The Barça assembly votes electronically and in the dark for sponsorship with Spotify

Joan Laporta, the president of Barça, has convened this Sunday the assembly of delegates to approve the sponsorship agreement with Spotify. An agreement, the “most important in the history of the club”, of which no official figures have been provided, the leader taking refuge in “a confidentiality clause” required by the Swedish streaming platform. 4,478 members are invited, but not physically.

It is, therefore, the first telematic assembly in the history of Barça, which can be followed through the club’s website, on You Tube or on Barça TV, a channel that in Catalonia can be followed on DTT through any platform.

They will vote on that agreement, which will mean, according to leaks, some 275 million euros, including all concepts: front of the men’s and women’s first team shirt (60 million per year until 2026), training shirt (five million until 2025) and put the name of Spotify to the old Camp Nou (another five million more until 2026 as well).

The club has not given any figures, despite the fact that Laporta has slipped on several occasions that he would have loved to reveal them. But the multinational Spotify has been, according to the club, intransigent, which is why it has prevented the members from having all the necessary information to exercise their right to vote this Sunday in the face of one of the most important agreements in the history of the club because, for the first time, the name of the stadium will be changed.

Those 4,478 committers have been summoned virtually hours before Barça faces Sevilla at the Camp Nou in the return to the League after the spectacular 0-4 against Madrid, two weeks ago now at the Bernabéu.

Until now, Barça’s sponsorship was spread over several brands: Rakuten was on the men’s shirt and Stanley on the women’s, while Beko was the Blaugrana’s business partner on the sleeve and training clothes. Now everything remains, if the partners endorse it, absorbed by the Swedish multinational in a contract that extends unevenly over time.

The duration is four years, both in the men’s and women’s shirts, reaching, according to those unofficial figures, 60 million (practically the same as Rakuten, with 55, and Stanley, with five). In other words, Barça reaches pre-pandemic figures just now that it is coming out of it. In the training shirt it is only five million, while Beko before the arrival of the coronavirus contributed 10 million per year. And unequal also in the economic plane between the old Camp Nou (five million) and the new Camp Nou, which would bring him 20 million euros over the next 12 years. That is, until 2034.

That mega agreement leaves Barça with only one asset to sell. It is the sleeve of the shirt, the only thing that is free to sponsor after the pact with Spotify. “We have six or seven interested brands,” revealed the Barça president, who will open the telepathic assembly at 10 in the morning on first call. The second and last call has been set for 10:30 a.m., which will open an unprecedented assembly for many reasons.

Unpublished because an agreement has to be voted on for which no precise figures or references have been given. Unpublished because it is the first to be done electronically. Unpublished, moreover, because if the assembly authorizes it, it will change the name of the old Camp Nou, built in 1957, for the first time. If Laporta receives the support he expects, it will be the Spotify Camp Nou from this coming July 1.