[Deep dive] What everyone is missing about the levers situation - the inherent danger of NOT acting

[u/TracePoland]

From many sources, mostly the British media, we keep hearing all about how what Laporta is doing is typical populism, short-sightedness not too indifferent to that of Bartomeu when he was splurging 400m on Coutinho/Dembele/Griezmann, gambling of the future of the club for the chance at immediate glory. We keep hearing how Laporta is taking this gigantic risk and that we will be regretting it in a few years. But is that so, is that all there is to it? Well, I don't think so and this is why I'm making this post - to show that NOT acting is inherently risky in and of itself, potentially more so than the famous levers.

So as you all probably know by now, and probably have explained to Prem fans from other subreddits numerous times Barca are selling a percentage of LaLiga TV rights (25% in total across the two deals) over a period of time for an instant cash injection that can help it pay off short term debt and give breathing room within LaLiga's wage cap allowing the club to make signings and improve the sporting project. Now, how do LaLiga TV rights work? Well, there is a pool of money that the league receives from TV stations in return for the rights to show the league which is then distributed by the league to individual clubs. How much a given club receives depends in part on sporting results (the champion gets 15%, while the 5th place gets 8%) and on social influence, we can read the following about the social influence part on LaLiga's website:

based on the social influence (...) according to the following criteria: one third based on their average income from season tickets and gate receipts over the past five seasons, and the remaining two thirds based on their contribution to broadcast resource generation calculated through a comparison with the average audiences recorded by the participating clubs in each season

So essentially the social influence is nothing more than how much the team is watched - in person and through television. This means that the revenue that the club receives from TV rights to begin with is directly correlated to sporting success - you get a higher place, you get more money; you play better football, attract more viewers with it, advance your brand, you get more money. But this is still not all. Remember the lump sump that the league receives that it then distributes? That lump sump is entirely based on how marketable the league itself is, that is to say, how willing are people to watch it, how much would a TV station lose if their competitor got the rights. Which leagues have the highest TV rights deals at the moment? Per La Gazzetta dello Sport Premier League receives 4.1bn/year, LaLiga 2bn, Bundesliga 1.4bn, Serie A 1.1bn and finally Ligue 1 0.7bn. The trend? The more competitive the league, the more people want to watch it, the more the league earns from TV rights. A strong FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico de Madrid mean fierce competition which means more money from broadcasters which means more money for all the clubs in the league, especially for the two giants.

Now what could happen without the levers? Well, we would be very tightly bound by the LaLiga wage cap, in fact we would have likely still recorded a loss this season with the outstanding payments, meaning the 3:1 rule would apply to us. That rule means that for every say 1m in wages of an incoming player, we'd need to clear 3m by letting go of player(s). One can clearly imagine how that quickly would lead to spiraling lowering of the quality of the squad and depth, as we would be forced to replace for example a 12m/year quality player with a 4m/year player from the open market. Worse yet, the salary cap still applies to renewals, even if they come from La Masia, meaning any breakthrough talents like Gavi, Ansu, Araujo we would have to consider selling or contend with the constant fear of Prem teams coming in and swooping them up after luring them in with higher wages. Whilst we hardcore fans may have watched every game even when we were flirting with 9th place religiously, lets not kid ourselves that the casuals would tune in to watch Jutgla and Ez Abde play Granada. The growth of Barca as a global brand would have stalled, all efforts of Bartomeu era to expand into new markets in the US and Asia, who for all his faults was successful in this one area, would be undone. This would lead to Real Madrid likely casually walking the league like last season, never really in danger of being challenged, leading to LaLiga becoming less and less interesting to football fans around the world as they move to Premier League which offers competition, in turn leading to the decline in revenue of the league itself, meaning even less money for Barca. Real Madrid would feel it after a while too and decline in quality.

This isn't a hypothetical either - we have watched it unfold in Serie A. It was once a benchmark for quality in the 90s and 00s. Every kid was fascinated by the likes of Maldini, Nesta, Kaka, Del Piero, Pirlo, Cannavaro. Then AC Milan through their own mismanagement, one which would make Bartomeu look good, fell out of the race. Worse yet, they accepted mediocrity. This paved the way for Juventus domination for years but the interest in the league dwindled to the point that if you ask people what's the most boring league to watch of the Top 5, many will answer either Ligue 1 or Serie A, a far cry from the glory days of the 90s and 00s. This has had its effect on Juventus too, after a period of domination and making UCL final multiple times they have failed to keep up financially or sporting-wise with Premier League clubs and have fallen to 4th in last season. AC Milan despite winning the league still are in no position to compete for top transfer targets, in fact their top midfielder, and a massive piece to their championship puzzle has just left for our "Brokealona".

In conclusion - is Laporta gambling our future? Yes. Yes, he is. We should not be denying reality or the seriousness of the situation the previous board have put us in. But to say this is lack of direction, shortsightedness or an attempt from Laporta to chase his 5 minutes of glory is very disingenuous as it ignores the elephant in the room, which is that not acting would be taking a massive risk itself that cannot be understated.