FC Barcelona’s very Messi $1 bln SPAC deal

Mountain & Co I Acquisition

14/08/2023 08:46

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions
expressed are their own.)
       NEW YORK, Aug 12 (Reuters Breakingviews) - FC
Barcelona’s latest match is a rivalry with financial reality
worthy of being dubbed “El Clásico.” The Spanish soccer club on
Friday said it is merging its content arm, Barca Media, with
special-purpose acquisition company Mountain & Co. I Acquisition
 MCAA.O . The idea is to carve out a growing, club-focused
new-media company. The problem: scant financial details, but
there are plenty of foul-worthy metrics instead.
    An investor presentation includes no standalone financial
figures for the club’s media unit, save that it is “expected” to
be profitable from the start. Instead, the former home of phenom
Lionel Messi fixates on its 420 million social-media followers.
    The deck pitches Barca Media’s profitability potential as a
matrix of how many of those followers can be “converted” - to
what is unclear - and how much profit each conversion will
generate. The range of possible EBITDA-per-converted-follower is
enormously wide, as is the multiple that should be ascribed to
that profit, based on comparable companies as far apart as Walt
Disney  DIS.N  and Manchester United  MANU.N . At the midpoint
of both, the company would be worth 15 times some $70 million of
EBITDA to merit its ascribed enterprise value of $1 billion.
Maybe Barca Media can make the numbers - once there are some -
stack up. For now, trying to grasp hold of what this business
actually looks like resembles being outmaneuvered by the club’s
most famous ex-player. (By Jennifer Saba)

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 (Editing by Jonathan Guilford and Aditya Sriwatsav)
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