Barça activates the second lever for 315 million euros

Barcelona activated this Friday the second economic lever, key to being able to complete an exciting squad even if the club mortgages its future. The entity chaired by Joan Laporta made official a new agreement with Sixth Street for the sale of the remaining 15% of the television rights for the next 25 years for 315 million euros, income that will mean a new oxygen ball for the culé club to alleviate the financial crisis and continue bidding in the current transfer market.

“We continue to advance in our strategy and we are delighted to have completed this additional agreement with Sixth Street that provides us with a significant increase in our financial strength,” said Joan Laporta in the statement issued by Barça. The Barça president thus manages to definitively close the first part of the two proposals that he took to the extraordinary assembly on June 16, in which he received the support of the members for the sale of 25% of the television rights for the next 25 years.

The initial idea of ​​the Barça board of directors was to diversify that percentage into various investment funds, but the strength of Sixth Street, which has put 315 million euros on the table, as the Mundo Deportivo newspaper assures, for this second lever, It has been decisive when carrying out the operation.

With this second purchase, the Sixth Street investment fund has managed to acquire the entire available package of television rights that Barcelona had for sale. The Americans, who boast of being “a leading global company with more than 60,000 million dollars in assets under management and committed capital”, took over the initial 10% on June 30 for 207.5 million euros, a sale that served for the culés to close the financial year in a positive way and could give the starting signal in the transfer market.

That day work began on the second lever, an operation that has finally closed a similar price, 315 million euros for the remaining 15%. “Futbol Club Barcelona is one of the world’s leading sports organizations, and we are delighted to expand our relationship through this additional investment,” said Alan Waxman, co-founder and CEO of Sixth Street.

With this new lever, Barcelona would have already entered a total of 522.5 million euros thanks to the agreements approved in the extraordinary assembly, an amount that, yes, could not stay there according to what Laporta estimated that the club culé had to receive to clean up the accounts. “We need to enter 600 million to recover normality and we are going to achieve it sooner than expected. “We have several proposals and the assessment that has been made of the entire company we think is 700 million,” said the Barça president last month.

To get that amount, Barcelona is already working to activate the third economic lever. The culé club still has 49.9% of BLM for sale, the company that is in charge of exploiting the retail business, and for which Joan Laporta hopes to receive, “being very conservative”, an amount that ranges between 200 and the 300 million. With this operation, the maximum president culé would manage to exceed 700 million euros in income, would clean up the accounts and could count on at least an initial capital gain of more than 500 million for the 2022-2023 financial year.

new stage

In this way, Barça achieves a new injection for a transfer market in which it wants to continue being the protagonist. After the arrivals of Ousmane Dembélé, Robert Lewandowski and Raphinha, the Catalans are now working on the additions of César Azpilicueta and Marcos Alonso, whose negotiations are already advanced with Chelsea, and they have Iñigo Martínez on the horizon, after knowing that Jules Koundé will play at Stamford Bridge, and Bernardo Silva. These are operations that require a strong investment and for which Barça was waiting for the activation of the following levers to make a move.