Saudi Crown Prince prepares staggering €10 billion takeover bid for FC Barcelona in potential game-changing ownership revolution.
The kingdom, already embedded in golf, boxing, and club ownership via its sovereign wealth fund, is increasingly testing the limits of what fans and governance models will tolerate.
Against this backdrop, Barcelona’s fragile financial position and enormous debt have inevitably drawn speculative external interest, even as the Catalan club publicly clings to its member-owned identity.
According to reports from El Chiringuito’s Francois Gallardo, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is considering a staggering €10 billion proposal related to Barcelona, a figure that would dwarf any previous football transaction and theoretically be enough to clear the club’s more than €2.5 billion debt and still inject massive fresh capital.
The idea floated is that such a bid would be aimed at securing effective control of the institution and folding it into the broader Saudi sports strategy, either directly or via the Public Investment Fund.
For a board battling debt, stadium financing, and wage pressures, that kind of number sounds transformative on paper.
In practice, however, a full “sale” of Barcelona is virtually impossible under current structures.
Barcelona, like Real Madrid, is owned by its socios (members), who hold voting power and elect presidents rather than shareholders trading equity on a market.
Any move that hands control to an outside state or private investor would require a fundamental change to the club’s legal form and identity, something that would face fierce resistance from the membership base and Catalan political and social circles.
The socios model is built precisely to prevent what this kind of bid represents.
Where there is some theoretical room is in the commercial and entertainment space.
One path being explored in Spain involves splitting a club into a footballing arm and a separate entertainment/business arm, with outside investors allowed to buy into the latter without dictating sporting operations.
For now, then, a €10 billion Saudi “takeover” of Barcelona is best understood as a symbol of two colliding worlds: sovereign mega-money probing the limits of football governance, and a member-owned giant clinging to a model designed to be unsellable, no matter the price.
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