The new Blaugrana Palace does not motivate Goldman Sachs
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BarcelonaThe new Camp Nou is the jewel in the crown of the Espai Barça. No one doubts it. When completed (in principle, at the end of 2025) it will become one of the best stadiums in the world of sport and will allow the Barça club a large increase in annual income. The idea is to start moving a machine this summer, but, as ARA explained, sources familiar with the situation report that, given that Joan Laporta’s board of directors is intensely redoing the project of Josep Maria’s board Bartomeu, it is very unlikely that Barça will then have the final building permit and should start remodeling with a section license.
But in the shadows awaits another major project that the club also needs to carry out, the new Palau Blaugrana, in this case scheduled for the end of 2027. In this sense, the board of Laporta is facing a problem that he already had to face Bartomeu’s. Goldman Sachs, the American investment fund that the club is looking to finance the Espai Barça, is not very motivated by the investment in the new Palau. “They are only interested in the stadium,” an important official of the organization told ARA, adding: “During the last part of Bartomeu’s term, the new Palace disappeared from all calendars of works and presentations.” .
Barça plans to allocate 420 million of the 1,500-ceiling ceiling to the new Palau, the Petit Palau, the ice rink and the bus station, which the members have given permission to apply for when seeking funding. Former CEO Ferran Reverter traveled to the United States the weekend before his resignation, which took place on February 8, with the intention of advancing negotiations, but failed to materialize anything. It will now have to be his replacement, yet to be decided, who will take the reins of the conversations. A few days ago, ARA explained that the CEO profile that Laporta is looking for to fill Reverter’s vacancy is that of a finance expert. At the same time, the club is negotiating with CVC how to host LaLiga Impulso without the money being counted as debt.
“Goldman Sachs is only interested in the Camp Nou and football. He has never hidden it. He was only giving money for the stadium. The rest of the actions would have been financed with the additional income that the Espai Barça will bring “, explains a person familiar with the conversations that Bartomeu’s board had with the American investment bank. “The fundamental problem is that, at the moment, there is no real and serious business plan and, therefore, the real potential that the new Palace can have is not valued,” he added. On the other hand, a former executive delves into this disinterest in Goldman. “The incremental income of the new Palau was not considered in the business plan, the return came only from the incremental of the new Camp Nou. Therefore, his main interest, which was to make sure that the planned income would be achieved, logically went through the rehabilitation of the Camp Nou “, he explains. “What they were asking for was the money first for the stadium and everything that was needed to get the license,” he added. Meanwhile, from the board of Laporta are limited to saying that they are working “to redefine the project of the new Palace.”
The disintegration of the Palau Project
Albert Soler, Barça’s director of professional sports from 2015 to 2021, was the ideologue of the Palau Project, which aimed to ensure that employees working for the Palau had a vertical structure separate from football-related matters. “Soler did not want to mix pears with apples and wanted to do a sustainable and self-sufficient project,” explains a former club employee.
With the arrival of Laporta in the presidency, this structure gradually disintegrated. In fact, Roger Rocasalbas, a former Barça skate hockey player and Soler’s trusted man in this project, left the club a few weeks ago. “Now the structure has been rebuilt in a much more transversal and effective way,” said the club.
