Wednesday’s 3–0 defeat would have been bad enough for Barcelona if this had just been another defeat to Bayern Munich, another game lost in the same way all the others have been, by a side bossing possession and being picked off on the break by smarter opponents. But far worse could be the financial consequences of a second successive group-stage exit from the UEFA Champions League, something that had already been confirmed when Inter Milan beat Viktoria Plzen 4–0 earlier in the day. That meant Barcelona was locked into a third-place finish, dropping into the Europa League’s knockout phase.
The wave of summer signings at Barcelona has not had the desired, immediate effect, and the impact could be devastating. The club’s last published accounts showed debts of €1.3 billion, a result of the pandemic coupled with the grotesque mismanagement and panic that followed the loss of Neymar to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017, as the club sought desperately to reassert itself by buying stars.
At the end of June, just before the accounts for 2021–22 were closed, 10% of the club’s La Liga TV rights for the next 25 years were sold to U.S. financiers Sixth Street for €267 million. A €160 million program of summer spending then began, with a further 15% of those TV rights then sold for €400 million. The cryptocurrency firm Socios.com paid €100 million for a quarter of Barça Studios, the club’s in-house production company. Another quarter was then sold for another €100 million to the Catalan businessman Jaume Roures and his Orpheus Media firm.
