Barça home set for $1.6 billion dress-up

Article posted by Coliseum, February 16^th, 2023

Image: FC Barcelona

The LaLiga club FC Barcelona’s home pitch – the Spotify Camp Nou in Barcelona, Spain – is set for a $1.6 billion revamp.

‘YARDBARKER’ stated that the club is looking to raise the funds from private debt investors and courting investors in the United States private placement market. The investment banking company Goldman Sachs Group and the financial services company JPMorgan Chase are reportedly arranging the sale.

Futbol Club Barcelona, commonly referred to as Barcelona and colloquially known as Barça, is a professional football club based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, that competes in LaLiga, the top flight of Spanish football.

The 99,354-capacity Camp Nou, officially branded as the Spotify Camp Nou for sponsorship reasons, is a football stadium in Barcelona, Spain. It has been the home stadium of FC Barcelona since its completion in 1957.

The stadium renovations are part of a broader project called Espai Barça.

The Espai Barça development plan goes well beyond modernization and reconstruction of FC Barcelona’s home venue Spotify Camp Nou. In addition to increasing the capacity of the current stadium to 105,000 from circa 99,000 and completely revamping the current structure of Spotify Camp Nou, the Espai Barça project entails building a new Palau Blaugrana with a capacity of 15,000, an additional court with a capacity of 2,000, an ice rink, a new social area, a new commercial area, revamped club offices, La Masía (read FC Barcelona’s youth academy), and an additional 5,000 parking spots. This ambitious initiative has been in work for several years and is scheduled to be ready for the 2024-2025 seasons. In April 2014, Espai Barça was approved by the club’s members with a budget of $700 million.

Goldman Sachs is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in New York (US). Goldman Sachs is the second largest investment bank in the world by revenue and is ranked 57^th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational financial services company headquartered in New York City (US) and incorporated in Delaware. It is the largest bank in the United States and the world’s largest bank by market capitalization.

Earlier this month, the club signed an agreement with the construction engineering company Limak to take charge of the stadium’s construction set to begin in June.

FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta said Limak was the sole bidding company committed to achieving “the time targets set by the club”, who is returning to the stadium before December 2024 and a completed project before June 2026.

He added, “Every season we are away means a loss of around [$99.3 million] for the club.”

Football Financing

‘YARDBARKER’ further stated that the financing plan includes three tranches of senior notes – around $533.6 million each – maturing in 2032, 2045 and 2052, according to the Kroll Bond Rating Agency.

Laporta said that with a financing structure in place and the work of Limak, Barça “will finally have a world-class stadium with the capacity to generate a lot more revenue.”

With global and ambitious construction operations, Limak Construction is Turkey’s second largest international contractor.

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