Barcelona in €1.2 billion debt which includes transfer related fees

The financial situation at Barcelona has just turned from bad to worse. The Catalan kinds were reportedly in a debt of over 500 million euros at the end of last year. Now, new reports suggest that the debt could be well over a billion euros and the club is hoping to pay everything back by the end of June. This is an improbable task, and with the presidential elections delayed, the club lacks the leadership to fix the mess created by the former president, Josep Maria Bartomeu.

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The club released their financial report and revealed that they have accumulated a massive debt of 1.2 billion euros and a short term debt of 730 million euros. A major part of their budget is spent on the massive wage bill. They pay the most wage among all the top clubs in Europe and it takes up almost 74 percent of their total budget. This is very alarming but a plan to cut wages and pay the players over multiple months is in progress.

The massive wage chart is not the only thing that is pulling the club into financial despair, money spent recklessly on big-money transfers have also come around to bite them. The transfer of Philippe Coutinho, Frenkie de Jong, and Malcom have left them in serious debt to some clubs.

They owe Liverpool 29 million euros, to Ajax they owe 16 million euros, and to Bordeaux they owe nearly 10 million euros. This is not all, they also owe Gremio 21 million euros for Arthur, and Bayern Munich is yet to be paid around 11 million euros for Arturo Vidal. The fact that Arthur and Vidal are no longer Barcelona players are further damaging.

The covid situation is not helping them out either as they have faced a lot of defaults on payments as well. Zenit, Getafe, and Roma are all yet to pay money to the Catalans for transfers and a total of 46 million euros is estimated from all the money due.

The Spanish giants also owe rivals, Atletico Madrid, 10 million euros as they made a deal with them to get “preferential treatment” for Antoine Griezmann. This basically meant that Barcelona would be able to match offers for Atletico players. This was a horrible decision taken by the former president and they are currently suffering from it.

How Barcelona plan to recover?

There has been a lot of money spent unwisely by Bartomeu and Barcelona must repay all their debts if they do not wish to go bankrupt. They have been negotiating with all the clubs and they hope to pay their dues by June 30th of 2021.

The main source of income that Barcelona is hoping for will be from ticket sales. With La Liga expecting to fill 25% of the stadiums with fans from February onwards and 50% from May, the Catalans are hoping to raise 56 million euros. However, nothing is certain during this pandemic and even Barcelona’s own presidential election was postponed. Should the fans not come back to the stadium, the club will be in dire straits.