Barcelona are exploring the sale of VIP boxes at the newly refurbished Camp Nou in 20-year commitments in a move to register first-team squad players in January.
The club are seeking to raise funds in a manoeuvre that would help them register Dani Olmo and Pau Victor in their squad for the second half of the 2024-25 season in La Liga.
While the figures remain unclear, it is reported that the sale of VIP boxes in the stadium over a 20-year period would raise between €100m-200million (£83-166m; $106-212m) for Barcelona, which would increase their spending potential for La Liga’s salary cap.
Alongside the club’s new multi-year commercial deal with Nike, which club sources have said would bring in a total figure of €1.7bn to Barcelona over the next 14 years, the club are confident this will suffice to see their salary limit improve with La Liga.
GO DEEPER
Barca’s new Nike deal explained: Is it really worth €1.7billion? And is it bigger than Real Madrid’s?
Any operation to sell VIP boxes, which would need to be checked and improved by the Spanish league, is yet to be completed and is just one route the club are exploring.
Club sources, speaking on the basis of anonymity to protect relationships, have indicated that the Nike deal alone would not create sufficient room to register Olmo and Victor in Hansi Flick’s squad.
Barcelona’s struggles to meet La Liga’s salary limit had made it difficult for them to register new players in the summer but a resolution was found due to long-term injuries at the club.
Clubs are afforded flexibility in case a registered player suffers an injury that will keep them out for four months or longer, which for Barcelona was the case with Ronald Araujo and Andreas Christensen, and later Marc-Andre Ter Stegen — allowing the wages of those players to be freed up.
Araujo’s injury freed up the space for Inigo Martinez to be registered for the entirety of 2024-25, while the salary space created by Christensen’s injury allowed Olmo to be registered for the first half of the season.
Araujo is expected to return to action this month and Christensen is targeting a January return, while Ter Stegen is out for the season with a knee ligament injury, with Barcelona signing Wojciech Szczesny to provide back-up for Inaki Pena.
(Top image: Pedro Salado/Getty Images)
