It is election season in Catalonia, "and the most anticipated race will have all of the expected ingredients: charges of corruption, fringe challengers, improbable campaign promises and blatant pandering to voters," according to Sam Borden of the N.Y. TIMES. The winner will not be a government official "but rather the next president" of Barcelona, a position that comes with "more clout, some residents argue." Yet while virtually "every major sports organization around the world relies on an owner or a board of directors to select its top leaders," Barcelona, which is owned by its roughly 160,000 members, continues to opt for a "more old-fashioned methodology: paper, envelopes and a whole bunch of ballot boxes." The balloting process is "undeniably quaint -- voters will go to the polls in a few months on the concourse of the famed Camp Nou stadium, where they will be organized alphabetically -- and members are especially prideful about their votes." Lifelong club member Xavier Sala-i-Martin, who previously served as the club's treasurer and is "now a professor in economics" at Columbia University, said, "My vote is like my country. It is something that belongs to me." But as is "often the case with any type of politics, wrapped within that idyllic package of glorious democracy are some more difficult questions." First among them is the "basic premise: Is it really wise for an organization with a multibillion-dollar valuation and an annual operating budget of about $580 million to let its constituents, who surely love the club but probably have little idea how to operate it, pick the president?"
MONEY TALKS: Barcelona businessman and presidential candidate Agustí Benedito said, "The election for the president of Barça is exactly like a regular political election. The good parts and the bad parts." There is also the "financial component of the election." While any
Barcelona member can vote for president, "not every member can run; to
become a candidate, each hopeful and his proposed board, which generally
consists of 20 people, must put up 15 percent of Barcelona's budget as a
guarantee." In other words, "you can run for president only if you can
vouch for a security deposit" of roughly $75M. Traditional political mudslinging is "a part of the deal, too." Benedito
has tried to "appeal to the members' moral compass, criticizing the
current administration for its decision to sign a jersey sponsorship
deal with Qatar Airways." He said, "Everyone knows that Qatar is financing Islamic terrorism. They are behind ISIS. In a
club like this, a special club, we cannot be on the same side of those people." Recently, there have been protests from a handful of European teams to "force Barcelona, as well as the few other Spanish clubs who are member-owned, including Real Madrid, to alter their structure." Operating this way, critics say, "allows Barcelona to avoid some of the tax requirements that corporate-owned clubs have to pay." It "seems unlikely that the model will change anytime soon" (N.Y. TIMES, 4/20).
