The Sports Business Group from Deloitte recently published its 2009 Football Money League report. It is a quite interesting report for football fans.
The first remarkable table is that showing Real Madrid and Barcelona well ahead other European clubs.
2009 Money League ranking.
I was reading parts of it and I was wondering… what is the difference between Real Madrid’s and Barcelona’s model?
In the graphics below you may see the revenue sources for both clubs. The differences are minimal in two chapters: Matchday (6M€, 6% higher for Real) and Broadcasting (2.5M€, 1.5% higher for Real). The main difference comes from Commercial revenues: with Real Madrid earning 139.2M€, 27.2M€ more than Barcelona. The main driver for this difference are revenues generated by shirt sponsorship, which according to the report are worth 15-20M€ for Real while Barcelona is not charging Unicef for this concept.
Real Madrid & FC Barcelona revenue sources.
In this other graphic you may compare the skyrocketing revenue growth for both clubs. Real Madrid’s positive trend starting in 2000, when Florentino was elected President and Barcelona’s starting in 2003, when Laporta was elected President.
Real Madrid & FC Barcelona revenue growth.
David Allen and Raúl Eguía, from the Instituto de Empresa, published a very interesting study: “FC Barcelona: Changing the rules of the game” in October 2004.
That report reviews the months before and after Laporta’s election as president, his campaign as candidate, his relations with different groups, his plans for Barcelona and the first year as president of the club.
We can read some excerpts from interviews with members of his board of directors. For example, the Vice-chairman of the Social Area, Alfons Godall is quoted saying: “We had all the financial information about the club from 1996. This enabled us to put together a very specific analysis which led us to the conclusion that sports and economic management were closely related. It is very important to have a clear policy for salaries and signings, as well as for bringing in players from the youth teams. In short, to run a club like Barça you have to have a model and we had been working on such a model.”
This sounds very familiar to the “Zidanes y Pavones” slogan from Florentino.
We have often heard words from Barça’s president such as “chollo”, “pelotazo”, etc… describing the model of Florentino Pérez in Real Madrid. Let’s review the corner stone of Laporta’s first project in Barcelona: “At the beginning of December 2003, FC Barcelona reached an agreement with La Caixa, a bank which was to front a syndicated credit for €151 million48 together with other entities such as Banco Sabadell, Caixa Catalonia, Banco Popular, Banesto, Caja Mediterráneo (CAM), Cajamar and Deutsche Bank. The transaction, which was spread over seven years, would make it possible for the current sports project to go ahead and for the sports centre in the Barcelona town of Sant Joan Despí to be completed.”
Leaving aside the demagogy of Laporta, can anyone tell me difference in the model of either club? See the famous “virtuous circle” of Barcelona…
FC Barcelona's "circulo virtuoso".
The answer “the difference is point number 2: Great sports results” is too easy…
The Blog by Javier 