FC Barcelona press release

FC Barcelona are satisfied with the outcome of yesterday’s voting during Congress’ Culture and Sport Commission, convened to issue a ruling on the Sports Law Project. An overwhelming majority of political parties voted against amending article 89 of the Sports Law Project, an amendment promoted by LaLiga, which was contrary to the club’s interests and could have jeopardised the club’s future if approved.

Said amendment sought to change LaLiga’s financial powers, which are currently held exclusively by the Clubs as set out in the Sports Law, as well as how to later correct some of the alleged irregularities in the agreement reached between LaLiga and the investment fund, CVC (the so-called “La Liga Impulso”), which was challenged in the law courts by Athletic Club, Real Madrid and Futbol Club Barcelona at the time, on being considered unlawful, and which is, therefore, currently pending legal resolution.

FC Barcelona are happy that their commercial rights are not going to be expropriated as LaLiga had hoped. Commercial rights are the main source of income for the entity, given the club’s member-owned model does not allow for injections of external capital, as is the case with sporting public limited companies. Approval of the amendment promoted by LaLiga could have jeopardised our club’s viability, after almost 123 years’ history.

Justification for the amendment promoted by LaLiga was based on an untrue account that “some clubs in the professional leagues have overestimated their audio-visual incomes in recent years”, when FC Barcelona actually has virtually the same income as prior to Royal Decree-law 5/2015, of 30 April, while the remaining clubs - apart from Real Madrid and FC Barcelona - doubled their income over the same period.

FC Barcelona encourages the LaLiga teams to seek out shared and joint solutions, without trespassing on the rights of over 31,000 federated clubs that legitimately aspire to form part of LaLiga over the next 50 years. As such, they offer other sporting entities support in the search for alternative sources of resources, as FC Barcelona did recently on opting for another route, which along with being legal and taking half the time, represents vastly improved financial terms to those agreed between LaLiga and the investment fund, CVC.