What Is Barca Studios? The Allure Of FC Barcelona’s Moonshot

FC Barcelona did it again. As the start of the season drew so close it looked impossible for the club to raise enough capital to register its new signings ticked, the Culers reached out into the void and pulled another of those magical economic levers.

The windfall this time around was $103 million courtesy of a 24.5% stake in the, currently unprofitable, digital content arm, Barca Studios, sold to audio-visual production company Orpheus Media.

A fortnight earlier, the NFT platform Socios.com purchased the same amount in the business for the same fee.

Those two deals were in addition to the half a billion dollars the club earned from selling US investment firm Silver Street a percentage of its future La Liga television revenues.

The money, FC Barcelona fans could rest assured, would be there for Robert Lewandowski, Jules Kounde and others, to pull on the blue and red stripes against Rayo Vallecano in the opening game.

But, while the TV rights sale was relatively well understood by the world of soccer, and often derided as the ‘sale of the family silver,’ this second Barca Studios deal prompted head-scratching. What was this business companies were queuing up to take a stake in?

Well, I tried to understand a bit more about what would prompt a company to splash $100 million on a percentage of Barca Studios I asked one of those that’s taken the plunge: Socios.com.

What is on earth is Barca Studios?

If you think of the chunks of FC Barcelona’s future revenue Silver Street acquired as the established way soccer clubs make money from content, Barca Studios is the attempt to discover what might come next.

So, while the company produces audiovisual content for the local Barça TV channel, its social media and streaming platform Barça TV+ it also seeks, as the club’s annual report explains, “new formats that could have a commercial route through other global operators.”

The idea of selling a stake to a company like Socios.com is that, as the announcement of the deal suggested, the technology-savvy partner leverages its expertise in helping to find those new ways of making money.

“In the same way that there is now a clear appetite for content beyond matchday broadcasting, we will also witness a vast increase in the demand for club-related products and services online and in the metaverse, including Fan Tokens, NFTs, play-to-earn games and other digital assets,” a spokesperson from Socios.com claimed.

“This is a fast emerging sector, one that will create new opportunities for fans and new revenue streams. And, while clubs can handle a lot of the creative in-house, the technology and scale required to really deliver on this vision is relatively limited,” they added.

This comes at a cost however, if the combined expertise of Socios.com and Orpheus Media does strike digital gold, they’ll be taking home half of it, 50% of Barca Studios now belongs to them.

Jackpot or flop?

Socios.com and FC Barcelona are not strangers to each other. The pair launched the club’s fan token back in February 2020 with more than $40 million worth sold. But, not unlike other clubs’ fan tokens, the value has not held dropping from a $50 high to $6.09 at the time of writing.

Despite this drop, Socios.com is confident that NFTs will be key to driving fan engagement in these new platforms, which they have quite literally bought into. It believes it will be part of the so-called Web3 vision of decentralized internet, where tokens and crypto have shifted the power away from the established order ruled by the likes of GoogleGOOG
or Facebook.

Soccer clubs are excited by the idea of Web3 because it offers the opportunity for them to ‘own’ their communities.

For a team like FC Barcelona, with an estimated 400 million fans worldwide, being able to cultivate that audience financially through the internet is very attractive.

“Communities that will be key to helping clubs unlock the full potential of Web3.” the spokesperson continued. “Socios.com is essentially building Web3-ready communities for its partners. Fans are already able to access a wide range of gamified features and rewards through the app and we’re constantly working to extend the ways Fan Token holders can benefit on the platform.

“Barca, one of the very first clubs to embrace the Socios.com platform back in early 2020, has always been at the forefront of innovation in sport. The club has now given Barca Studios the mandate to roll out their Web3 vision and, with $BARAR
at its core,” they added.

But just as has been demonstrated with the drop in fan token value, it would be wrong to think Barcelona will suddenly hit the jackpot. I could be wrong, but if there is anything to be learned about online revenue it’s that things change rapidly.

In a decade, the $200 million Joan Laporta has generated from Barca Studios could look like genius or stupidity.