The main starting point of the present turbulence of Joan Laporta’s Barça is called Barça Vision (formerly Barça Studios). Now, the club is reorganizing its digital, new technology and audiovisual activities, with the aim of creating a new society in which it will subsume the current Barça Vision, the subject of a long sales and unpaid process that keeps the board of directors in suspense. Laporta. In fact, it is at the origin of the serious economic imbalance that has ultimately forced the launch of a new operation ( lever in the jargon of Laportismo), the advance sale of the VIP boxes, which has concluded in the fiasco of the non-registration of Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor in LaLiga.
At the moment, the deadline established by the management team itself to find new partners before December 31 of the just concluded year has already been missed. According to the sources consulted, the changes in the content of Barça Studios will imply that all digital assets and new businesses will be provided, and this will have the consequence that a new company will emerge, which will need a different valuation than the current one. One more complication for the auditors, with whom the entity maintains a dispute, since it considers that the participation it has in Barça Vision, 54%, and which it quantifies at 208 million, is strongly overvalued.
The new operation implies a tacit recognition that, with its current characteristics, Barça Studios will not be able to attract new shareholders. Some investor with interest in the club’s audiovisual and digital activities has already told this newspaper that the current company is an empty shell without activity and that to participate in it the club should provide it with business, new contracts and activities that are already fully operational. With the urgency of the sale of the VIP boxes and the tensions over the registration of Olmo and Víctor, the efforts to reorganize these businesses have suffered a notable halt.
The club has earned only 55 million of the 200 expected and had to declare losses at the request of the auditor
The initial Barça Studios was created by the previous president of Barça, Josep Maria Bartomeu, and was barely active during his mandate. In 2022, with a quick and gruesome shot, pretending to sell 49%, Laporta generated accounting profits of 408 million thanks to which, at that time, he raised the fair play financial of the club and was able to register Raphinha, Koundé, Lewandowski, Christensen and Kessié.
They also served to dress up the accounts and present profits without which he would have had to declare losses. In the 2022/2023 financial year, Laporta declared profits of 304 million, but thanks to sales (levers) of just over 800 million, half from the sale of Barça Vision and the other from 15% of the television rights. The previous year it had done the same with another 10%, thanks to which what would have been losses of 141 million were also transformed into profits of 125 million.
But the Barça Vision sale operation had much more fantasy than reality. Some of the first investors, Jaume Roures, who had agreed to take on the role of buyer of 24.5%, quickly disappeared. The other, Socios.com, did the same, although in this case partially, in stages and paying in installments.
The mystery of the VIP boxes
The only thing that is known about the sale of part of some 350 VIP seats at the new Camp Nou is that Barça presented LaLiga with the purchase and sale contracts, the audit of the valuation and proof of the income of a part of the money. Total, about 200 million to be distributed between the club and the creditors for the works. The sale is structured around the creation of a company (as in the other levers) in which the club will have a majority. The rest, unknowns. What was the cost (discount) of the sale? Will it be based in a tax haven? Will the new partners be public? Will there be new commissions?
New participants in the adventure had to be found – of course paying commissions in countries like Croatia – to replace the previous ones, and here came the collapse. The new investors did not contribute the announced money and defaults began.
In the end, the club has earned only 55 million of the 200 expected and has had to charge against profits, at the auditor’s request, the outstanding 145 million. And declare losses in the year ended last June. The last investor announced is the catering firm Aramark, which the club presented as a new strategic partner in the field of new technologies, in which the North American company has no activity. In fact, on its official website it only mentions food services, catering and monitors as business areas.
However, those first 145 million negative provisions in last year’s income statement could be only the first part of the problem. Of the aforementioned 208 million that the club maintains in its assets due to its participation in Barça Vision, the auditor highlighted in his report on last year’s accounts that “this valuation should not be maintained, and therefore the value of the registered investment at closing it should be subject to impairment.” That is to say, the report – which was issued with “exceptions” because “there is a material error in the annual accounts” – ensures that the Barça Vision package is worth much less than what the club claims. It should be taken into account that last year the company had a turnover of 74,000 euros and that it did not even have a business plan to develop its activities, as the auditor also highlighted.
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