By Tony Attwood
And so we were having a debate about how Arsenal compares with Barcelona and Real Madrid, and we drew up a little league table showing all three clubs in their current league positions. Arsenal, as you will see, have played one game fewer than the Spanish clubs, scored fewer and conceded fewer.
|
Club
|
P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
| Arsenal | 10 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 18 | 3 | 15 | 25 | |
|
Real Madrid
|
11 | 10 | 0 | 1 | 26 | 10 | 16 | 30 | |
|
Barcelona
|
11 | 8 | 1 | 2 | 28 | 13 | 15 | 25 |
Having done that, we wondered what the big differences are between the Spanish and Premier Leagues. And here’s a hint: Barcelona changed auditors not once but twice his year.
So we, like others, do take an occasional interest in Barcelona and its finances, not least because they seem bonkers even by the standard of bonkersness that is a fundamental feature of most football economics.
And Barcelona remain of interest because they seem to me to be an example of what can happen to any business that believes in its right to be there, competing at a certain level, even when all the economics suggest otherwise.
Indeed, “otherwise” is perhaps the appropriate word here since the club is not yet back in its own ground, which is being renovated and upgraded, which costs money. And that is the bit that interests me, because each time I take a look at Barcelona’s finances I get more and more puzzled. Having sold its future TV revenue for a big sum, in order to pay off past debts, it still seems to need the TV money to pay for current expenditure. Yet they say they are financially fine. I remain puzzled.
And this is a matter of interest because lots of football clubs lose money. Indeed, Arsenal lose money under the current regime, whereas they made a profit before the Kroenkes came along. Maybe everything is fine, but all things considered, I would much prefer Arsenal not to go bust.
Of course, what I love about present-day Arsenal is their youth policy. All these youngsters coming along who cost Arsenal nothing in transfer fees, and in this, Arsenal’s approach is very different from the Barcelona approach of buying people like Neymar. Now he’s gone to PSG, who can afford him, because PSG are financed by the Qatari government, who are not likely to go bust while we keep using their oil.
And because Barcelona were paid £200m for him, which could be added to the fact that the club were making money every year with income was rising each season. In fact, it seems that the only clubs with higher incomes were Real Madrid and Manchester United.
But there was a problem because Barcelona only made a profit because it made money from selling players: it didn’t make a profit from playing football in front of large crowds. And therein lies a problem because if the football does not attract the crowds, then the whole financial model collapses.
So to cover this problem, Barcelona decided to improve its attractiveness by buying in better and better players, and it paid for them by selling off their future TV revenue. This money then paid the salaries and transfer fees of players currently on the books. In fact, in 2025 they spent £300m on new signings.
And the process worked. They won the Spanish league in 2023 and 2025 and got to the semi-final of the Champions League in 2025.
But Neymar going meant that even more was spent on players both in transfer fees and wages, including on Messi, whose salary appears to have reached over £475m a year although some estimates are for a bit less
Salary payments across the Argentinian’s employment and image-rights contracts totalled up to £250million, a renewal bonus landed him £100m and a loyalty bonus for staying beyond February 2020 would provide another £70m. Other elements of the contract were performance-related, so not everything was achieved, but I’ve not seen anything come in at under £450m a year. And yet there was Covid – during which players were still paid, but us mortals were not in the stadia. Messi agreed to defer his salary – but not forgo it. The club President resigned; the club lost about half a billion pounds in one season, and they couldn’t sign any new players.
The only options Barca could find were selling players to Manchester City and Chelsea, whose finances did not seem to be restricted, and who spent over £400m on Barca’s fire sale. And it was at this time that Barcelona came up with the wheeze of selling 25% of their TV income projected for the next quarter-century – all in one go.
Unfortunately, Barcelona didn’t check all the details of the deal with the Spanish league before they did it, and the League wasn’t that happy and refused to register some of the players Barcelona had bought. But some nifty selling of assets also managed to reduce their tax liabilities while boosting income, (although some of these deals began to look a bit fishy and legal cases are now being fought). Indeed, it seems (and I must stress that – it seems to me) that Grant Thornton, the auditors of Barcelona’s accounts, wouldn’t immediately sign the accounts off.
For it appears that in the past the club had control over and profited from its media activities. That doesn’t now seem to be the case. But it does seem that Barcelona have been selling the rights to some of the seats in the stadium to companies who now have the absolute right to sell them on for the next 30 years at whatever price they wish. It has also sold on almost half of its licensing and merchandising business. So in essence, it is selling bits of the club that have for decades been making profits for the club, to other companies, in return for money now.
Behind all this is the fact that (as always seems to happen) the cost of rebuilding the stadium has doubled, and income from games has halved. and the project is way behind schedule. And Barcelona has effectively run out of institutions that will loan it money at anything remotely like normal rates of interest. The club’s debts are over £1.5bn, although no one is quite sure how much, and fewer and fewer institutions seem to want to loan it anything more as the club’s debt goes up day by day.
Even Uefa are getting edgy. The Court for Arbitration in Sport has recently upheld fines against Barcelona for financial misrepresentation of the club’s situation in its accounts, although income is now growing again through sales of naming and other sponsorship rights, but profit on player sales is declining and transfer spending is declining. But the wages bill is rising.
If there is a summary to be had of Barcelona’s problems, it is that they are competing in the market with PSG and Manchester City, but don’t have the access those clubs have to the funds of a nation. If there is to be proof that all is not well, it is that the Barcelona board keep offering personal guarantees over their debts so they can register the players they have recently bought. Meanwhile, debt refinancing carries on apace while new fundraising efforts continue. Profits however, are elusive.
