Barcelona“It will be a gold mine”. This is how Joan Laporta presented Barça Mobile, the latest business venture of one of the club’s fashion partners, Ruslan Birladeanu. But the big announcement, over time, has not been accompanied by any kind of action: since November 21, 2024, New Era Visionary Group – the company responsible for taking the Barça operator forward – was made official as “official telecom operator“, the project has not yet started. In fact, according to the ARA, an advertising company has reported the subsidiary of the United Arab Emirates company in Barcelona for non-payment of 73,718.21 euros. The reporting company, which would have designed a marketing and promotion campaign for Birladeanu’s company, has not yet been paid for its services.
In addition, sources in the sector indicate to the ARA that planning, agreeing and launching a mobile company from scratch that uses the connectivity and network of a third party, in this case MasOrange, can require between three and five months of work. New Era has been dragging out the order since at least the end of 2024. Despite the delay, the company assures that in the coming weeks the project will be cleared and, finally, Barça’s mobile and fiber operator will be able to see the light of day. New Era Visionary Group was presented as a company “world leader in connectivity and infrastructure integrations”, despite the fact that its only and first client was Barça itself. Birladeanu, its founder, also had no experience in the world of telecoms.
At the end of 2024, the Moldovan businessman gained a lot of weight in the cultural offices. Although until then his relationship with the club was solely the sale of luxury watches under the Barça brand through an Estonian company owned by his son, between November and January he was assigned the job of taking forward Barça Mobile, he was chosen as “systems integrator” of the 5G antennas at the Camp Nou and bought for 70 million euros a part of the seat lever vip. Three key operations for the entity, especially the third, which had to solve recurring problems with the fair play finance.
And the remaining 30 million?
If this year Barça arrived in the winter market with the peace of mind of being able to sign Cancelo with the resignation of Christensen, a year ago the club experienced an extreme situation: Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor were not registered and Barça needed to prove income to solve the situation. In this context, Barça went in search of buyers for a pioneer product in Europe, the Personal Seat License (PSL). Better known as the seat business vipthe club ended up finding two investors that it wanted to keep secret. Some time later it became known that one of them was New Era Visionary Group; the other, the Qatari company Forta Advisors.
The agreement distributed, in exchange for 100 million euros, 475 Camp Nou seats for the next thirty years. New Era promised to pay 70 million, while Forta Advisors paid 30. Although the Qatari side, with Pini Zahavi as an intermediary, made the full deposit, New Era turned over only a first payment of 28 million and left 42 outstanding. Although there have been reports in recent weeks that the payment expected in September 2025 had not yet arrived, official sources at the club say that 12 million has come in which is reflected in the latest audited accounts. Thus, there are only about 30 left. They should arrive before the end of this current financial year. However, in the cultural environment and close to Joan Laporta’s board of directors, there is a suspicion that this will not be the case or that the money will only be collected after a total or partial resale of the New Era PSL package.
The Camp Nou aerials
Another cool operation that was resolved in favor of New Era was the assignment of the Camp Nou 5G antennas. Although leading companies in the sector such as Telefónica or Cellnex entered the tender to obtain the work, Barça and Limak – builder of Espai Barça – preferred that Birladeanu’s company be in charge. But since New Era doesn’t have the necessary tools to be able to install them, the final person in charge of their placement has also ended up being Orange. New Era, therefore, only served as a “systems integrator”.
As the club announced, the antennas at the future Camp Nou must offer “very low latency and perfect connectivity”. For this reason, its placement was expected to have an impact of 12 million euros for Espai Barça. Sources close to the operation explain that Orange has received 6 million euros from Limak for the infrastructure.
Barça Mobile, under maintenance until this Monday
The idea of creating an operator under the Barça brand also comes from afar. In fact, as already detailed by the ARA, the proposal was born in a meeting in February 2024 between the club and Parlem Telecom. Months later, to the surprise of the Catalan telco, the project went to New Era. In April of last year, the company started selling e-SIM cards through its website. The page had been under maintenance for a few weeks, but it has been working again since this Monday. According to New Era, they are preparing for when “soon” they finally launch the operator. Orange sources also say that they could have been on the market for months and, in fact, they don’t understand why they haven’t done it yet.
Voices close to the offices of Aristides Maillol also explain to ARA the rarity of the agreement between Birladeanu and the club to take the operator forward. Normally, when a third party wants to exploit the Barça brand in order to open or promote a business, the club and the company concerned conclude a sponsorship agreement. These deals bring financial benefits to the club. With New Era, however, that would not have been the case. “They’ve been given a business,” they say.
In recent months, Birladeanu’s company has also experienced structural changes. Specifically, from September 18, 2025, Réka Monika Bors has become joint and several representative of the group’s subsidiary in Barcelona, New Era Visionary Group Iberia SL. The new addition, as indicated by voices from the company, is responsible for spearheading technological development. Sources from the company also tell ARA that they will open new offices “near the cathedral of Barcelona”. It is expected that they will locate the call center.
