With only four days left until the start of the official season, Barça has activated the fourth and final lever to be able to register their signings. Seeing that LaLiga did not buy the Blaugrana accounts, the board decided to sell 25% of Barça Studios to GDA Luma. According to Cadena SER, with this move the club would still need another 30 million to be able to register the new additions.
Last week Barça already announced that it would receive 100 million for the sale of 24.5% of Barça Studios to Socios.com, including in this package metaverses, tokens and NFTs. Unlike television rights, which were sold for 25 years, this sale is final.
The sale of 49% of Barça Studios was authorized in October in an assembly in which audiovisual productions, such as series and films, were discussed, but not about monetizing digital assets such as metaverse, tokens and NFTs. You can remember that two weeks ago Barça sold its first NFT for $693,000.
After activating the first two levers, 25% of the television rights for 25 years to Sixth Street for 537.5 million, the club was reluctant to activate the two Barça Studios. But seeing that Frenkie de Jong was reluctant to leave and that no money was being taken in the exit operation, the board has agreed to part with these technological assets to avoid the obstacles of LaLiga fair play.
The other way is through wage cuts. At the gates of the start of the championship, Barça reported that it sees signs of criminality in the renewals that Josep Maria Bartomeu signed a week before resigning Piqué, De Jong, Ter Stegen and Lenglet. The club has proposed to recover the previous wages, noting that otherwise it will take him to court. Piqué, the only one who did not benefit from the renewal, is the only one who has shown himself ready to lend a hand at the moment.
Piqué, on the cut like last year
The Catalan central is negotiating a new contract, which would end as before in 2024, lowering his salary very significantly. A move that, together with the fourth lever, would facilitate the registration of the five signings (Christensen, Kessié, Raphinha, Lewandowski and Koundé, not counting the re-signed Sergi Roberto and Dembélé). You can remember that Piqué already lowered his salary last year to allow the registration on the horn of Eric Garcia and Memphis Depay. Busquets, who also took a pay cut last September, could also make another gesture in this regard, just like Pjanic, who knows that if he wants to stay he must lower his emoluments.
The continuation of the Bosnian midfielder will mean the departure of Nico, who could close in the next few hours his transfer to a Valencia that is also interested in Abde. Collado, seeing that he will not have minutes, looks for destiny.
35 million in transfers
Barça also want to release Samuel Umtiti, Martin Braithwaite and Memphis Depay. It remains to be seen what happens to Balde when Marcos Alonso arrives. So far, beyond reducing the wage bill, the club has only been able to cash in on Phillipe Coutinho (20), Ferran Jutglà (5) and Trincao (3 +7), since Òscar Mingueza, Neto, Clément Lenglet and Riqui Puig they left for free.
