Barcelona president Laporta admitted at the club's general meeting that he had to negotiate with UEFA to avoid being penalised with a full season out of the Champions League. UEFA had previously wanted to penalise clubs for abusing their "leverage" and ultimately compromising their financial fairness policy.
Laporta admitted that the use of 'leverage' was a mistake and agreed with former president Juan Gaspart that it was in fact nothing more than capital augmentation, a formality that would have been impossible to achieve in a membership-based entity such as Barcelona, but which could have been operated by other sporting entities with a different corporatised structure: "Thinking of 'leverage' as capital augmentation is exactly the line of thought and argument we used in our defence to UEFA in response to the alleged breach of the Financial Fairness Act. We reduced the fine from €80m to €60m to €1.5m with no sporting sanctions. Initially, they wanted to keep us out of the Champions League."
LaPorta added, "The leverage was used to avoid levying additional assessments on the membership and to alleviate the dilemma we faced four and a half years ago."
The President also wished to explore the matter in depth: "Strictly speaking, 'leverage' is not capital expansion; it is simply the transfer of assets for a specific period of time, after which they are recovered. In exchange, we receive a specific sum of money. We have transferred 25 per cent of our TV rights to a fund, which has given us an income of €600 million. The deal means that after 25 years the TV rights will be returned to the club. This is a transfer where an asset is taken back after a period of time. When this issue arose, they tried to convince us to sign with CVC, but the other side offered a lower percentage of funding and a longer term of 50 years. And we leveraged this way enabling us to save the club."
As for the match in Miami, Laporta said, "La Liga must inform us and the revenue from the match will be much higher than playing at home in Villarreal. It will be an extra-budgetary income and will make up for the loss of income from the first two matches played at the Johan Cruyff Stadium. I can't give an exact figure, but there will definitely be income."
He added, "We will utilise this opportunity because the American market is very important. Eurosport's presence in the US is growing by the day and there could be potential partners there, such as the NBA, which is in talks with EuroBasket. but again, I emphasise that the opportunity is in the US and they are interested in Europe."