Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten is weighing up an offer to secure naming rights to the Camp Nou, home stadium of Spanish LaLiga football club Barcelona, according to Mundo Deportivo.
The Barcelona-based sports newspaper today (Monday) reported that Rakuten founder and chief executive, Hiroshi Mikitani, is keen on building on his company’s existing shirt sponsorship contract by adding stadium naming rights in a major move to push the Rakuten brand on a global basis.
Barcelona is said to be seeking up to €300m ($354m) for a 20-year contract, and although the club is said not to be keen to have the same company sponsor both its shirt and stadium, Mundo Deportivo stated that this will depend on Rakuten’s offer.
Rakuten became Barcelona’s new main sponsor, replacing Qatar Airways, through a deal signed in November 2016. Rakuten signed a four-year deal, covering the 2017-18 to 2020-21 seasons, to become the main global sponsor of the club and to appear on the front of the first team’s shirt. The deal is worth a basic €55m per season, with an option to extend for a fifth year.
In April, Barcelona reached an agreement to lift the bureaucratic red tape surrounding the Espai Barça project, which will include a substantial redevelopment of the Camp Nou.
First approved in March 2016, Espai Barça has been hit by regulatory challenges. However, the Barcelona City Council Governing Board in April accepted a Modification to the General Metropolitan Plan (MPGM), thereby making Espai Barça possible.
The future Espai Barça includes the redesign of Camp Nou. On the side that is now occupied by the Miniestadi, there will be a new Palau Blaugrana and adjoining sports hall for other sections of the club – basketball, handball, roller hockey and futsal – and other facilities relating to sport such as the ice rink and the FCB Escola youth academy, which will remain active on the new site.
Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu had said work on the Camp Nou is expected to begin in the summer of 2019, while other projects could commence in the first quarter of next year with the goal of completion in 2022. A naming rights partnership has been seen as a crucial part of financing the project.
Work on the redevelopment was originally scheduled to commence in June or July last year. The original start date was put forward in March 2016 as Barcelona selected a bid from Nikken Sekkei and Pascual i Ausió Arquitectes as the winner of the tender for the design of the redevelopment project.
Barcelona’s members voted to back the redevelopment project in April 2014, in what was only the second referendum in the club’s history. The referendum came after Barcelona’s board of directors threw their support behind redeveloping the iconic Camp Nou rather than building a new stadium.
The Camp Nou, which first opened in 1957, has a current capacity of 98,888. Through the redevelopment the historic stadium will be expanded to a final capacity of around 105,000.