(Bloomberg) -- FC Barcelona, one of the world’s most successful football clubs, is facing a financial crisis that could cost the team its star signing of the season and an initial €50 million ($51.5 million) it paid for him.
Spain’s top-flight competition LaLiga removed midfielder Dani Olmo, as well as forward Pau Victor, from Barcelona’s official roster after the Catalan club failed to meet a Jan. 1 deadline to register the two players.
That could mean not only forfeiting the transfer fee paid in August to sign Olmo and seeing him sign with another club, but also having to pay his full salary through 2030 while he plays somewhere else, a multi-million-euro hit to the team’s already stretched finances.
The dilemma for Barça is a result of LaLiga’s stringent financial fair-play regulation. But it also highlights the club’s broader funding troubles, marking the latest twist in a years-long crisis.
While the team’s financing has been unraveling for close to a decade, the situation has come to a head in recent years under Chairman Joan Laporta, who’s sought to use a series of obscure financial deals to comply with league rules.
LaLiga sets teams’ salary caps based on their revenue, debt and losses. Barcelona, which in the past was the sole club whose spending limit was set at less than zero, was only able to register Olmo in August after another played suffered a long-term injury. That allowed the club to reassign 80% of his salary to Olmo.
To be sure, Barcelona is still exploring alternatives for resolving its financing issues, notably by trying to convince LaLiga it will have income from the sale of future rights to VIP seats worth millions of euros. But so far, the league has said that’s not enough. The club’s stadium is currently undergoing refurbishment.
Since his current term started in 2021, Laporta has sought to shore up the club’s coffers with a series of deals that haven’t always delivered, mostly linked to future income.
Those included selling 25% of the club’s LaLiga media rights to San Francisco-based investment firm Sixth Street Partners, the divestment of a 24.5% stake in content hub Barca Studios, and a stadium-naming deal with Spotify Technology SA.
The club also said last year that it would list its media business on the Nasdaq exchange through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. The deal valued the combined entity at $1 billion, but was ultimately shelved.
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