Just like the president did John Laporta At the press conference last Tuesday, the FC Barcelona has officially announced the sale of Spotify Camp Nou VIP seats with a new business model for the club called Personal Seat License (PSL). As the Barça entity points out, this model “is a paradigm shift in the exploitation model of Hospitality“taking as reference the sports organizations of the United States in the NFL and the NBA.
He Barça wants to make it clear in its statement that “investors acquire a VIP seat and subsequently take charge, if they so deem it, of marketing them or making use of them themselves. In this way, the club reduces the risk in the marketing process of this type of seats and that income is assured for the entire period of operation and investors pay: i) the license for the use of the seat during the entire term of the contract at its beginning; and ii) the price of the VIP seat per season.”
The operation was closed for a total of 475 seats in two packages with two investors of Middle East for a period of 30 years. Laporta said on Tuesday that one is from Qatar and another of United Arab Emirates but did not reveal the name of the companies. It also does not appear in the report of the Economic Commission posted this Thursday on the FC Barcelona website. The club claims that “the operations, at the request of the investors, contain confidentiality clauses aimed at preserving the competitive advantage of the investment groups in the hospitality and product sectors. VIPas they were also included in other financial operations of the Club (as an example the financing of the Barça space)”.
He FC Barcelona insists, as Laporta did when explaining the ‘case Elm‘, that “the pertinent documentation on these agreements was transferred to LaLiga before midnight on December 31, 2024.”
On the other hand, he points out that “the benefits generated from the transfer of the exploitation of this new product will allow the Club to make available to the investors of the Barça space a significant part of the amount planned as a return on the debt of the Spotify Camp Nou already before the fulfillment of the first payment period scheduled during the 2025/26 season.”
In the report of the Economic Commission It is explained that “the owner investor is guaranteed the enjoyment of use for all the matches that are played” and the option of “disposing it for his own use or selling it to a third party, making his own the price he obtains” and being able to do the marketing “directly to the licensee by his own means or optionally requesting the intervention of the club, which in that case would receive a share of the price”. The licensee could also “transfer the license rights for the remaining validity period.”
The Economic Commission adds that “The PSL It does not have the status of material good referred to in point 6 of article 20 of the Statutes, nor does it imply the issuance of transferable debt securities or the acceptance of money in the form of credit or loan that should lead to an increase in the overall indebtedness of the Club (point 7 of the same article 20). On the other hand, the granting of this type of license is the power of the Board of Directors, provided that it does not exceed any of the limits referred to in article 66 of the Statutes“. If it had been exceeded, the operation should have gone through the approval of the Assembly.
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