Xavier O’Callaghan has held a press conference to outline how financial fair play affects the FC Barcelona professional teams. He reiterated that the current Board of Directors want to ensure “every professional team at the Club is competitive in order to strive for every trophy”. Barça is a multi-sports club and as such, the LaLiga rules regarding controlling budgets and finances “affects all the institution’s professional teams and sports structures, not just the football first team”.
As he outlined, each season LaLiga calculates the income and expenditure forecasts, establishing the wage bill for each club. “It should be understood that the wage bill is part of the budget, it’s not exactly the same thing”, he noted. In this context, LaLiga differentiates between expenditure on the football first team and those they call non-registrable – such as professional team wages, amateur sports, youth coaches, or the Barça Academy management.
For the 2025/26 season, Barça have a non-registrable wage bill of 95 million euro, with 56 million allocated to the professional teams, amateur sports, youth football, and the Barça Academy. “We are responsible for finding a balance, investing to keep every professional team competitive, within the rules of play set by LaLiga, while remaining true to the identity of the Club”, emphasised O’Callaghan.
Albeit acknowledging that the sporting market is growing faster, making it harder to remain competitive, the director defended the approach by the Board of Directors, stating “You don’t need to be the club that spends most to win. What’s important is having a good sporting structure, investing in homegrown talent and using judgement on signings, bringing in experienced players. That will allow us to compete against other teams with a higher budget than us.”
O’Callaghan wanted to get the message across that the current management approach is all-encompassing and balanced, aiming for every professional team to be in with a real chance of competing for trophies. “Our goal is for Barça to remain a benchmark in every sport, alongside the biggest-spending clubs, while remaining true to our philosophy and approach”, he concluded.