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Barcelona (Reuters): Barcelona head into Saturday’s “Clasico” against Real Madrid with a whopping 11-point gap over their bitter rivals in the Liga title race – and they also have the advantage in financial terms, albeit by smaller margins.
The two teams are separated by a hair’s breadth in the latest edition of the Deloitte Money League, with Barcelona generating 620.2 million euros ($736.74 million) in revenue in 2015/16 compared with Real’s 620.1 million.
Barca also sit above Real in the 2017 Forbes Sports Money Index, which ranks clubs according to their estimated value as a brand. The Catalan club are estimated to be worth $3.64 billion and Real 3.58 billion.
However, the two Spanish clubs trail Manchester United in both tables. The 20-times English champions had revenues of 689 billion euros and are estimated to be worth $3.69 billion.
Barcelona also have the heftier wage bill, according to the 2017 Global Sports Salary Survey, paying their squad an average $8,576,750 annually compared with Real’s $8,092,283.
According to Timothy Bridge, senior consultant for Deloitte Sports Business Group, Barca’s narrow lead over Real in commercial terms is the result of their enduring drive to build revenues, which began when Ferran Soriano, now chief executive at Manchester City, joined the Catalan club in 2003.
Soriano’s arrival was accompanied by sustained success on the field, with Barca winning eight Liga titles and four Champions Leagues since 2005.
“There was a concentrated effort in the early 2000s to really capitalise on their branding and grow revenue accordingly,” Bridge told Reuters.
“The effort that went into ensuring Barca were as commercially viable was assisted by the fact the team performed so strongly, and the two things go hand in hand.
“The strong performance of the team helps them get more idols in the team, which drives commercial value. People want to be associated with biggest and best brands and you have to pay for that exposure.”
Barca earn 58 million euros per year from their four-year shirt sponsorship deal with Japanese retailer Rakuten, which was signed in November 2016, outstripping the 38 million euros Real receive annually from airline Emirates, although that agreement is up for renewal next year.
The two clubs’ best chance of unseating United as number one in terms of revenues and brand values, however, depends on La Liga catching up with the Premier League in terms of worldwide audience.
“It’s about supporting the growth of the league overall to ensure international broadcast rights are maximised,” added Bridge.
“Barca and Real should want the league to be competitive; they should want their competitors to set high standards, to have new, full stadiums. They need to grow the overall pie, which they will, in turn, benefit from.”
La Liga signed a record broadcast rights deal worth 1.555 billion euros in 2015 after switching to a model based on collective bargaining. President Javier Tebas has said the next deal, coming into effect from 2019/20, could be worth 2.3 billion.
The league has made huge strides in building its international audience in the past year and has switched Saturday’s game between Real and Barca from its traditional Spanish night-time kickoff to a lunchtime start in a bid to broaden its appeal to viewers in Asia.
The objective is to use the popularity of the flagship fixture to promote the whole league.
“One of our key priorities is to present La Liga as much broader than Real Madrid and Barcelona,” said Joris Evers, La Liga’s global director of communications.
“They are the biggest clubs and brands within La Liga and we want to take advantage of the ‘Clasico’ to present the broader league, to tell people about more clubs because our job is to build the value of the product overall.”
BARCELONA (Reuters) - La Liga’s drive to build its audience in Asia and establish itself as the most popular league in the world prompted Saturday’s ‘Clasico’ between Real Madrid and Barcelona to be scheduled at 1pm local time, officials said on Thursday.
The showdown between Spain’s two most successful and popular sides usually takes place late in the evening.
However, Saturday’s 1200 GMT kickoff will allow viewers in countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia, where the game will start at 7pm local time, to follow the action in prime time. In contrast, last season’s Clasico on 23 April started at 2.45am in the two countries.
“La Liga is... a global entertainment spectacle, last year 2.6 billion people around the world were following La Liga and many of those are in Asia,” the league’s head of global communications Joris Evers told Reuters.
“We are keen to give them the opportunity to watch the Clasico without needing to stay up until the middle of the night or set an alarm to wake up very early.”
The move has been criticised, however, by Barcelona supporters group Seguiment FCB for ignoring the concerns of match going fans.
“It is very clear to us that football is undergoing a process of globalisation which benefits clubs economically but forgets about the loyal supporters who go to stadiums,” the group’s chairman Carles Ordiales told Reuters.
“The television market has been prioritised with a kickoff time that favours people in faraway places who want to watch it but harms fans who have to travel 600km (from Barcelona to the Spanish capital) to the game are obliged to wake at the crack of dawn to get there on time.”
Spain’s top flight has long trailed England’s Premier League in its international audience but there has been a push to attract more consumers worldwide.
In the past four years, it has set up offices in Shanghai, Delhi, New York, Johannesburg and Dubai. It now has representatives in over 40 countries.
La Liga says it increased its international audience by 501 million viewers last season to 2.59 billion. The biggest spike was in the Asia-Pacific region, where an extra 375 million began watching.
The ‘Clasico’ is one of the most-watched games in club football. Officials said an estimated 650 million people in 180 countries watched the last league encounter in April.
