Skip to main content

Barcelona has struck a shirt sponsorship deal worth £47m a year with the Japanese internet retailer Rakuten.

Barcelona has struck a shirt sponsorship deal worth £47m a year with the Japanese internet retailer Rakuten.
It is one of the biggest football shirt sponsorships yet seen and could make Barcelona wealthier than Real Madrid, currently the world's richest club.
The deal will begin with the 2017-18 season and last for four years.
It will earn the club at least £188m in that time, with more to come if the team wins the Spanish championship or the Champions League.
"This agreement puts us at the forefront of sports club sponsorships, which has always been an objective for the current board of directors," said the Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu.
He added that negotiations began in 2015 at a dinner in San Francisco organised by defender Gerard Pique, who is a friend of Hiroshi Mikitani, the chairman and chief executive of Rakuten.
The deal with Rakuten may be extended for a fifth year.
Rakuten is Japan's biggest e-commerce firm and employs more than 13,000 staff in Japan, with a turnover of nearly £15bn in the first nine months of this year.
It already owns the J-League club Vissel Kobe and baseball club Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.
Barcelona, with star players such as Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, and Neymar, will become even wealthier from 2018 when the club starts a new 10-year kit sponsorship deal with the US sportswear firm Nike, which is reportedly going to pay £134m a year.
The Spanish club first accepted sponsorship only in 2006 in a deal with Unicef, which in fact involved the club donating to the charity.
But in 2010 the shirts became sponsored mainly by the Qatar Foundation (replaced by Qatar Airways in 2013), in a £24m per year deal which was at the time the most lucrative sponsorship deal in world football.
Reflecting the massive inflation in football advertising and investment, which has been mainly due to international TV coverage, Manchester United has let its shirts be sponsored by the US carmaker Chevrolet for £47m a year for seven years, alongside a kit deal with Adidas worth £74m per year.
The extra money for Barcelona will help it to pay for the planned expansion of its Nou Camp stadium to 105,000 seats.
According to this year's Deloitte Football Money League, the richest club in the world was Real Madrid, followed by Barcelona and Manchester United.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Arsenal’s Wenger concerned by Chinese spending power

Arsene Wenger fears the huge wages being offered by big-spending Chinese clubs could cause problems when the Premier League teams look to negotiate new contracts with their star players.  Wenger is currently locked in talks with Arsenal duo Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez as the pair reportedly seek parity with the best-paid players in the Premier League. The Arsenal manager is hoping for successful resolutions to those contract stand-offs, but he believes the money on offer in the China Super League may persuade the Premier League’s star names to ask for even bigger pay packets to stay in England. Chelsea striker Diego Costa has been linked with a move to China, with an offer of £600,000-per-week ($739,000) reportedly on the table for the Spain international. Two of his former Chelsea team-mates, Oscar and John Obi Mikel, have already moved to Super League outfits, while former Manchester United striker Carlos Tevez became the highest-earning player in the world when h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hausa Tribe Accused Britain of disrespecting their Culture and Religion

The people of Hausa tribe react to BBC HAUSA Sexual behavior research done by   Claremont Graduate   University in California on facebook. According to the research, Bisexuals enjoys the pleasure of sex mother than anyone. Some Facebook users of the Hausa tribe accused Britain of disrespecting the culture and the religion of Hausa’s. One of the users,   Aminu adam tangar   wrote in hausa: I’m not surprised, the media organization belongs to Britain, but whatever is the case: they should learn to respect our culture and religion. (Translated) Hamza Danbatta   also wrote: This is totally against the hausa culture, if this media organization is really for Hausa listeners then you’re not trying at all, may God deliver you. (Translated)
Post a Comment
Read more

Record signing, Oscar lands in Shanghai to join SIPG

 Brazilian midfielder Oscar landed in Shanghai on Monday where the 25-year-old was set to smash the Asian transfer record with a reported 60 million euros ($63 million) deal with Shanghai SIPG. Dozens of supporters chanting club songs swarmed the former Chelsea player at the city’s Pudong airport. Oscar’s arrival in the Chinese Super League comes ahead of that of Argentina’s former Manchester United striker Carlos Tevez, who signed for Shanghai Shenhua in another big-money deal last week.  Tevez’s transfer fee was 10.5 million euros, according to the website transfermarkt.com, which tracks dealings in the sport, though the reported two-year contract of 38 million euros per season ($40 million) makes him the world’s highest salaried footballer. SIPG’s general manager on Monday dismissed concerns raised by state media of a market bubble in the super-rich Chinese league, arguing prices have to be higher to attract players away from big European leagues. “The leagu...
Post a Comment
Read more