Barça revenue maximizing Espai Barça plan

Article posted by Coliseum, December 14^th, 2022

Image: FC Barcelona

The LaLiga club FC Barcelona is teaming up with the premium experiences company Legends International to promote the design and marketing of the future VIP boxes and seats at their renovated home pitch – the Spotify Camp Nou in Barcelona, Spain – the epicenter of Espai Barça.

‘FC Barcelona’ stated that this new alliance comes together with one with the Innovative Partnerships Group (IPG 360), with which the club has already started working on the search for new partners and strategic associations for the project. Thus, Barça is joining forces with two leading international companies with the aim of maximizing the generation of new revenue associated with the future stadium.

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.

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

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.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, Dallas and New York, Legends International is a leading company in the field of commercial management of stadiums, large entertainment venues and premium experiences. It specializes in providing holistic solutions to sports organizations and clubs as well as their stadiums and facilities. The company is owned by investment fund Sixth Street Partners, Jerry Jones (owner of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League [NFL]) and Yankee Global Enterprises (New York Yankees of the Major League Baseball [MLB]).

The Innovative Partnerships Group (IPG 360) is a leading Los Angeles (US)-based naming rights, business development and international marketing firm focused on generating long-term strategic business partnerships for prestigious global brands. It is specialized in the sports, music and entertainment industries and has extensive experience with clients from professional leagues, governing bodies and franchises and teams from the main sports competitions including LaLiga, NFL, National Basketball Association (NBA), National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Soccer (MLS), MLB, and the Olympics.

The Innovative Partnerships Group also works with a patented system, Partnership Intelligence™, which helps companies and brands accurately assess, align and measure their potential sponsorship deals.

‘FC Barcelona’ further stated that based in the United States, both the companies are among the leaders in their respective areas of expertise and provide a vision of the best practices and trends on the international side in the commercial use of large sports facilities. Their experience will play a key role in the generation of new income, a fundamental element for the project to restructure the Spotify Camp Nou, as well as Espai Barça in general. Two of the main ways to achieve this goal are new partnership agreements linked with the stadium, and a renewed offer of VIP spaces and experiences once the work is finished.

Regarding the former area, the current agreement with Spotify (Swedish audio streaming and media services provider) for the title rights of the Camp Nou was just the first of a series of additional agreements on which the club is working with leading companies in sectors such as sustainability, mobility and technology, and which should be closed in the coming months. The future stadium will offer a new range of 100 percent Barça experiences, in addition to a design that incorporates a wide variety of VIP boxes and seats of much higher quality than at present, and in line with the best European stadiums, the aim being to treble the number of places currently being offered.

These proposed revenue sources are two of the most essential for the viability of the financing plan proposed for the project. The plan is for them to jointly report to the club more than 120 million euros per year once the new stadium is finished and at full capacity.

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