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Sports marketing expert Cinto Ajram believes that the uncertainty surrounding Lionel Messi’s future has been more detrimental to sponsorship in Barcelona than the coronavirus.
The money generated by the sponsorship in Barcelona has been reduced from 55 million euros to 30 million euros and Ajram, who was head of sponsorship activation at the Camp Nou during the tenure of Josep Maria Bartomeu, believes that this corresponds to the captain .
“It is a reality that the coronavirus is massively reducing the amount of money received from sponsorships because the visibility of brands has been greatly affected,” Ajram told Efe.
“But the current agreement for about 30 million euros is more revealing of Rakuten’s reaction to the uncertainty surrounding the future of Leo Messi. I would even wonder if, at this moment, this agreement is valued at 30 million euros.”
The situation when Rakuten first partnered with the Catalan club was very different.
“Rakuten started the relationship with Barcelona that Messi, Luis Suárez and Neymar had,” added Ajram. “Commercially they were huge and now Barcelona is proposing a renewal without Suárez and Neymar, and there are doubts about whether Messi will stay.
“When you sell the Barcelona brand around the world, you wear Messi’s face. In these conditions, no brand would dare to renew for three or four more years because they don’t know the value of the club without the player.”
The captain’s own comments in which he stated that he wanted to leave the Camp Nou this past summer are what Ajram believes most harmed the club.
“The thing that did the most damage was that Messi said he wanted to leave,” Ajram explained. “Because many fans are just Messi fans, like others with Cristiano Ronaldo and when he went to Juventus [from Real Madrid], they changed teams. “
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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