Barca sign record shirt deal with Qataris
Barcelona have
agreed a record shirt sponsorship deal with the Qatar Foundation worth
£25 million a season through to the end of the 2015-16 campaign.
The deal is the
biggest for any football club, Barca said, and will net the Catalan
side about 165 million euros in total, including £12.5m for the
remainder of the current season.
The Qatar
Foundation, founded by Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of
Qatar, in 1995, has projects focusing on education, scientific research
and community development. It is also engaged in several corporate
joint ventures.
Last week the tiny
Gulf state was chosen by football’s governing body FIFA to host the
World Cup in 2022 when it will become the first Arab country to stage
the finals.
Barca are one of
the few clubs in world football not to have a corporate logo on their
first-team shirts, instead displaying the name of the United Nations
Children’s Fund, UNICEF – for which they actually paid the charity
£1.25m a year.
Under the agreement
announced on Friday, marketing experts will seek to find a way for both
logos to be displayed, although if that was not possible the UNICEF
name would be moved to another part of the shirt, a club spokesman said.
“With this accord,
Barca becomes the undisputed brand leader in world football, far ahead
of international rivals,” Javier Faus, a club vice president, said.
The agreement also
includes a commitment for Barca to play one friendly per season, not
necessarily in Qatar, and the Qatar Foundation will take part in joint
projects with UNICEF and the club’s own foundation.
A study by
consulting firm Sport+Markt published in October showed new deals for
English Premier League clubs Manchester United and Liverpool, with
insurance brokerage AON and bank Standard Chartered respectively, were
the two most valuable contracts in 2010/11 at £19.75m each.
Real Madrid’s £19.25m deal with Internet bookmaker bwin was the next biggest.
Leave a Reply