BARCELONA – Barcelona on Monday released the closed and audited financial report at the end of the 2019-2020 season, which reveals a very delicate financial situation, with a total debt of 1,173 million euros (155 from the previous year) and a message of checking whether the club’s viability could be compromised. “Future events may cause the Group (the club) to cease to be a company,” warns the audit report, warning of the urgent need to correct this situation.
Carles Tusquets, Chairman of the Board of Directors, warned of the “serious economic situation of the club” as soon as he took office on 29 October, without going into some of the details he provided to candidates for president last week (Joan Laporta, Victor font and Toni Freixa) before making them public, as set out in the Barcelona Statutes, through the annual report.
It reveals disturbing details leading to this total debt of 1,173 million euros, 730 of which are short-term (225 more than a year earlier), with a net debt of 488 million and specifies that at the end of this season, in June 2021, Barcelona will have the obligation to pay 266 million to financial institutions, a figure that endangers liquidity and has led it to request deferment of payments. The 730 million current liabilities are divided into 265 million debts to credit institutions, 2.5 million debts and other marketable securities, 164 million debts to sports personnel and 298 million other unspecified items.
While he considers wage bill to skyrocket to 74 percent of total income (while the maximum ratio could not exceed 60 percent), he realizes the need to cut wages to nearly $ 500 million. Euro that, after the agreement with the staff to defer payments, you want to negotiate further in the same direction.
It is also considered that Barça is owed € 196 million to other clubs (126 at short notice), highlighting the nearly 70 million still owed to Liverpool for Coutinho, the nearly 21 to Gremio for Arthur (already in Juventus) or the 19 owed to the Girondins for signing Malcom, which has already been transferred to Zenit. There is also a debt of over 2.4 million euros to Eibar for the repurchase of Marc Cucurella (which has already been transferred to Getafe) or 240 thousand euros to Villarreal by Denis Suárez, which has already been sold to Celta.
Likewise, the ten million to be paid to Atlético Madrid for unspecified pre-emption rights that took place as a result of the transfer of Griezmann, although Barça denied at the time that they were in a relationship … and that they are coming out months after they even have a settlement had to pay for Luis Suárez’s departure to the colchonero club.
At the other end of the scale, Barça is waiting to collect € 46.4 million in transfers, highlighting Zenit’s € 9.4 million for Malcom, four from Roma and Juventus for Carles Pérez and Alexander Marquis or 5.9 from Getafe by Cucurella. The curiosity in this section is personified by Ronald Araújo, signed on Uruguay’s Boston River … And who is said to be in debt of 1.5 million euros to Barça through his own transfer.
The report also finds that the $ 90 million loan advanced by Goldman Sachs is guaranteed by the revenues of the company that relies on the Barça club, Licensing & Merchandising, recognizing that the crisis the entity is suffering goes beyond the impact of the pandemic as a result of the coronavirus. , which fell by 200 million in expected revenues last season without continuing to increase the level of expenditures.
As if that were not enough, Barcelona had planned an income of 55 million euros for this season, calculating that the Camp Nou could open to fans from the month of February with 25 percent of its capacity and that it would have half of the total in the month of May, a forecast that, given the current situation of the pandemic, is considered almost impossible to fulfill and will therefore have a negative impact on the budget for the season.