Audit once again checks Barça’s accounts | Football | Sport
The audit report once again puts Barcelona’s accounts under control. Last week, the Barça division reported that the closing of the financial year of the 2023/2024 season is estimated at losses of 91 million euros. This red figure resulted from the non-payment of $141 million corresponding to the sale of Barça Vision, the commercial name of a subsidiary of Bridgeburg Invest SL, to the German company Libero. Grant Thornton, who audited Barcelona’s balance sheet, made a reservation about this. The firm understands that Barca’s assets are €208 million, which corresponds to the value of Bridgeburg, which is not true. “The value of the investment recorded at closing should be subject to impairment,” he says, as reported by 2playbook. However, at Barça this analysis is not true. “They are not asking the club to devalue this amount. We remain confident that its value is 400 million. The auditors, in order to clarify the value, say that they do not know what the value of Bridgeburg is,” explains a source in the economic sphere of the enterprise.
In 2022, when Joan Laporta tried to save the club from the economic hole in which it found itself, the Barça board decided to sell the assets. A financial maneuver that the president popularized with the euphemism “leverage.” That season, the Assembly of the Compromisers of Barcelona approved the sale of 49% of Barça Vision. The club wanted to find strategic partners for its subsidiary responsible for the Web3, NFT and metaverse business. At that time, according to auditor KPMG, this area of Barça’s business had a value of 400 million euros. “At that time, all these things were booming, and it was true that their prices were expected to be higher. This was not the case,” say the opposition to Laporte.
Club treasurer Ferran Olivet justified the maneuver with leverage: “In a normal society, if faced with a situation of negative equity, any company in a pre-bankruptcy situation would ask its shareholders to increase capital. We are running away from this. The partner is not responsible. “We ask that we be given the opportunity to sell the club’s assets.”
La Liga also approved the sale. Barça then sold 24.5% of Barça Vision each to Orpheus media and Socios.com. A few months later, Libero appeared on the scene, taking over the shares owned by Orpheus media and Socios.com. He bought it but didn’t pay. In the 2023-2024 financial year, the club’s economic direction decided to record non-payments as losses. “In terms of extraordinary results, the club has commenced impairment of a number of Bridgeburg share receivables due to non-payments by certain investment partners,” he said. Auditor Grant Thornton, however, understands that as a result of the partners’ “failure to comply with the payment schedule agreed upon in previous sales and purchases, as well as the failure to adhere to business plans,” Barca should also worsen its receivables.