FC Barcelona Finances

Luftstalag14

Culé de Celestial Empire
So apparently the socis vetoed a measure proposed by the board to increase the limit on borrowing/credit at the AGM yesterday. Not sure if and how this will restrict our ability to amass more money that we need to sign players and sustain paying the high wages we are paying, as well as financing the Espai project.

Personally it is already alarming that the board wants to borrow more money. It probably indicates that we have a bit of trouble financially.
 

Luftstalag14

Culé de Celestial Empire
We should all be concerned about the MARCA piece posted by Donatello in the Messi thread. What is most alarming is, I guess we were all deceived by the board in terms of the amount of our debt. The 160m figure reported by the club is just another way of making our debt look less and smaller than it actually is, which is standing closed to 500m right now. That is A LOT. Which means our debt has not really gone down at all. And the fact our board wanted to borrow more money paints a gloomy picture for us financially. This is huge because if our debt keep on ballooning and we can’t get the funds we need, we risk selling players just for money and our ability to buy players we want will be greatly jeopardized and endangered.

I hope they know what they are doing and do something to steer us out of this mess. Otherwise it won’t take much for everything to crumble.
 
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pepi

New member
Things didn't go as Josep Maria Bartomeu expected at Barcelona's general assembly. He had to suspend the vote for the approval of the new badge proposal and delegates voted against a change to the statutes which would give the club a greater capacity for debt. The rejection of these two proposals isn't trivial and this must be profoundly analysed. This is a clear rejection from the members of Bartomeu's management, as the members don't see eye to eye on some of the current board's handiwork, with certain criteria having varied in dangerous ways.

Below is a look at some of the topics from the general assembly that have caused eyebrows to be raised....

An oscillating debt

The club announced a debt of 157 million euros. The criteria is that which the LFP uses. Here, they only count debt accumulated in the past year, but the criteria of two years ago reflected the total debt of the club. There's an important point here. According to something Sandro Rosell put into the statutes, there was a limit to the ratio with respect to EBITDA margin and if this was surpassed for two years then the board would have to step down immediately. Using the previous method of calculation, which was used when this ratio was introduced, the club's debt would be 490m euros, according to a study done by Palaco23. With that figure, the ratio would surpass the permitted limit. As such, the board would be at risk of having to step down. Dangerous.

The salaries
There has also been a change to the calculations when it comes to salary spending. The club state that the percentage of spending on salaries for the first team is 66 percent with respect to the budget, but when it comes to counting this they have considered that the figures for the sales of players are normal income. This is a method other clubs don't use. If these fees hadn't been included then the proportion of salary spending would rise to 77 percent, a dangerous number. The club defend themselves by saying that they also include amortizations, something others don't do. In any case, this figure is also dangerous.

Obligatory sales
As part of the Budget they consider obligatory sales of around 130m euros. This is a considerable risk because the club might start to sell players purely for economic reasons.

The badge is up in the air
Bartomeu didn't want to accept a defeat regarding the proposed new badge. Rather than lose at a vote, he decided to suspend it in a legal action, something ethically reprehensible. There was no fair play on the president's part.

New directors
The board proposed the acceptance of four new directors with a joined vote, aware that the proposal of Marta Plana would be rejected if put to an individual vote. That's because her company was the first to leave Catalonia during the Catalan referendum process.

The name of the stadium
They had proposed an assembly in the first semester to decide which company would have naming rights for the stadium but there is still not date for this.

(SOURCE: MARCA)

...
 

Barcaman

Administrator
Staff member
Barca won't crumble, you can bet your life on it. Salaries are main concern but it's a problem that occured before Bartomeu when we were flying high under Laporta. We are kind of victims of our own success there.

People in charge are inept, that's for sure (Pique clinching a shirt deal for us was very revealing) but even they can't take Barca down even if they tried their best.
 

Luftstalag14

Culé de Celestial Empire
Barca won't crumble, you can bet your life on it. Salaries are main concern but it's a problem that occured before Bartomeu when we were flying high under Laporta. We are kind of victims of our own success there.

People in charge are inept, that's for sure (Pique clinching a shirt deal for us was very revealing) but even they can't take Barca down even if they tried their best.

I believe it is a big concern. Our revenue is growing but not growing at the rate that we wanted, last season’s artificially high revenue should be dismissed as a fluke and we will see how our revenue looks like this season as I believe this is when the new Nike deal kicks in. Other than that we don’t have other big bump in revenues. Meanwhile, if our debt is that much (close to 500m) then it takes a lot of money just to pay interest let alone driving down the base. The fact that the board wanted to borrow more money itself is very concerning. We have a lot of expenses, salaries are too high (even taking away Messi’s it is still very high compared to other elite clubs), we need to borrow money to finance the new Camp Nou and the Espai project. If we can’t contain our expenses we will run into negative net profit soon.

We can talk about signing this and that top player all we want but we might be in for some rude awakening that we don’t have money to sign them and pay their wages. And if that trickles down to our performance on the pitch and we don’t win games, our incoming revenue flow, which is the basis of our entire operations, will go down as well This is what I meant by crumbling.

Some folks want the current board to quit but there is no guarantee that the next group of people will do better. It is a huge ship to run.
 

DonAK

President of FC Barcelona
The wage level will go down to normal once Messi retires. We're involved in projects related to Camp Nou, Palau Blaugrana and the Johan Cruyff Stadium + other stuff so naturally the debt would be higher.
 

Luftstalag14

Culé de Celestial Empire
The wage level will go down to normal once Messi retires. We're involved in projects related to Camp Nou, Palau Blaugrana and the Johan Cruyff Stadium + other stuff so naturally the debt would be higher.

Don, do you think the 500m figure already factors in the money we will be borrowing (in addition to money from our own coffers such as naming right etc.) for the Espai project? I didn’t think so. Why would they include future money borrowed into our current debt?
 

clemente

New member
Don, do you think the 500m figure already factors in the money we will be borrowing (in addition to money from our own coffers such as naming right etc.) for the Espai project? I didn’t think so. Why would they include future money borrowed into our current debt?

That's what happens when you give 20 y/olds 200k a week.
But we are Barca, nothing really matters, we will have the biggest and best stadium when its done, the revenue will flow and debts will go down, there literally is nothing to worry about...
 

Luftstalag14

Culé de Celestial Empire
That's what happens when you give 20 y/olds 200k a week.
But we are Barca, nothing really matters, we will have the biggest and best stadium when its done, the revenue will flow and debts will go down, there literally is nothing to worry about...

You are being sarcastic, right?
 

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