Heavily strained financial conditions at the club have forced FC Barcelona to undertake some extreme measures in the past few years. One such action was the planned selling of a portion of the club’s television rights by President Joan Laporta and his Board of Directors.
Related to this decision, an interesting story has been disclosed in a recently published book on Jim Ratcliffe, which has also been reported by SPORT. According to this story, the British billionaire, Jim Ratcliffe, tried to buy 50% of the rights in FC Barcelona, before he turned his interest in buying Manchester United.
The report mentions that the billionaire founder of Ineos, and the owner of Ligue 1 side Nice, held meetings with President Joan Laporta and pledged to inject billions into the club. In this regard, he had an “interesting” conversation with the FC Barcelona representatives, and had a good relationship with President Laporta.
The book claims that it was the selling of the club’s portion of television rights that induced the billionaire to make such a move. Ratcliffe claims he told the club executive not to undertake such an operation, and offered the club €2-3 billion cash injection and renovation of Camp Nou, in exchange for 50% ownership of the club.
The billionaire would also have signed a deed which would have prevented him to sell these rights further to another party. The book claims that the investor was motivated only by footballing aspects, and making money from FC Barcelona was not on his agenda.
However, FC Barcelona refused the offer because they believed such an arrangement would have made their relationship with their other partners and sponsors very difficult.