Spanish LaLiga soccer giants Barcelona recorded a loss of €91 million ($101 million) during the 2023-24 financial year.
The majority of the losses were blamed on the club failing to sell off the Barca Vision digital media arm - this led to Barcelona having to effectively write off €141 million.
The club said the losses were specifically due to “non-payment by some of the participating investors,” and added that it “must record this potential default as a precaution.”
The 2023-24 financials were approved by the Barcelona board of directors yesterday (September 30), as was the budget for 2024-25.
In terms of revenue, Barcelona can point to record sponsorship income last season, of €210 million, and turnover by the BLM merchandising subsidiary of close to €110 million.
Over the last 12 months, significant deals for the club included the front-of-shirt and stadium naming rights agreement with streaming giant Spotify, a sleeve sponsorship tie-up with TP Vision, and the technical partnership they have in place with NIKE (which the club must honor through 2027-28, against its wishes).
In 2022-23, overall sponsorship revenue came to €97.6 million, which was in itself a record.
The last month or so has deals unveiled with sports supplement firm BioTechUSA, European smartphone manufacturer Human Mobile Devices, and Maybank.
The women’s team, meanwhile, secured a profit of €600,000 last season, partly due to winning the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
For 2024-25, meanwhile, Barcelona have projected an operating profit of €5 million, and another record figure in terms of sponsorship income - over €250 million.
They also expect both physical and e-commerce sales, and are forecasting over €125 million in revenue from that overall sector.
Barcelona are currently playing away from their iconic Camp Nou home stadium, which is currently being rebuilt (at a substantial cost). Instead, they are playing home fixtures at the Estadi Olímpic, with the plan to return “to a partially opened Camp Nou for the second half” of the season.
While the stadium’s redevelopments are still being finalized later this season, lower matchday income is to be expected - this adds to the overall refinancing project for the stadium costing around €1.45 billion.
Barcelona have said that playing at the city’s Olympic Stadium for all of last season resulted “in a reduction in annual ordinary revenue of over €100 million,” - hence the desire to return to the Camp Nou as soon as possible.
The Olympic Stadium has a capacity of just over 60,000, while the new Camp Nou will (Barcelona have claimed) eventually be able to accommodate up to 105,000 fans, making it the largest soccer stadium in Europe.
From 2026, the club believes, “the new structure for generating revenue from the redeveloped Spotify Camp Nou will be fully operational.”
Barcelona have had to pull a number of ‘financial levers’ in order to remain cost-compliant with LaLiga over the last two years - essentially, they have made deals that guaranteed them short-term profit when made, but which also require them to hand over a percentage of their revenue from various sectors each season, in long-term tie-ups.
The men’s team currently sits top of LaLiga after eight games, while they are also competing in the lucrative pan-European UEFA Champions League.
