The hidden face of Pau Gasol's mysterious investment in football

BarcelonaThe announcement of Pau Gasol's investment proposal in the women's football league, amounting to approximately 55 million euros, put everyone in the sector on alert. With the aim of "professionalizing the commercial model and accelerating internationalization," the former Barcelona player wants to carry out the largest private investment in this competition through the company Gasol16 Ventures and alongside other investors. However, all of this will have to be approved by the league's clubs in an extraordinary assembly that will take place on Monday, June 29.

However, the reality is that there is a lot of information and lack of communication that has been lost along the way. L'ARA has contacted five clubs from the Women's First Division, who highlight the limited information received regarding the proposal. “Everything is very general, still,” explains one of the entities. None of the clubs have yet made any decisions, and all assure that they will evaluate and study the proposal before making a decision. When will the money arrive, for how many years, or what obligations will the league and its teams have to fulfill are questions that, nowadays, no one knows the answer to.

What needs to happen for it to be approved?

In any case, it will be the clubs that will have the final say and decide whether the proposal goes ahead or not. According to the statutes of the women's league, the favorable vote of two-thirds of the teams will be required. This means that eleven entities will have to accept the proposal for it to move forward. However, as in all assemblies, clubs with more weight - such as Barça and Real Madrid - will play a key role in deciding whether it is approved or not. To give an example, the candidacy of Beatriz Álvarez, ratified as president of LaLiga F in April, received the support of thirteen of the sixteen clubs.

The new dimension of women's football

However, it is a new commitment to Spanish women's football, which seeks to make the definitive leap to compete with other leagues, mainly the English one, to which large amounts of economic resources are being allocated to attract the best talent. Proof of this are the possible departures that will occur this summer from the F League to the English first division. Alexia Putellas, Mapi León, Ona Batlle or Andrea Medina, among other players, will leave the Spanish competition and could land in England.

Some departures that will negatively impact stadium attendance. In the 2024-25 season, La Liga F attracted nearly 400,000 spectators throughout the entire season. This figure represented a 7% increase compared to the previous year, but it remained a very low number, with an average of 1,650 fans per match. These are numbers that always increase at Barça. The Blaugrana team has had an average of 6,102 spectators this season in La Liga F (3,947 if we do not consider the match played at Montjuïc against Real Madrid).

In this context, Futboleras —one of the benchmark websites for Spanish women's football— has made a commitment to renew its portal. “The idea is to create an ecosystem. We want to move from being a statistics portal to being a community, but resources remain very limited,” explains Toni Moral, one of the four partners of the digital portal and former player for Barça and Girona.

Currently, Futboleras has 40,000 unique users per month, but it is not sustainable. “There is a strong and solid base to grow from, but not to live off right now,” adds Moral, who aims to internationalize the platform. “It will be possible to continue tracking both the Liga F, as well as the First, Second, and Third Federation. We have also incorporated other services such as biohacking —tools for players and fans to track their health—, a portal for content creators specialized in women's football, digital books about women's football, and various games on the website,” describes Moral.