Football | Dorna could buy Barcelona | FormulaPassion.it

These are decisive hours for the future of Barcelona intended as a football club. The Blaugrana company, in fact, is going through a financial crisis – the blocking of the payment of salaries is now near – which could soon lead it to become a SAD (sociedad anonima deportiva), a sort of SRL (limited liability company) of a commercial nature, whose owners are so by virtue of a participation in the share capital through securities or shares. As a limited liability company, it does not require shareholders to respond with their personal assets. Being a SAD with regard to a football club in Spain is the practice, in the Spanish Liga – the equivalent of Serie A in Italy – only four teams are currently not SAD and are Real Madrid, Osasuna, Athletic Bilbao and, in fact, Barcelona.

Obviously the transformation of Lionel Messi’s club into a SAD would attract investors from all over the world, but in pole position there is an Iberian entity. According to journalist Josep Brau, who has been an expert in all the behind-the-scenes maneuvers regarding Barcelona for years, the Dorna of Carmelo Ezpeleta is evaluating the purchase of the Catalan company thanks to the support of the investment funds of which Dorna Sports already belongs, namely CVC Partners and Bridgepoint. Carmelo Ezpeleta is on excellent terms with Javier Tebas, the president of the Spanish La Liga, who would have already given his blessing to the operation also illustrating it to the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sanchez.

The link between Ezpeleta and Tebas is not the only ‘connection’ that gives concreteness to what at the moment remain indiscretions. Manel Arroyo, sales manager of Dorna Sports, was marketing director of Barcelona from 2010 to 2018 and the approach to football would be a return to the past for the company chaired by Carmelo Ezpeleta. At the end of the 1980s, in fact, Dorna, while taking its first steps, managed the relations between La Liga and investors at an advertising level.