Barça to sell Camp Nou naming rights to raise funds in coronavirus fight

FC Barcelona’s stadium is getting a new name - or at least for one year. The club have announced on Tuesday that they are looking to sell the naming rights to the Camp Nou for the 2020/21 season, with all proceeds going to the fight against coronavirus, as detailed in a club statement. 

The Camp Nou has never carried any sponsorship name since its opening in 1957, but now the naming rights lie in the hands of the Barça Foundation, the club’s charity wing. The money paid by the stadium sponsor will go to “projects being carried out in Catalonia and the rest of the world involved in the fight against the effects of COVID-19.”

The Barça Foundation, ran by club vice president Jordi Cardoner, is now in its 25th year, and the institution along with the club “consider it a necessity that at this time of humanitarian crisis” to “use all its resources to fight against the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences.”

Originally, the club had planned on selling the naming rights of the 99,000 capacity Camp Nou for the first time in 2023/24, as reported in Associated Press, but that has been brought forward now to raise funds during this time of public health emergency. 

“We are very happy to be able to drive forward this initiative that offers something as emblematic as the name of our stadium, so that institutions, organisations, businesses may associate themselves with it, and as such, contribute to the fight against COVID-19” Cardoner said in a statement also on the club website.  

“We are facing a global crisis without precedent in our modern history and we have to assume with courage and calm the responsibility that we have. For that reason, from both the Club and the Foundation, we consider it vital at this time of humanitarian crisis to use all the resources available at the organisation to fight against the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences.”