I want it

I was born Barcelona, a city bathed by the Mediterranean and thus at the heart of European commerce and trends. Apart from cooking with olive oil one trend we all strongly follow comes from up north though, and that is soccer (we call it football). Our team, F.C. Barcelona, arguably one of the best teams in history, has a unique ideosincracy, treating its supporters with utmost respect (we are serious people, cheering in the stadium is surprisingly polite) and consulting them on most of the important decisions. In short, there are presidential elections once every 4 years and a randomly selected group of paying supporters get to say their opinion¹.

I mention all this because they all recently accepted a business proposal from the newly elected president, Sandro Rossell: the team would be earning money from a jersey sponsor, Qatar Foundation. I won’t discuss the terms of the deal, it was so huge that it even got featured at the cover of Financial Times.

The point is our team has not always performed as good in competitions as it now does, but fellow supporters were always proud of a few things that defined us as “More than a club”². One of them is a sponsor-free jersey. That changed with a deal with Unicef³, but at least it kept the spirit of generousity by giving instead of receiving money. And now we have Qatar Foundation. It certainly is a good deal, but how will it affect the brand’s reputation? Sure they pay a lot of money, more than any sponsor has paid before, but do we really want to be associated with a “foundation” that yes, it’s non-profit, but it is founded and funded entirely by the Emir of a country that condones human traficking⁴ and has still a long way to go in terms of gender equality?

Photo by mtraker

¹ More information on the club website here
² This motto was adopted in the supporter’s assembly in 1968
³ The previous deal with Unicef is thoroughly explained here
⁴ Example