Can the Most Indebted Team in Global Soccer Fix Its Finances?

F.C. Barcelona’s liabilities have reached 2.5 billion euros, the result of financial mismanagement and vaulting ambition.

F.C. Barcelona is renowned for breaking soccer records.

Over the years, the star-studded club has won title after title, becoming one of the most well-known brands in all of sports. But beneath the surface there is a less laudatory achievement: Barcelona is by a margin the most indebted team in global soccer history.

Barcelona’s liabilities have reached 2.5 billion euros ($2.9 billion), according to the club’s treasurer. That burden, mostly related to a stadium refurbishment that the club says should be considered separately from its other debt, is roughly twice as large as that of its big rival, Real Madrid. It is the result of a dizzying combination of financial mismanagement and vaulting ambition.

Joan Laporta, the club’s president, is trying to keep the financial troubles from hurting the 28-time Spanish champion’s performance on the field. That is made harder by Barcelona’s unique structure, which is more like a nation-state than a commercial operation.

Like Real Madrid, Barcelona is run not by investors but by members, known as socios, who pay an annual subscription of just over €200. Every half-decade or so, slates of candidates run political-style campaigns, and the members — around 150,000 at Barcelona — elect a group of leaders to run the club on their behalf. The next vote at Barcelona is expected in the first half of the year.

Mr. Laporta is running for re-election to a five-year term, and his campaign is based on the club’s spending its way out of crisis. A charismatic populist, he has splashed out on expensive players and embarked on a costly and much delayed revamp of the Camp Nou, Barcelona’s famous stadium, which he is banking on to restore the club to financial stability.

This gamble has been on display for the past year, as Barcelona spent months playing games in smaller stadiums, including one that holds just 6,000 fans. The team returned to the arena — now known as the Spotify Camp Nou — in November, but attendance is being capped at fewer than half the stadium’s capacity of 105,000 until the troubled building project is completed.

The bulk of Barcelona’s debt is made up of €1.5 billion in long-term financing raised to pay for the stadium upgrade, a project that should have been completed before the current season. The remaining liabilities stem from Mr. Laporta’s commitment to staying competitive, whatever the cost, by recruiting some of the best talent in global soccer.

Mr. Laporta described the club as “technically bankrupt” in 2022, when he returned as president for a second time. He was elected after the ouster of a board under which losses grew to more than €500 million, according to accounts produced by Mr. Laporta’s board, which his predecessors have questioned.

Mr. Laporta won his position with brash pledges to keep Barcelona competitive, even as it was going through one of the worst crises in its history. Not only were its finances in disarray, but the club and members of its previous board were also facing criminal investigations.

To meet his promises, Mr. Laporta has bet the 125-year-old institution’s future, raising hundreds of millions of euros by selling the rights to future revenues to outside investors. His aggressive efforts to shore up the club’s finances have been seen by some as sullying the reputation of one of the most vaunted brands in soccer.

The club sold 25 percent of its income from domestic media rights for 25 years to Sixth Street, a global investment firm, for €667 million. Over the course of the contract, Barcelona is set to redirect about €1 billion to Sixth Street, should the league’s domestic rights retain current values.

“Even though the club sold a percentage of TV rights, it is also true that the asset will return to the club once the contract is finished,” Barcelona said in an emailed response to questions.

Another deal, related to a digital platform for the club, is now the subject of litigation between Barcelona and its partners and has been written down to a lower value.

Without the asset sales, Barcelona noted in its financial accounts, the club would have lost the equivalent of almost €1 billion in the five seasons through 2025.

On the field, Mr. Laporta’s approach has largely worked, with Barcelona winning two league titles since his return as president and reaching the semifinals of last season’s Champions League. Near the halfway point of the current league season, Barcelona is in first place.

But there is little sign that the team’s finances are stabilizing. Only the Spanish league’s fiscal rules, which broadly seek to limit the amount that teams can spend on players relative to the club’s earnings, have acted as a brake on the club’s spending.

“The extremely rigid rulebook prevented us from getting into more debt,” said Marc Duch, a tax adviser and longtime Barcelona member who is otherwise critical of league management. The club has often faced unedifying disputes with the league over the registration of new players because of those rules.

Some sponsorship deals have also raised eyebrows.

A November deal with an obscure cryptocurrency start-up led to criticism by fans, the club quickly issued a statement distancing itself from the firm’s crypto token, and reports this week suggested that the club was dropping the deal. Barcelona also drew scrutiny from human rights groups after signing the Democratic Republic of Congo as a major sponsor in July. And in 2024, it signed a telecommunications partnership with a little-known firm based in the United Arab Emirates run by a Moldovan businessman who also committed to spend millions of euros for seat licenses in the stadium’s V.I.P. section.

The club has churned through auditors to sign off its financial accounts and was penalized by European soccer’s governing body for its accounting practices, including a multimillion-euro fine in July, a punishment that could have been far worse, Mr. Laporta has said.

“Institutionally and socially, the club faces very serious problems,” said Víctor Font, a businessman who plans to run for Barcelona’s presidency, after losing to Mr. Laporta in the last election. “However bad the situation Laporta inherited might have been, the time for excuses is long over.”

To be sure, Barcelona remains a cash-generating machine, making about €1 billion in revenue per year.

The financing for the stadium project, arranged by Goldman Sachs, requires the team to start making larger loan payments only when the arena is fully operational. The most significant repayments have been deferred to 2033, at an average interest rate of more than 5 percent — far higher than the interest rate on the debt that Real Madrid was issued to help refresh its stadium.

Barcelona ultimately expects to generate €350 million per year from its stadium operations, more than double its earnings before the refurbishment. That figure, which the club describes as “conservative,” is higher than any other team, with the exception of Real Madrid.

But much of that extra revenue will go toward paying down the stadium debt. At the same time, Mr. Laporta is under pressure from the league to reduce the club’s payroll from the eye-watering figures it was paying when it fielded the likes of Lionel Messi.

Barcelona said it faced an “inflationary market” for players that it “cannot address with the same tools” as other clubs. Its member-owned status rules out the easy source of cash that most top clubs have tapped: wealthy investors.

Barcelona’s finances are underpinned by its members, who are largely ordinary fans and not oligarchs, private equity moguls or Arab sheikhs whom many elite clubs rely on for cash infusions.

The club’s commitment to its model is now being questioned in ways that it never had been.

Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid, announced that the club’s members will vote this year on his plan to sell a portion of the club’s equity, a move that would not so long ago have seemed unthinkable. That has raised speculation that Barcelona, with its need for investment, could follow suit.

“In my opinion that would mean the end of this F.C. Barcelona,” said Mr. Duch, the tax adviser and longtime member, “for the simple reason that it wouldn’t be ours anymore.”

Barcelona said it currently had no plans to sell a stake.

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