Barcelona to make away games request to La Liga

Barcelona are set to request that La Liga schedule more games away from home at the beginning of next season, in the lead up to their return to Camp Nou.

The Blaugrana, who are currently playing their matches at Montjuic in the old Olympic stadium have seen their average attendance almost half from last season, and losses on matchday revenue are predicted to approached €70-90m. Even factoring in the loss of capacity and a drop off, Barcelona are thought to be €10m behind their targets.

As such, Barcelona will ask La Liga to schedule as many games as possible away from home at the start of next season, as per Relevo. The renovation work at Camp Nou will, if all goes to plan, allow them to return in November with a capacity of 60-65,000. The idea is that they could begin to increase their matchday revenue as much as possible for next season, playing fewer games at Montjuic.

These requests tend to be honoured by La Liga, who have done similar for Villarreal and Real Madrid in recent seasons to accomodate renovation work. While lower attendances were a given at Montjuic, the handling of their time at Montjuic has been relatively disastrous so far. Receiving just 17,000 season ticket requests, this was 12,000 below their projections, and that number was only reached after lowering prices.