Feature

Barcelona taps Legends to maximise Camp Nou revenues

Featured image credit: FC Barcelona

LaLiga football club Barcelona has teamed up with Legends International to market VIP boxes and seats at the renovated Spotify Camp Nou.

Barcelona said the deal will complement an agreement with Innovative Partnerships Group (IPG 360), which will look to sign partners for the club’s wide-ranging Espai Barça project. Both agreements will be designed to maximise revenue generation at the Camp Nou, which is undergoing a significant revamp as part of the project.

Legends International specialises in commercial management of stadiums, large entertainment venues and premium experiences. IPG 360 is based in Los Angeles and specialises in naming rights, business development and international marketing.

Barcelona has cited partnership agreements and new VIP offers as two of the main ways to generate revenue at the new Camp Nou. The club added that its deal with streaming service Spotify for naming rights to the stadium will be the first of a series of sponsorship agreements linked to the venue.

More deals, covering areas such as sustainability, mobility and technology, are set to be announced in the coming months. Barcelona hopes to generate more than €120m (£103m/$126m) per year from partnership agreements and VIP hospitality once the new stadium is finished and at full capacity.

The club is using the winter World Cup in Qatar to work on the renovation of the Camp Nou, with the outer ring of the stadium being demolished. The bulk of the work will be done during the 2023-24 season, which Barcelona will spend at the Estadi Olímpic Lluis Companys.

Camp Nou’s capacity will increase from 98,000 to 105,000 as part of the Espai Barça project, which also includes the delivery of a new Palau Blaugrana arena and the wide-ranging Campus Barça development.

Legends’ deal with Barcelona comes as the premium experiences company furthers efforts to target the Spanish stadium market. In October, Legends appointed Jesus Bueno, a former executive at the NBA basketball league, as its new managing director in Iberia.

Legends also has a wide-ranging deal with Barcelona’s arch-rival Real Madrid to optimise the management of the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu.

In May, Real sealed a €360m deal with global investment firm Sixth Street and Legends for the formation of a new entity aimed at enhancing the non-football activities at the revamped Bernabéu.