Barcelona strike €120m deal in exchange for 29.5% of company for media section

Barcelona have announced a series of agreements for various media assets that will inject €120m into the club’s coffers.

The agreement sees Barcelona sell 29.5% of their Bridgeburg Invest, a holding company for Barca Vision, to German investment fund Libero and Dutch investment fund NIPA. Those shares were previously owned by Socios and Orpheus Media, who previously had bought 49.5% of the same company for €200m but had not yet received payments for.

They will still own 10% each of those rights, while Libero and Nipa have acquired at the same rate as Orpheus Media and Socios – although arguably taking into account inflation, this is actually less money for Barcelona.

Barcelona are currently scrambling to register players for their La Liga opener on Sunday against Getafe, and these funds will no doubt help towards that. However as was the case with Orpheus and Socios, the timeline for their payments is not yet clear, thus it is not clear exactly how much this will help.

The club announcement noted that Barca Media have also reached an agreement to facilitate growth with Mountain & Co. I Acquisition Corp, although it is not yet clear what shares the Swiss venture capitalist fund will have and what Barcelona will own.

Laporta: “This step that we are taking now, with the investment, is a strategic move that provides us with new resources to continue growing at a time when the demand for digital sports content is clearly expanding; reinforcing the path of digital transformation that started in…

— barcacentre (@barcacentre) August 11, 2023

They also explain that Barca Vision encompasses new online operations such as NFTs, Web3 and metaverse that involve the club, whereas Barca Media specifically relates to the distribution of image rights for Barcelona, perhaps their most valuable asset.

This is part of a process that Barcelona began last summer, as they tried to boost the competitiveness of their team last season in return for the sale of their assets.