Barcelona spend more money on wages than any other club in Europe, with their mammoth £424million outlay nearly double that of Premier League giants Manchester City.
The Catalan giants' financial figures for the 2017/18 season have been released and they show the financial muscle available to Ernesto Valverde and Co.
Barcelona's €487m wage bill rose an incredible 43 per cent (£128) on the previous year, with bonuses accounting for £38m of that increase.
Lionel Messi, who earns £1.75m a week, makes up a whopping 15 per cent of that outlay, with wages now costing the club nearly three-quarters (70 percent) of their turnover.
They now spend a whopping £80m than rivals Real Madrid - and £416m more than Girona, the side with a wage bill of just £7.8m, the lowest in La Liga.
The gap between Barcelona's wage bill and their peers in La Liga has never been higher and their outlay on Messi and Co also dwarfs the big hitters in England, Germany and Spain.
Barcelona and Real Madrid (€344m) have the two highest wages in European football, with Manchester United the biggest-spending Premier League club on £293m.
Amazingly, in comparison big-spending Manchester City spend only £257.5m on wages - only just over half what Barcelona now fork out.
The figures cover the 2017-18 season, when they won La Liga for the third time in four years, triumphed in the Copa del Rey but were beaten by Roma in the Champions League quarter finals.
This comes in spite of the fact that defeat by Roma meant their revenue from the Champions League actually fell by £2.6m on the pre-season.
Instead, funding their high wage bill is a financial machine that includes a matchday revenue of £119m - the highest in the world in 2016/17.
The Catalan giants also benefited from a huge £181m profit on player sales, helped in no small part by Neymar's £198m move to Paris Saint-Germain.
Starting next year, they begin a 10-year kit deal with Nike, reportedly around £91.4m-a-year. Only Real Madrid (£156.65m) have a bigger kit deal.