Barcelona reportedly suffer record-breaking financial loss / News - Basketnews.com

Barcelona's plan to dispense with some heavy contracts has amounted to unprecedented €56.6 million financial losses for the club's basketball section.

Credit: Javier Borrego/AFP7 via ZUMA Wire Credit Javier Borrego/AFP7 via ZUMA Wire

Over the past three seasons, FC Barcelona have been trying to cut down on their expenses, presenting a lower budget, reducing players' salaries, or letting some of them go.

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However, the outcome remains invariably the same: a huge deficit that grows bigger every year. According to the latest annual report by 2PlayBook, the Catalan club has recorded record losses of €56.6 million in 2022-23, mostly due to layoffs.

Almost half of the amount (€25.27 million) was the cost of the agreement for contract terminations with coach Sarunas Jasikevicius and players Nikola Mirotic and Cory Higgins.

That sum was registered as extraordinary expenses since the losses occurred in the summer when the fiscal year had already ended.

Per the same report, Barca's basketball section is closing the year 2023 with the biggest losses in its history. Initially, the entity expected to lose close to €28 million, which - by and large - is the standard deficit to be covered every year.

But the layoffs have skyrocketed the total expenses to an unprecedented extent, creating a hole of €56.6 million overall, double that of 2019-20 and 88% more than the budget that had been set before the start of the year, according to data extracted from official accounts.

Ahead of the 2023-2024 season, Barca plan to cut the deficit to 13.77 million. The section recorded losses oscillating between 27.4 and 28.8 million from 2020 through 2022.

The recipe is none other than a cut in salaries, which will go from 38.8 million to 27.06 million. Non-sports personnel will have the same expense, over 860,000 euros, while the first team will be allocated 12 million less (26.2 million).

As far as revenue, Barca expects to cash in 21.24 million in the 2023-24 campaign. All lines of business will remain frozen except for sponsorships, which are expected to contribute more than 10 million for the first time.

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