Barca economic Vice President, Susana Monje, presented the economic
balance of the 2015-2016 season. Before going on, let me make a couple of
considerations.
The first is, Mrs. Monje, that the fact that the judge has concluded
that the famous 40M€ paid to N&N
for the transfer of Neymar to Barca are salary and no transfer, does not mean
that this transfer has cost 19,3M€.
At "accounting" level it will be reflected in this way in the books,
sure. But the reality is that, between one thing and another, the transfer (not
counting the "real" wage the contract says), is around 100M€. That we are not experts in Economics
does not mean we do not know about addition and subtraction.
The second consideration is that, according to the same Mrs. Monje, the
accounts have been audited, as established by law and that, for the sixth
consecutive year the accounts have been validated without any annotation.
Perfect. Or not. If auditors are the same who said they were 40M€ transfer and,
it turns out they are not, I would not be too quiet. Let us not forget that the
Club has come to recognize two tax crimes, while the same authors (who signed
the agreements, Mr. Rosell and Mr. Bartomeu), have come free of any charge. And
it was audited. Not to joke about it.
Let the numbers as such. As starting point, when you see the big
numbers, you can’t say anything but: AMAZING! They had budgeted income 633M€, against 598,5M€ spending, with a profit (before tax) of 34.5M€. The results were:
Income: 679M€ (+46M€)
Expenses: 630M€ (+31.5M€)
Benefit: 49M€ (+14.5M€)
Moreover, debt has been reduced from 328M€ to 271M€, i.e. 57M€. Another great news in terms of
numbers:
Now, let's analyze where these data come from, and we’ll see that the
situation, although economically it seems more than good, at productive level
perhaps it is not so.
The first thing is that the club received a bonus of 24M€ from Nike and sold players
(Pedro+Bartra+Adama), for a total of 48M€.
That is, as such, we have only achieved revenues of 607M€. When it comes to
reaching 1,000M€ in 2021, it seems to be quite difficult if there is no ability
to generate more revenue out of extraordinary circumstances. Because there is
something we can’t forget: the great clubs are players-buyers, not sellers.
Clubs of medium/small size include in their budgets the sale of one or two
players to have a balanced numbers. The large, don’t. And at Barca, heading
fastest growing in terms of revenue is sales of players and, marketing (new
sponsors), not selling products.
What does this mean? Well, I understand that this means that the economic
model that we have is not useful anymore. If you look at the
"Stadium" section, you will see that increases 9M€ over the previous year. A game like Spanish Super Cup (paying
for socis now), can allow to enter 4-5M€.
There is a clear stagnation. I repeat: for an economist, what matters is the
total amount, but for those who have to get the money means something is not
done well.
Let's go to debt. 57M€ less.
But, if there is no the sales we have said before, you can’t reduce debt. We
are back in the same place. Since there is no normal increase in revenue, the
only way is the extraordinary one. And, of course, it’s not every year that
extra millions will come from a sponsor or we’ll sell enough players to fix the
situation.
Think, on the other hand, that more sponsors mean fewer tickets to sell
... or less socis in the Stadium. As the agreements are
"confidential", we don’t know what the sponsors have in exchange, but
everywhere, one of the things they receive are obviously match tickets. The
more sponsors, the more tickets you have to give, obviously. And the Estadi has
a limited capacity. Therefore, if we add sponsors, we will have to stop selling
tickets or, when there are socis who leave the Club, these seats will not go to
socis who are on the waiting list. They have not said the number of
season-holders tickets. Last year it was 84,000. We'll see how many are this year
or next year.
We go to a third point. The payroll. The budget was 419M€ meaning 66% of
revenues. The reality tells us it is 435M€, representing 69%; if winning the
League and Cup is not included in the budget, we have a problem. A problem
aggravated when the amounts paid in bonuses to players exceed the bonuses we
receive from sponsors and others. Somewhere the accounts have been done too
lightly, without calculating all circumstances. And this year, unfortunately,
we didn’t win the Champions League, which always represents an expense that
makes all the economy stagger the club. It can’t be.
To all this we have to add the issue of "Grand Sponsor": 35M€ (5%¡¡ of the Budget), for a Board
that shows off Trident, Triplet and I don’t know what else. 35M€ for a shirt that wear the world's
best player by far, the one that should be his replacement and the best striker
in the world. When you see all this, it is clear that, at commercial and image level,
things aren’t well done. All this, when you're considered one of the most
valuable Clubs in the world (it matters little whether first or second, because
the criteria used can have many variables, the fact is you are up there). Me,
I'm sorry, but I do not understand any of this. Or they are very bad selling
the club or I don’t know what to think.
In short: the financial situation of the club looks very good -although
still they have not explained why it was that Nolito (18M€) could not come in January, but we have now these figures of
income and profits-, but, on the other hand, the business situation it is
stagnant, without solutions to increase revenue, either by way of further
exploitation of what is done now, either by way of new activities to do. In the
short term they can give us good results and the accounts can be good. Once
everything is sold, what will they do?
Club sports model have been already burst. Now, it seems they will do the
same with the economic model. Selling players to have benefits is sending us away,
every day, of being "More than a Club" and brings us closer,
increasingly, to be "One more Club".
Jordi Pascual
