COVID-19 fight: Camp Nou title rights on offer for 1 season

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BARCELONA: LaLiga giants FC Barcelona announced on Tuesday that they will sell the naming rights for the Camp Nou for one season in a bid to raise funds in the battle against the coronavirus.

The club have handed over title rights to the Barcelona Foundation who will now be tasked with finding a sponsor for the 2020-2021 season. 

The club's board has approved the ceding of the title rights to Camp Nou for the season 2020-2021 to the Barça Foundation to raise money to invest in research projects being carried out in Catalonia and the rest of the world involved in the fight against the effects of COVID-19.

Official statement:
FC Barcelona and the Barça Foundation, of which the director responsible is the club’s first vice president Jordi Cardoner Casaus, consider it a necessity that at this time of humanitarian crisis, the institution should use all its resources to fight against the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences. The Barça Foundation is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and it reflects the club’s determination to contribute to the creation of a fairer and more sustainable society, especially by improving the welfare of children at risk of social exclusion in Catalonia and around the world. At the moment the Foundation helps more than 1.6 million children to improve their lives via education, programmes for violence prevention and social inclusion. For these children, who have become indirect victims of this pandemia, confined to home for more than a month, to have a future it is vital to invest in research projects to find treatment to counter Covid-19 and that help alleviate economic and social effects.

As such, the club, via the Foundation, has been carrying out a series of initiatives since to the start of the health emergency, working with institutions, businesses and other organisations. The Foundation has managed the recent initiatives in the battle against Covid-19 that have come about over the last few weeks such as the campaign to raise awareness by the Club, allowing facilities to be used and working with partners such as Tencent and Taiping to import health materials, adaptation of programmes so that children can stay in touch with teaching professionals, advice on the prevention of cyberbullying and organising visits by our sportsmen and women to sick children in hospital to name just a few examples.

Title rights, an unused resource
For this reason, in the next few weeks, the Barça Foundation, through the club's Commercial Area, will begin the process of finding a sponsor who wishes to acquire the title rights to Camp Nou for a season with the proceeds going to finance research projects and other projects involved in the battle against the effects of COVID-19, both at a local and international level. Barça are ceding those rights for a name to be put to Camp Nou for the very first time as the title rights are a commercial option that has never been exploited before and had been reserved for the Espai Barça, the transformative project for the club’s facilities to become the best sporting complex in the world in the centre of a big city like Barcelona and that included the redevelopment of Camp Nou, the building of a new Palau Blaugrana, a Campus Barça and the Estadi Johan Cruyff, which is now being used at the Ciutat Esportiva. This ceding of the rights for a season is compatible with the future commercial use of the title rights for Camp Nou to finance the Espai Barça project, as approved by the members in a referendum celebrated in 2014.

Now, the Foundation will put out on to the market the title rights and it will use the money a sponsor brings in the service of a vital cause and one that benefits everyone. The income generated will create a fund that will be divided in the following way: a part will be destined for a project on COVID-19 driven by the sponsors themselves and the rest will be shared out amongst other projects that are being developed in parallel.