In an attempt to refine the financial crisis, Barcelona have decided to enter negotiations in order to sell 49% of Barça Licensing and Merchandising (BLM) for €200 million for over ten years to a consortium headed by Fanatics and Investindustrial.
On top of that, Roger Torello of Mundo Deportivo also writes that the team has accelerated the sale of a maximum of 49% of Barça Studios after getting the green signal from the compromising partners. From that, the team is hoping to coup another €200 million in income.
MD believes the audio-visual business that Barcelona generate has gathered excessive interest, and several companies are willing to hop on the board. Hence, if the aforementioned deals are agreed upon, Barcelona could see an injection of €400 million in total income.
However, it must be noted that although the team has several proposals on the table, nothing is close yet, but there could well and truly be some good news soon.
Other projects in the Barcelona pipeline
Apart from Barça Licensing and Merchandising and Barça Studios, the team is also hoping to find suitors for Barça Academies and the Barça Innovation Hub which will complete the Barça Corporate that was introduced by the Josep Maria Bartomeu board in the past.
So far, those willing to invest in the mentioned projects have arrived through Goldman Sachs, a company which is working on finding foreign investors in financing the Espai Barça project.
Now, Barcelona were publicly in talks with CVC for giving away 8.2% of their audiovisual rights to the CVC a couple of months back, but MD says that the deal is not even being considered a priority.
That is mainly because the amount that would have been generated through CVC would have gone down as a debt and not as income. Furthermore, only 15% of the fund would have been used for signing new players in the summer.
As for the potential €400 million income that Barcelona are hoping to receive, the management’s plan is to use the €200 million to clear off some debt, while the remaining amount would be used in the sporting projects
