BarcelonaIt’s getting less and less until Barça have to go to Montjuïc. Once the Blaugrana first team plays the last League match of this season at the Camp Nou, on the weekend of May 28 against Mallorca, they will have to pack their bags to leave for some time on the Olympic mountain with the aim that the more complex works of remodeling their stadium can be carried out. At the very least, the Lluís Companys will be played there throughout the 2023-2024 season, but sources from the Barça board admit that the exile could also affect some matches of the 2024-2025 season.
Beyond the emotional blow that competing as a local away from home will entail, leaving the Camp Nou will imply a sharp decline in three areas of the club’s income: matchday (especially due to ticket sales and the drop inhospitality due to a significant decrease in VIP areas), museum and merchandising. Experts estimate that the income that the entity will no longer have per year for these three concepts while it plays in Montjuïc will be around 100 million euros. In this sense, the number of spectators that the Olympic Stadium will have while Barça plays there will be significantly lower than initially planned, a fact that will cause the loss of turnover per match day (mainly, due to the sale of tickets) increase even more.
The Olympic Stadium has a capacity of 56,000 spectators, a little more than half of the 99,354 at Camp Nou. However, Barça’s economic vice-president, Eduard Romeu, revealed in an interview with Via Company that the number could still be lower if you want all attendees to enjoy good visibility. In this regard, the ARA has been able to learn from sources at the club that the adaptation of Montjuïc so that Barça can play there, which will cost around 20 million euros, may mean that the capacity has to be reduced to 40,000 viewers following the most conservative forecasts.
This figure is less than half the season ticket members of the Catalan club, 83,500, and the average attendance in the first 10 official matches at the Camp Nou this season, of 83,609. The match attended by the most spectators, 92,605, was last Saturday’s match against Almeria, Gerard Piqué’s farewell.
Barça are aware of the magnitude of the disruption that going to Montjuïc will entail and explain that “it is never a good time to carry out works” and admit that the logistics of the matches at the Olympic Stadium will be complicated. “But it would also be a commotion to carry out the works in a Camp Nou with limited capacity and with matches every three days, leaving aside the fact that the duration of the works would be at least two more years”, they argue. Thus, they consider that “an exercise of Barcelonaism must be carried out and assume that concessions will have to be made during a season” if the goal of reforming the Camp Nou is to be achieved.
A stadium adapted to concerts
“Among other works, evacuation updates will have to be done. The Olympic Stadium is very outdated and in recent times it was adapted to hold concerts. This means, for example, that so that people can access the playing field and it can be evacuated, there are currently no seats in one of the grounds”, explains an expert in sports facilities who knows the grounds well to this newspaper Montjuïc Right now, the concert scheduled there furthest in time is that of Harry Styles on July 23, 2023, shortly before Barça will play the first matches of the 2023-2024 season there.
A favor to the city
The expenditure that the club will have to make to update the facility will be dedicated, above all, to the improvement of the lighting to adapt to the requirements of the League and the Champions League, the setting up of the pitch and the reform of the changing rooms, in addition to the already mentioned improvement of visibility for spectators. “In the end, going to Montjuïc is like a contribution to the city, for the adaptations and everything that needs to be done at the Olympic Stadium and its area of influence”, also advanced Eduard Romeu in the Via Company. In addition, he was concerned about the complications that can be caused by playing in a place that is difficult to access: “Go and tell people to do the favor and the sacrifice of going up to Montjuïc and solve, for example, the traffic jam that can be organized and that was already set up in those years when we went to Sant Jordi to watch basketball”.
