Clever Marketing? Barcelona To Sell Camp Nou Stadium Naming Rights For Fight Against Coronavirus
Spanish giants FC Barcelona wants to sell the naming rights to its stadium Camp Nou for the coming season and donate the money to corona research. This was officially announced by the Catalans on Tuesday. Let us find out what this is all about.
FC Barcelona To Have Regular Camp Nou Naming Sponsor From 2021-22 Season
According to the official press release, the Club Board, whose president is Josep Maria Bartomeu, "have approved the ceding of the title rights to Camp Nou for the season 2020-2021 to the Barça Foundation to raise money to invest in research projects being carried out in Catalonia and the rest of the world involved in the fight against the effects of COVID-19."
However, while this sounds like a very good cause at first glance, the (long) press release also includes the following sequence
"Barça are ceding those rights for a name to be put to Camp Nou for the very first time as the title rights are a commercial option that has never been exploited before and had been reserved for the Espai Barça, the transformative project for the Club’s facilities to become the best sporting complex in the world in the centre of a big city like Barcelona and that included the redevelopment of Camp Nou, the building of a new Palau Blaugrana, a Campus Barça and the Estadi Johan Cruyff, which is now being used at the Ciutat Esportiva.
This ceding of the rights for a season is compatible with the future commercial use of the title rights for Camp Nou to finance the Espai Barça project, as approved by the members in a referendum celebrated in 2014."
So there will be a commercial sponsor also after the 2020-2021 season, with all proceeds going to FC Barcelona and their stadium project.
The income generated in the (first?) year of the Camp Nou naming rights deal will create a fund that will be divided in the following way: a part will be destined for a project on COVID-19 driven by the sponsors themselves and the rest will be shared out amongst other projects that are being developed in parallel.
In similar fashion, FC Barcelona first gave away their sponsor-free shirt for a non-commercial sponsor (UNICEF) before announcing a deal with "Qatar Foundation", which was then replaced with Qatar Airways a few years later.
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