Barcelona finances

Barca has to pay big bucks to get players who can play at the level of this team. There is no sense bringing in players who are only "good", they don't make it on this club. Like Maxwell or Afellay.

Only a few of the Masia products who get promoted to the big club can ever progress to the Barca regular level, so the club does have to go outside for big money to bring in fresh brilliance. About one a year. The next one will be a very rare talent, might have to wait until after the WC. After that, this will be the greatest South American team of all time.

Whats the debt nowadays?

raskolnikov said:

Whats the debt nowadays?

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I don' know but I thing the board is lowering it. According to them the club is obtaining profits.

Corb said:

I don' know but I thing the board is lowering it. According to them the club is obtaining profits.

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I hope so, it would be smart to lower the debt as much as possible when you are relying on homegrown players mostly.
There is no need for many huge transfers the coming years.
But to be honest I have my doubts about Rosel being the type that is really interested in lowering it.

Bojan said:

Was a bit surprised with the fact that since Pep took over, Barca were only outspent by Chelsea, Madrid and City.
And this is a team that plays with 6-7 homegrowns all the time, mind you. Makes you think.

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Whenever I bring this up people keep talking about Barca's dna, mes que un club and so on .
We're a big club, we spend to remain a big club it's normal but most of our big name signings have been a waste of money whereas the less expensive utility players have proven to be useful.

raskolnikov said:

I hope so, it would be smart to lower the debt as much as possible when you are relying on homegrown players mostly.
There is no need for many huge transfers the coming years.
But to be honest I have my doubts about Rosel being the type that is really interested in lowering it.

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Rosell is interested in lowering the debt, but not by means of reducing expenses (well, apart from the ultimately hilarious idea to save money by not using color copies) but by generating revenue which is probably the smart thing to do. Lowering debt means being able to meet your commitments on time to not let the debt + interest + interest on interest go through the roof. It would be a bad idea to excessively cut the expenses or to lay the focus on debt reduction via special payments because that way Barca would lose its' ability to compete in no time.

The problem is though, that Rosell's doing a bad job at it: The Qatar Foundation/Airline deal is the prime example: Not only was the deal tailor-made to piss the traditionalist fans and members off, NO, he also managed to sell out at less than fair value. I mean, being the most marketable club in the world and getting 30 million per season, seriously ? That's Messis' yearly wage + slush money for a club this big.

If we examine our signings since Pep took over, and divide them in expensive (+20£), medium (10-20£) and cheap (-10£) this is our (subjective, obviously) success rate:
Expensive: 2 failures (Chygrinskiy, Zlatan), 2 successes (Villa, Alves).
Medium: 3 failures (Keirrison, Hleb, Caceres), 3 successes (Keita, Mascherano, Alba), 1 unknown (Song)
Cheap: 2 failures (Henrique, Afellay), 3 successes (Pique, Maxwell, Adriano)

This is a bit crude, i know, and some are probably more in between (Maxwell, Afellay, maybe even Zlatan). But the outcome is rather predictable; there is no apparent link between transfer fee and success rate. As Soccermonics suggested, there is a much bigger link between wages and success, than transfer spending and success.

You forgot we also signed Cesc and Alexis.

Cesc seems to be a success while Alexis should be labelled 'unknown', just like Song.

raskolnikov said:

I hope so, it would be smart to lower the debt as much as possible when you are relying on homegrown players mostly.
There is no need for many huge transfers the coming years.
But to be honest I have my doubts about Rosel being the type that is really interested in lowering it.

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The debt is not a major issue or worrying issue. For the size of the club the level of debt is very low. The reason they are lowering it further at the moment is because then they can better raise investment for either building a new stadium or expanding the Camp Nou. In terms of transfer spending, it was mostly the transition from Eto'o -> Ibra -> Villa that boosted the figures. And they did get 24M back for Ibra from Milan.

An article that explains extensively the debt issues and what do they mean

http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2012/04/truth-about-debt-at-barcelona-and-real.html

Great article! Thanks for sharing a very interesting read.

no80s said:

An article that explains extensively the debt issues and what do they mean

http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2012/04/truth-about-debt-at-barcelona-and-real.html

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I read a lot of business and accounting journalism, this is an excellent article for laymen.

For Man U, keep in mind that the lion's share of the huge debt is paying off the Glazers' purchase of the club, so the club is in effect buying itself. The Glazers bought the club for almost no cash. This is very different from the debt of the Spanish clubs.

Current Barca financial management is realistic, unlike those they replaced. In technical accounting terms, the previous management were "irresponsible liars". Currently, there is debt, which is declining, and is at levels not out of line with the enormous revenue.

No English versions yet

Club record income of 530 million euros
WWW.FCBARCELONA.CAT 07/29/2014 13:00
Economic vice-president Javier Faus has given a press conference to review the 2013/14 finances, revealing that FC Barcelona has made its second highest profit ever of 41 million euros

FC Barcelona closed the 2013/14 season with a club record income of 530 million euros, as revealed today by economic vice-president Javier Faus at a press conference in the Ricard Maxenchs Pressroom, where he also explained that profits this year amounted to 41 million euros, a figure previously only topped by the 49 million euros in the 2011/12 season. Faus also explained that in the four seasons since 2010/11, when the new Board came into power, the club has an accumulated profit of 113 million euros.

The 2013/14 season also witnessed a reduction in the net debt by 44 million euros, meaning that since the new Board took over, this figure has decreased by 143 million, and as of June 30 of this year now stands at 287 million euros, while four years ago it was 431 million.

Javier Faus stressed that the unprecedented commercial and sponsorship deals involving FC Barcelona have been the driving force behind such positive changes. And the audits for the last four years have all been clean, without exceptions. He also commented that the closure of last season was the first since the entry in force of article 67 of the Statutes as approved at the last Assembly, and which has been satisfied due to the year ending with a profit and the club having a good Debt / EBITDA ratio.

Another point he wished to stress was how the club has progressed from its own funds being 62 million euros negative (on June 30, 2010) to 50 million positive.

In the last four years, FC Barcelona has risen from 24th to 2nd in the Forbes ranking of the most valuable clubs.