Barcelona announced on Tuesday that they would cede the title rights to the club’s charitable foundation, which would manage the process. They hope to find a sponsor in the coming weeks and plan for part of the money raised to go towards charities involved in the investigation of Covid-19. Other charities, chosen by the sponsor and the foundation, would also benefit. The deal will last for a year, after which the search for a permanent title holder would continue. Barcelona’s stadium has never had a title, still less a commercial one.
This move is reminiscent of Barcelona’s decision to name Unicef as its first ever shirt “sponsor†in 2006. Rather than being paid, Barcelona contributed €1.6m a year to carry Unicef’s name, serving as a soft launch for commercial sponsors thereafter, beginning with the Qatar foundation and then Qatar Airways.
Barcelona said that the measures fit their claim to be “more than a club†and that they hoped to be able to “create a wave of hope for millions of people around the world who are suffering due to this pandemicâ€. A statement described this as a “global crisis without precedents†during which Barcelona have to “assume responsibilityâ€.
“We are very happy to be able to drive forward this initiative that offers something as emblematic as the name of our stadium so that institutions, organisation, businesses, who wise [sic] may associate themselves with it and as such contribute to the fight against Covid-19 given that their investment will be used to finance research projects on the illness and projects that are working to eradicate to lesson its effects,†the statement said.
Source: theguardian.com
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