Barça interrupts his American dream

BarcelonaThe last time that Barça went on a summer tour There was a rough patch in Asia. The reason that led the Catalan club to visit Japan in 2019 was that the shirt sponsor was then Rakuten, a company whose activity many Barça members still do not know. Hiroshi Mikitani, the company's CEO, was outraged because the players arrived quite late to a commercial event in the city of Kobe. Japanese culture considers tardiness a serious lack of respect. At that time, Barça employees leaked that the delay had been caused because the players were finishing a game of a board game on the bus, but official sources from the club denied that this was the case.

This year, Barça will return to Asia at the beginning of August to play friendlies six years after the last tour on this continent. Everything indicates that the trip will stop and stay in Japan and South Korea, where, according to the event promoter D-Drive, they will play against Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors and Suwon Samsung Bluewings. "Barça did not have any commitments with anyone this summer and will decide the best option, which will be Asia," official sources from the club simply told ARA, who postponed the announcement of the cities, rivals and dates for later.

"Asia is always very interesting, especially Japan due to its monetization capacity," a source familiar with football markets explains to this newspaper. "But if you only have one bullet, I would bet on the United States," he points out. The return to Asia is a very significant change in the preparation of the Barça summer tours because in Laporta's second term in office he had always - except in 2021, due to the coronavirus pandemic - gone to the United States. "There is an explosion of the MLS [catapulted by the arrival of Leo Messi], the strength of Apple TV and the 2026 World Cup will be played there," he continues. "But, above all, it is that in the United States they go with the credit card in their mouth."

The Club World Cup factor

There is one clear reason for choosing Asia. Barça will experience a very different summer to that of the majority of the big European teams. While Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain will be playing in the Club World Cup in the United States between June 15 and July 13, the Barça players will be on holiday because they have not qualified for this first, renewed edition of the competition. The World Cup will make it very difficult to organise the typical summer tournaments between European teams in the United States, such as the Soccer Champions Tour, promoted by the Californian investment fund Sixth Street (which has 25% of Barça's television rights in La Liga for a quarter of a century) with the collaboration of Legends (a company belonging to Sixth Street) over the last two summers.

The club has been forced to seek its own resources outside of an American market that will have already been satiated with football this summer with the Club World Cup. On last year's tour, Barça earned around 10 million euros to play three games in the United States, one of them a classic against Real Madrid. In 2019, Rakuten paid Barça 5 million in total for the two games it played in Japan plus 1.5 million for the expenses of its stay. The figures for this year's tour are still unknown.

Barça's last tour of Asia dates back to 2019, but the last time it played a one-off friendly was in June 2023 against Andrés Iniesta's Vissel Kobe in Tokyo. Back then, a sold out. On the other hand, the classic between the Legends of Barça and Madrid, which was played just two months ago, on December 15, also in the Japanese capital, with the participation of names such as Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta and Rivaldo, was a full house. "Tickets sold out faster for the Legends' game than for the Barça first team's. There is a big fan phenomenon in Asia," a person familiar with the secrets of these two games explained to ARA.

The United States and Asia, the two main markets

The choice between going to America or Asia also comes into play because of the business that Barça has on each continent. The two international offices of the club are there; one in New York and the other in Hong Kong. Both, which are not going through the best of times, They are captained by Bryan Bachner, who between 2016 and 2021 was the director of CSSB Limited, a company based in Hong Kong that Currently there are several open legal cases for alleged fraud, some of which implicate Laporta as being under investigation.

The United States and Asia are Barça's two main strategic markets outside Europe. No less than eleven of its current sponsors belong to these continents. Asia, despite the departure of Rakuten as a sponsor of the front of the shirt, provides seven (Daka, Maybank, SHB, Konami, ZIC, Sebang and EBC Financial Group) and the United States four (Nike, Stanley, Scotiabank and PRIME). Of the seven in Asia, three have their main headquarters in the countries where Barça will play matches next preseason. ZIC and Seabang are from South Korea and Konami from Japan.

Hiroshi Mikitani was not the only one who felt annoyed during Barça's tour of Japan in 2019. Barça's footballers felt it there too. In his case, due to the constant presence in group photographs of Jaume Masferrer, then the right-hand man of President Josep Maria Bartomeu, in a strange behaviour because he was generally a figure who preferred to remain in the background of the media. Half a year after that tour, in February 2020, the Barçagate case broke out and the already damaged relationship between Masferrer and the squad was finally broken.