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Having resisted the temptation to pocket large sums of money to have a sponsor on their strip for the first time in over 100 years, Barca have finally agreed to have a sponsor.

They are PAYING Unicef £1.5m to allow Barca to have their logo on the shirt. At a point where football has become disgustingly greedy, this is a magnificent gesture.

http://www.sport.es/vivo/recursos/fotos/foto_167355_CAS.jpg (http://www.sport.es/vivo/recursos/fotos/foto_167355_CAS.jpg)

 ;applause; ;applause; :respect: ;applause;

WOW - this indeed is something special but unfortunately greed has a firm hold on football and I cannot see any other clubs following suit.

I would never expect anyone to follow suit it's a greedy world out there in footie land...Barca has always been a very special club and though i don't support them, you can't argue with them being a club of gentlemen and a club truly for the fans.

Well done Barca.

class move from  a class club

resores your faith in people and institutions

What a wonderful gesture :)

The greatest club in the WORLD

In terms of worldwide support - they are but only by a nose to other recent European champions.... 8)

 :respect:

Please...

Barcelona have never had a sponsor on their shirts, Have the biggest ground in the world and over 200,000 members

Liverpool are not even the 2nd club in England anymore IMO.

In terms of worldwide support I'd love you to name two English clubs above Liverpool.

errr... Manchester United and Arsenal

i'll add a third - Accrington Stanley.

EXACTLY!! ;)

"Who are they" :dontask:

One is debatable, the other isn't even close, according to Dobson and Goddard anyway.

LOL@Matt - best advert ever.

'pool fans need a reality check.

It's like us Spurs fans. We can not even contemplate that we are the biggest club in London anymore, or even the 2nd biggest club in London. Liverpool were the 2nd biggest club 15 years ago, not anymore.

I saw an interview with Mr Wenger and he said that Arse have 14million 'supporters/fans' worldwide; and Man U have even more.

Sad but true.

Yeah but if you take all of the french out of this statement its actually 18

An interview with Mr Wenger? Is that meant to be an unbiased fact? I'll take the guys who write Economics of Football books over the Arsenal manager everytime.

Liverpool are one of the top supported teams on 5 different continents.

remind me of your attendance in your 1st home game this season....BTW ours was 60,023  ;goodvevil; ;goodvevil;

 ;iagree; except for the sad bit  ;goodvevil;

A good gesture yes, but they are one of the only big clubs in the world to be in a position to do it. They are not a business like many others.

Chirp chirp!

I bet you werent covered in half the countries we were!  ;goodvevil;

It really doesnt matter how big you are in how many countries- unless you market yourself like Man U to earn from it. What matters is how many games your team wins in a season....

is that all? ;)

What's the biggest stadium in Scotland?

60832  - Paradise  :D

Wikipedia says that Celtic Park is the 2nd biggest stadium in Scotland?

Murrayfield is the biggest stadium in Scotland

record crowd is Hampden - but that was pre-all seaters. now Paradise is the biggest.

egg chucking doesn't count though ;)

Once they knock down that ugly main stand at Paradise and rebuild the stand so it matches the others, if will be bigger than Murryfield.

Do any of you know how big Paradise will be after it is completed and why they havent started building yet?

Also, do Hearts play at Murryfield?

if they rebuild the south stand it will fcuk up the pitch as it would lose its afternoon sun, celtic have one of the better all year pitches in the league,rangers pitch has been shit ever since they rebuilt there south stand!

A Fine Moment in Football!

Plans are supposed to have been drawn up to chamge the main stand and bring the total capacity to over 80000. Depends on European League or some other move.

Hearts are using Murrayfield for European games, or were at least, I know there's been a push to move them back to Tynecastle.

nice move Barca

they are a business actually...and clubs like ManU Arsenal Chelsea (especially them) to name some in the UK could do it..they just don't as they would rather pocket the cash from the sponsorship deals.

to be fair rod, celtics support is superb. i have been to testimonals at highbury when we have played celtic and they have come down with 8000-10000. I remember going away to ajax in the CL a couple of seasons ago and celtic were playing a german side, i dont remember who,(it was the year you lost to porto in the final i think) and there were thousands of celtic fans in amsterdam. 

But i suppose its not that hard to have support like that when there are only 2 teams to support in the whole country  ;goodvevil;  ;hide;

The main stand is not the best looking from the outside but the facilities it has inside are cracking.  I sat there for years but atmosphere was terrible that was where out prawn sandwich brigade used to congregate.

I think if memmory serves me correctly there is a listed part of the main stand that makes it difficult to re-design.

As for the carry on about supporters Celtic have more support world wide that Liverpool Mr Baron - thats a FACT!!!!

Probably make myself unpopular but I dont see why clubs should be criticised for not giving money to charity. Fair play to them for doing it, but i think a few clubs/chairmen may have given more than 1.5 million over the years without the publicity.

Can you show me a link that proves this?

FACT!!! - LOL don't you start with that as well! :D

actually this is true my friend...i don't support celtic (or rabngers) but they have the second biggest following of all UK clubs (behind manu)

Cool - anyone know where I can read up on it?

When I did Economics of Sport at uni 2 years ago, no British club had the WORLDWIDE support that Man U & Liverpool had. If this has changed, then coolio, I just wanna know where I can read up on it. Cheers.

What he said.

How is it remotely possibble to put any reasonable figure on something like this, it is all finger in the air stuff based on a few half decent assumptions.  A person in a foriegn country may like watching several clubs, they wont have the affinity with any of them, its the same as us with foriegn football, I certainly wouldnt say I supported any of them though I like watching Real and Barca.

Mate economists measure anything. They try to measure people's happiness, expectation levels and preference as a population FFS! LOL

Seriously though I think it came down to merchanidse sales, website hits and TV ratings from foreign countries.

Yeah I have a degree in economics too, never got the option of sport in there too thou!

They did have 10-15 years ago.

But not now...

All difficult to prove. Also depends if you count someone buying the strip as a fan or not. Certainly there's enough Celtic fans in the US for their convention to be the biggest in Vegas every 2 years, and for them to have their own Satelite TV channel - run by the Amverican CSCs.

I wasn't cricising other clubs - most clubs will do charitible work of some kind. But the Baarcaa gesture was incredible. They don't really need much publicity at the moment either.

One thing I will watch for though - is what happens when the Unicef sponsorship is finished... we can then tell whether it was a clever move by the board to have the fans accept sponsorship.

It would be terrible if after the Unicef "sponsorship" they go and get fee paying sponsor. I doubt it would happen - Laporta would get voted out faster than you can say "Ronaldinho looks like a rabbit"

yeah...Barca won't cave into that one anytime soon.

I definatly think there may be something in using this as a step to a full sponsor, I just dont see the point otherwise. They could have given them 1.5m without anything more....

Liverpool support certainly runs very high, especially in scandinavia. Don't think I've met a Norweigien who doesn't support Liverpool lol. Celtic do indeed have a massive supporters base. As to who has the bigger, who cares lol. They are both exceedingly big. However only one of them owes that size to success on the park!!!!!!! Other than the domestic cups, Celtic have done little to nothing but are one of the largest clubs in the world

Sigh

Welcome to blonde to Queen William

good publicity for both sides. This shows to the world that barcelona is "the peoples club", who play great football and are champions in every sense of the word. That is what barcelona is going for. That is much MUCH more valuable then a shirt sponsor is. It makes potential supporters (aswell as the current ones) feel good about themselves and buying Barca shirts and all that.
this is especially valuable in an age where everyone is getting fed up with paying too much for shitty p[layers and the negativity that surrounds most clubs these days. People are fed up with hearing about how ex-players threatened to score own goals and all that sort of sillyness.

People also have to understand the culture of Barcelona FC. This is not a commercial organisation like every other. The board has to pay a tremendous amount of money to even be on it and even then can get voted out by the supporters.
Barcelona is a club for the catalans a "local club done good" to the extreme and therefore this "getting a commercial sponsor" business has never gone down well with the supporters. Untill the supporters see the point of it (and they won't as it's a pride thing) barcelona will never have a commercial shirt sponsor as the Catalans feel that that would mean people wee to think of Barcelona as the shirt sponsors club...and not the club for the Catalans.

liverpool - wnkers.