Barcelona Members Approve €510m as Camp Nou Bill Keeps Growing

Barcelona’s members have approved another €510 million of financing as the club pushes to finish Spotify Camp Nou and get one of the most expensive building sites in football properly earning again.

The money comes in two parts. Barça will add €300 million to the financing available for the stadium redevelopment, while another €210 million will be raised through two Media Notes backed by future audiovisual income from La Liga and UEFA competitions.

The votes were convincing. The stadium financing passed with 562 votes in favour and 45 against, while the Media Notes received 486 votes in favour and 55 against. For all the scale of modern Barcelona, there is still something unmistakably Barça about hundreds of members having a say before another half-billion euros can be borrowed.

The €300 million is there to help finish Camp Nou after the redevelopment became considerably more complicated than first planned. Barcelona say more than 3,000 reinforcement works have been required on the existing second tier, compared with around 800 originally expected, while the club has also expanded hospitality areas, museum space, 5G infrastructure and other stadium systems.

Being away from home has not exactly helped the bill either. Barça say two seasons at Montjuïc brought almost €17 million in operating expenses and another €24 million in investment. More painful has been the wait for the extra ticketing, hospitality and commercial income the rebuilt Camp Nou was meant to start producing.

That income has always been central to Espai Barça. The idea was never simply to borrow a huge amount and hope for the best. Barcelona structured the redevelopment around the belief that a modern Camp Nou could generate far more from VIP areas, sponsorship, ticketing, catering, the museum and matchday business than the old stadium could.

The other €210 million works differently.

Barcelona will raise it through two Media Notes worth €105 million each, with future income from La Liga and UEFA broadcasting used as security. One issue was completed in July and the second is expected in October or November.

It is not another version of the famous economic levers from 2022. Back then, Sixth Street acquired the economic benefit of 25% of Barça’s La Liga television rights for 25 years, a pair of transactions worth €667 million in accounting revenue to the club.

This time Barcelona are borrowing instead of selling another share of those rights. The club retains the underlying audiovisual income, but future media revenue is being used to give lenders security over the debt.

For supporters who have spent the last few years learning considerably more about television rights, refinancing and securitisation than they ever expected when they first walked into Camp Nou, it is another addition to the vocabulary.

There is a legal reason Saturday’s vote mattered too. Barcelona remain a member-owned sports association rather than a club controlled by a private shareholder. Major financing decisions can therefore require approval through the General Assembly rather than being left entirely to Joan Laporta and his board. Financing operations were formally placed on Saturday’s Assembly agenda under the club’s statutes.

That member control has survived through a fairly dramatic transformation in the size of the business. Barça now operate with annual revenues above €1 billion, global commercial partnerships and a stadium financing structure complicated enough to make a few seasons of Financial Fair Play suddenly seem quite relaxing.

Camp Nou is supposed to make much of that complexity worthwhile. The club expects the completed stadium to generate significantly more revenue from hospitality, sponsorship and matchday activity, with the wider Espai Barça redevelopment sitting at the heart of its long-term financial plans.

Laporta has also told members that the proposed new Palau Blaugrana will now be pursued through alternative financing arrangements rather than loading another major development onto this latest Camp Nou package.

So another €510 million has been approved, but the logic behind it is fairly easy to recognise. Barcelona need Camp Nou finished because an unfinished stadium costs money while a completed one is supposed to make it.

The second €105 million Media Note is expected in October or November. The members have done their bit. Barça will now be rather keen for the stadium to start doing the same.