Barca spins off media operations

Barcelona has announced plans to spin off its media operations arm as a public company in a bid to raise tens of millions of dollars as it scrambles to shore up its finances.

Barça Media, which controls the Spanish football club’s online assets, including videos and social media, and licences its brand for TV series and video games, will list on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange.

It plans to go public via a so-called “blank cheque” merger with Mountain & Co I Acquisition Corp — a Cayman Islands-based shell firm — in a deal which values the business at about $1 billion.

Joan Laporta, the president of FC Barcelona, claimed that it had made “considerable progress in the digital and audiovisual spaces to ensure that Barça Media will grow into a multifaceted content creation hub that leverages the power and unique assets of the world-renowned FC Barcelona brand”.

Hiving off such a division is an unusual move. It comes as Barcelona grapples with a string of financial problems, including its vast wage bill, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the costly renovation of Camp Nou.

As they attempt to win over investors, Barça Media and Mountain & Co touted Barcelona’s 421 million social media followers and claimed it had “the largest fanbase among all professional football clubs,” with “more than 330 million fans and 434 million television viewers” during the 2021-22 season. It described the club as “one of the world’s most visible and valuable sports franchises.”

Under the deal, Barça Media’s existing shareholders — which include Barcelona and Libero, the football-focused investment group — will retain about 80 per cent of the business.