet to sell 15% more of the television rights -the maximum is 25%-, a maximum of 49% of the company that sells its products called BLM, and Barça Studios.

The negotiations for such assets have not borne fruit for now and the priority was to attack a budget that provided for profits of five million.

Income has been lower than expected and it has not been possible to contain spending as the critical situation demanded to the extent that Barça was on the way to closing its third consecutive year with losses after the -97 million registered in the 2019 academic year- 2020 and -481 million in 2020-2021.

The assembly of partners, in any case, has already agreed to suspend the article by which the board of directors had to resign in case of accumulating two years in a row with a negative balance, after a proposal from Laporta.

Nor has the wage bill been corrected as expected -Romeu specified that it must be cut by 160 million to be able to equate it with that of Madrid: 400 million- and the debt is estimated at 1,350 million.

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The guarantee is Laporta

“It is a purely financial operation, as if it were a mortgage;

we were in favor of looking for strategic partners that would help grow other assets;

it will not improve that of television rights.

It doesn't make me happy to know that we were right”, argued Víctor Font, candidate for the presidential elections won by Laporta.

"It tends to happen when you enter to govern a club without a plan," he added.

Font, who accused the president of "improvising", appeared to request that the statutory reform provided for by the board be democratic and above all save the Barça club from the risk of becoming a Sports Public Limited Company.

Font's proposals have already been delivered to Vice President Elena Fort.

The president is supposed to explain the agreement with Sixth Street, the investment fund that already signed an agreement with Real Madrid in May.

The club chaired by Florentino Pérez will enter some 360 ​​million in exchange for 30% of the exploitation of a part of the commercial business of Benabéu for 20 years.

The investment fund also has Spotify as a client, which will be the sponsor of Barcelona from July 1, and is linked to Audax, the renewable energy company whose vice president is Romeu, vice president of Barcelona.

The Barça board has opted for Sixth Street after ruling out alternatives such as CVC - it negotiated an agreement outside the one it has with the League - and Goldman Sachs, Barça's main creditor.

Some of the current leaders of Sixth Street were previously part of Goldman Sachs, the investment group that will finance the Espai Barça -the assembly authorized requesting a loan worth 1,500 million- and the same one that has already granted another loan worth 525 million to return in 15 years and in exchange for a percentage of the television rights so that the club could avoid closure in 2021. "We need 600 million" Laporta specified in the last assembly;

So far he's got about 200.

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Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2022-06-28

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