FC Barcelona: How a Club With No Shareholders Escaped a €1.35bn Debt Crisis

FC Barcelona is the only billion-euro business in Europe that has, within five years, nearly gone bust, mortgaged a quarter of its main income stream for a generation, and rebuilt its headquarters while still operating out of it. The club did all this as a members’ association that cannot issue shares, which shaped every decision. This article traces the crisis, the “palancas” used to survive it and the stadium bet that has to pay for it. It is part of the Spain Company Stories hub.

How did FC Barcelona get into financial trouble?

By spending like a club with an owner while being a club with none. Between 2017 and 2020 Barcelona signed Coutinho, Dembélé and Griezmann for a combined €400m-plus, pushed its wage bill towards €650m, and financed the gap with short-term bank debt. Then COVID-19 removed matchday and museum income for over a year.

When Joan Laporta returned as president in March 2021 the audit he commissioned put total debt at roughly €1.35bn, of which about €730m was short-term, with negative equity and a 2020-21 loss of €481m. Wages were around 103% of revenue. Under LaLiga’s cost-control rules that meant the club could not register new contracts — including Messi’s reduced one — and he left in August 2021.

The comparison with the club’s rival is instructive. Real Madrid, with the same ownership model, entered the pandemic with a surplus and a fixed-rate stadium loan; its story is told in our piece on Real Madrid’s €1.2bn business. Barcelona had the same revenue and no buffer.

The structural problem was that a members’ club has no equity to sell. When an investor-owned club runs out of money, the owner injects capital or sells shares. Barcelona’s only options were to cut costs, borrow more, or sell future income. It did all three.

What exactly were the “palancas”?

Asset sales of future revenue, approved by an extraordinary members’ assembly in June 2022. The word means “levers”; the accounting effect was to bring cash and, crucially, book profit forward into a single season so that LaLiga’s salary rules would allow the club to sign players.

The first two levers went to Sixth Street, the same US investor that financed Real Madrid’s stadium. In June 2022 it bought 10% of Barcelona’s LaLiga television income for 25 years for €207.5m; in July it took a further 15% for €310m. In total Barcelona sold a quarter of its domestic TV money until 2047 for around €517m. On current LaLiga distributions of roughly €160m a year to the club, Sixth Street is collecting around €40m annually for a 25-year term.

The third and fourth levers involved 49% of Barça Studios, the club’s digital and content arm, sold in two tranches of 24.5% to Socios.com and to Orpheus Media for a nominal €100m each. Those deals were later restructured, buyers changed, and the auditor questioned the value; substantial amounts were written down in 2023-24. The lever generated accounting profit in 2022-23 but far less cash.

A fifth, in 2024, was the sale of future income from 475 VIP seats at the new stadium for about €100m to a Middle Eastern buyer, New Era Visionary Group, later restructured. LaLiga initially counted it towards the salary limit; when auditors refused to certify the accounting in 2025, the limit was cut by nearly a quarter.

How is Espai Barça financed?

Through a €1.45bn debt package arranged by Goldman Sachs in 2023 with around 20 institutional investors, structured as bonds and loans with maturities up to 2050 at a blended cost reported at roughly 5.5–6%. The debt sits in a special-purpose vehicle and is serviced by the new stadium’s own income, not by football operations — at least on paper.

The total Espai Barça programme, which includes the rebuilt Spotify Camp Nou, a new Palau Blaugrana arena and surrounding campus, is budgeted at about €1.5bn. Turkish contractor Limak won the stadium work in 2023 with a fixed-price bid and a schedule that required the club to leave the stadium for two full seasons.

Those two seasons were expensive. Barcelona played at the Olympic stadium on Montjuïc from 2023 to 2025, with capacity below 50,000, poorer hospitality and reduced matchday income estimated at €100m or more across the period. Interest costs rose 35% in 2024-25 as the debt was drawn. Construction spending in that year alone was €476m.

The cost of the money is the sharpest contrast with Madrid. Real Madrid fixed its stadium loans at around 2.5% in 2019; Barcelona borrowed four years later at more than double the rate, from investors who priced in the levers, the negative equity and the delays.

When did the club return to Camp Nou?

On 7 November 2025, for an open training session in front of 23,000 fans, followed by the first competitive match against Athletic Club on 22 November at a capacity of just over 45,000. The reopening had been promised for November 2024, the club’s 125th anniversary, and slipped by a year as the municipal occupancy licence and the construction schedule fell behind.

Through 2025-26 the stadium operated at around 42,000 seats in phases as the third tier and roof were completed. The eventual target is 105,000, the largest in Europe, with full completion now expected during 2027. Until then the club earns from a partial building while paying for a complete one.

The early evidence supports the bet. The club attributes its 2025-26 revenue record, above €1bn for the first time, mainly to stadium operations, alongside higher sponsorship and record merchandising through its retail subsidiary BLM. That is with less than half the final capacity and none of the premium hospitality the new roof and ring will house.

The comparable case is Madrid’s: stadium revenue there doubled to €363m once the building was finished. Barcelona’s 2019 business plan assumed Espai Barça would add around €200m a year once complete. That is the number the 2050 bonds depend on.

How does LaLiga’s salary limit constrain the club?

By capping what it can spend on the first-team squad at a level calculated from its own revenue and costs, and by refusing to register players when it is over. For 2025-26 LaLiga set Barcelona’s límite salarial at €351m, down from €463m, after auditors Crowe declined to sign off on the VIP-seat income the club had counted.

The limit has dictated every summer since 2021. The club has operated under LaLiga’s stricter “1:1” and “1:4” rules — meaning that in bad years it could spend only a quarter of what it saved — and has repeatedly struggled to register signings until deadline day. Dani Olmo’s registration in January 2025 required an emergency ruling from the Spanish sports council after LaLiga refused it.

A fuller explanation of how the limit is calculated for every club, and why Real Madrid’s stands at €761m, is in our article on LaLiga’s business model. The short version is that Barcelona’s revenue is now close to Madrid’s, but its debt service, amortisation of past transfers and the income already sold to Sixth Street leave far less room.

The club’s relationship with Javier Tebas, the LaLiga president, has been openly hostile through the period. Barcelona refused the league’s CVC deal in 2021, sued over it, and blames the league’s rules for its registration problems. LaLiga’s reply is that the rules are the reason the club still exists.

What did the Nike renewal and other commercial deals change?

They restored the commercial base that the levers had been eroding. In December 2024 Barcelona and Nike extended a partnership dating to 1998 through the 2037-38 season, in a deal reported to be worth in the region of €1.7bn over its life including performance bonuses, making it the largest kit contract in football at signing.

The Spotify naming and shirt deal, signed in 2022 for four seasons at roughly €70m a year including the stadium name, was the first time the club sold the Camp Nou name. Further partnerships have been added around the new stadium, and the 2024-25 accounts show sponsorship growing alongside stadium income.

Merchandising has been brought in-house. The club ended its licensing arrangement and created Barça Licensing & Merchandising, which reported record sales in 2025-26. Combined with the Nike renewal, the retail line is now one of the few areas where Barcelona’s numbers are ahead of Madrid’s.

The purpose of all of this is a single ratio: commercial and stadium income high enough that broadcasting — a quarter of which now belongs to Sixth Street — is no longer the swing factor. Real Madrid is already there; Barcelona is on the way.

How did member ownership both constrain and enable the rescue?

It constrained the rescue by ruling out the obvious fix. An owner-run club with €1.35bn of debt would have recapitalised. Barcelona could not, because it has no shares to sell and Spanish law has exempted it from converting into a company since 1990. The levers were the substitute for equity.

It enabled the rescue because the members were willing to vote for it. The June 2022 assembly approved the sale of TV rights and Barça Studios by large majorities; in 2023 members approved the Espai Barça financing structure; and the September 2025 assembly endorsed what the board called the “consolidation” of the recovery. A listed company would have needed lenders’ consent for each step; a members’ club needed only its own.

The model also protects the board. Laporta was re-elected in 2021 on a promise to fix the finances, has no shareholder to answer to and cannot be removed by a fund. The trade-off is that presidents post personal guarantees, which limited the 2021 candidate field to the very wealthy and makes each board’s risk appetite a personal one.

For a wider view of how Spanish institutions with no shareholders fund large investments, see our profile of CaixaBank, which grew out of a foundation-owned savings bank, and of Mercadona, a family-owned retailer that has never raised outside equity.

What happens next?

The full 2025-26 accounts go to the general assembly on 19 September 2026. The board has already announced revenue above €1bn and a third consecutive positive ordinary result; the numbers to watch are total liabilities, interest cost and how much of the stadium debt has been drawn.

The stadium schedule is the other variable. Every month of delay to full capacity is a month of hospitality income not earned while the 2050 bonds accrue interest. The 2026-27 season should be the first with the roof and third tier partly open; the plan is for 105,000 seats by 2027.

The longer question is whether the club can rebuild a squad-cost advantage under a €351m limit while its rival operates at €761m. Barcelona’s answer is La Masia: a team built around Lamine Yamal, Pedri and Gavi costs far less than one built around Coutinho and Griezmann. That is a sporting strategy born of a balance sheet, and it may prove the most durable lever of all.

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