Barcelona raise another shocking €100 million to ease financial crisis

The big storyline in the football world last summer was FC Barcelona's financial crisis. The Catalan giants revealed through an audit that they were over 1 billion euros in debt, and that led to the exit of Lionel Messi, who they could no longer afford.

A year later, and Barcelona have just signed European top scorer Robert Lewandowski for €45 million along with a number of other valuable players like Raphinha €60.7m and Jules Kounde €50m.

Needless to say, Barcelona's market activity has raised eyebrows across the football world. After signing a massive sponsorship deal with Spotify, Barcelona has also been busy selling its TV rights to generate cash.

The most recent windfall comes from the sale of the club's production hub, Barca Studios, to Socios.com. According to Marca, this transaction brought in an additional 100 million euros ($102 million). The Blaugrana are desperate to balance the books and find a way to satisfy La Liga's financial fair play regulations and this is just another step towards that goal.

Socios.com now hold a 25% stake of Barça Studios. For those unfamiliar, the company is a blockchain provider that deals in the sports and entertainment business. Apart from the cash injection, this partnership is also aimed at improving the club's online, blockchain and audiovisual ventures.

Because of this deal, Barcelona look on course to be able to register their new signings, to the utter disbelief of many of their rivals. After swimming in debt, they have managed to become the summer's biggest spenders so far, letting go of at least 160 million euros ($163 million) on the three aforementioned players alone. They also signed Franck Kessie and Andreas Christensen earlier in the summer, apart from re-signing Ousmane Dembele.

Laporta is aware of the risks involved in selling the club's assets, but he assured members that he has everything under control. He thinks that the priority is to be able to generate cash and bring in the players that would help the club fight for trophies. When the results come from the pitch, the financial benefits should follow.