Barcelona finally agree to a shirt sponsorship with Qatar Foundation
Barcelona have managed to finally end their hundred and eleven year record, of having no sponsorship deal for their shirts, by agreeing to a twenty five million pound deal with the Qatar Foundation. The deal is reported to be the
biggest that any football club has made and will see Barcelona bag a whopping hundred and sixty five million Euros, all the way until the 2015-2016 campaign.
The Qatar foundation came into existence in 1995 and has numerous projects, which are focused on education, community development and scientific researches.
This news has emerged only a week after Qatar were announced to be official hosts of the FIFA 2022 World Cup and as a result the small nation has managed to become the first ever Arab country to host the finals.
Prior to the deal going through, Barcelona was one of the handful of teams to be playing the game of football, with no corporate logo being bared on their first-team shirts. The team instead opted to bear the UNICEF logo across
their shirts and in turn paid the foundation around a million pounds, instead of making any money off of them.
However, it seems like Barcelona will be working to try and display both the logos on their shirt and if not feasible, then they will just have to move the UNICEF logo to some other part of the shirt.
Barcelona's vice president is reported to have said,
"With this accord, Barca becomes the undisputed brand leader in world football, far ahead of international rivals"
The deal has also seen Barcelona agreeing to play one friendly on behalf of the Qatar Foundation, but the match need not be played in Qatar.
Prior to Barcelona striking up the deal with the Qatar Foundation, the Premier League teams Manchester United and Liverpool had the biggest shirt sponsorship deals. Both the teams were bagging around £19.75m from AON and Standard
Chartered respectively, while Real Madrid were the closest rivals with their £19.25m deal with bwin.
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