Clubs, especially the top-flight ones, complacent and presuming that their brand name is attractive enough to attract the big sponsors need to be mindful of the products they are offering.
Barcelona are in a right regular financial mess now with Football-Espana indicating that there are genuine bankruptcy fears as the the club desperately try to get the players to take another pay cut.
The financial woes keep piling up for Barca after Sport evaluated the situation with the €55m a year sponsorship deal they currently have with Rakuten, which is believed that there’s no way the sponsors will pay that much again when the deal is renewed.
It has been clearly pointed out that when Rakuten first agreed to the deal, they were strongly associated with a dominant Barca side that featured global icons like Lionel Messi and Neymar, but that dynamic brand association will be very different, if not nullified, if Messi does indeed decide to bid the club farewell next summer. After all, Neymar has already left the roost.
The Barcelona brand may still be attractive in some ways to some but the stark reality is that the Blaugrana could be only a pale shadow of what it was even in the recent past, which would ultimately result in even more financial calamities for the club.
Their €19m a year deal with Beko is also due for renewal next year while the Rakuten deal is up in 2022, and neither are expected to be as lucrative the next time round.
The Barca scenario is full of variables in the immediate future as there’s a chance a new dynamic president could appoint an erstwhile manager with the nous and the kohonas to convince club talisman Messi to stay and help rebuild a dominant team back to winning ways again, but that does look pretty hazy at this point looking at their current situation.
Credit: Football Tribe Malaysia
