The Camp Nou went from being a political challenge to becoming a communication challenge. Above all, however, it was (and will continue to be) an economic challenge. “The Espai Barça can have the same impact on the city that the Barcelona Olympic Games had,” said the Barça president when he decided to promote the new stadium project in 2021. Two years later, when work began, he highlighted that his board “had shown courage with the project.” And, once the field was open, in the test that took place on November 7 in open-door training, the Barça top manager highlighted: “It maintains the mythical moments of the past, but with a new soul. It is like returning to the future.”
It is difficult, for now, to know whether Laporta sold slogans of optimism to Barcelona fans or was simply realistic in highlighting the courage of a board that began the most ambitious project in the club’s history (1,450 million euros). There is no doubt, however, that the new Camp Nou brought political duels for the president.
The first was to bet on Limak. As revealed by Cadena SER, the Turkish company was the construction company least valued by Barcelona technicians for the Spotify Camp Nou works. The report noted that Limak did not justify its execution schedule, which is faster than that of its competitors, and that its responses were “indefinite, vague and insufficient.” In addition, it needed close to 200 million euros to start the works, compared to 12 million for the rest of the applicants.
The second conflict arose in the unfulfilled promises with the return to the stadium. Tenants in Montjuïc from August 2023, Barcelona initially scheduled a return to the Camp Nou in November 2024 to celebrate the 125th anniversary. The delays continued until Laporta himself assured that the 2025 Gamper Trophy would be played in the Les Corts neighborhood. He didn’t comply. In fact, Barça returns home not only a year later than planned, but three months after the Gamper was announced. “The return to the field is an example of how things work at the club. There are many interests and no one wants to go to the president with bad news,” they remember from the Camp Nou offices.
In the uncertainty regarding returning to the field, Barcelona looked for an enemy. He looked for it outside of Les Corts: the City Hall. On September 23, with Barcelona at the gates of La Mercè, Barça and City Hall staged a fight: in the morning, the club assured that everything was ready; In the afternoon, the council denied the license due to “safety deficiencies,” which the fire chief described without nuance. Barcelona, then, had no choice but to return to Montjuïc, the house lent by BSM (Barcelona Serveis Municipals) after an agreement that, on average, amounted to 500,000 euros per game.
“Barcelona takes a problem that is theirs with the construction company to a political level. It was not a political decision to hand over the license or not. It was a technical decision. The technicians do not care if Laporta pushes or not to return to the stadium,” they complained from the City Council.
But the rush to return to the Camp Nou was not only political disputes with the City Council or internal wars between the different directors and executives of the club. Barça needed to return home to mitigate its financial problems as soon as possible. That was (and is) for Laporta the third conflict, essentially the most important. One of the first issues to be resolved was in the offices of the Ciudad Deportiva: without the stadium open there was no way for the auditors to justify the sale of the VIP seats – hurriedly transferred in December 2024 for 100 million to Qatar and Emirates funds to register Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor – and thus achieve the 1×1 rule required by LaLiga’s financial fair play rules. “Now the auditors will be able to verify that the asset that was sold exists and is operational,” celebrate sources from the financial area.
Commitments and investors
But it was not only pending issues with LaLiga and Javier Tebas that had to be resolved. The club has commitments with investors and sponsors. In December, for example, the Catalan entity must pay 44 million euros in interest on the 1,450 million loan. Additionally, the contract with Spotify requires a “full return” by July 1, 2026; Otherwise, income falls from 20 to 5 million annually, and they could even cancel the agreement as of 2028. There is one no small detail: to be considered complete, the return requires that benches, rings, catwalks, doors, advertising and other key assets be operational.
For now, Barcelona opens its doors to 45,401 spectators (phase 1A: grandstand, south goal and side). The players, in any case, still do not have their final dressing room (they will use one of the four that will be on the field) and this Saturday against Athletic (4:15 p.m.), the press conferences of Hansi Flick and Ernesto Valverde will be held at the Auditori 1899. It is expected, according to Laporta, that at the beginning of next year 62,000 fans will be able to access the Camp Nou (phase 1C, with complete first and second stands). According to the budget presented by the board during the 2025-2026 campaign, the stadium’s income will be 226 million, 51 more than last season.
The stadium would be completed in 2027 and will have capacity for 105,000 people. That will be when Barcelona will have the economic leap it needs to clear its debt. The consulting firm Legends, an American company with which Barcelona and Madrid work, predicted that the Barça club will generate 346 million euros when the stadium is finished. Laporta, in the last assembly, assured that this figure already exceeds 400 million.
The return to the Camp Nou, then, was not about sentimentality or nostalgia: each delay increased the political risks, but above all the economic ones, in a club where there is not enough money. Laporta already said it: “We have shown courage with this project.”
