Barcelona remain heavily involved in the European Super League project and Joan Laporta continues insisting that it will come to fruition eventually. However, Spanish media mogul Jaume Roures believes otherwise.
"This is a meaningless discussion. This Super League won’t exist — end of story. I don’t think this has a lot to do with what the court in Luxembourg decides now," Roures has told The Athletic.
"The bottom line is this Super League can’t launch a new competition because they don’t have the teams for it. But, most importantly, they haven’t worked on anything other than announcing it very loudly.
"They [Barca, Madrid, Juventus] claim they are good guys and that young people’s habits towards watching football have changed, but I also can prove with daily numbers of TV audiences that young people follow football and, actually, the number of young fans keeps increasing.
"The day they announce a big deal with, I don’t know, Amazon or any huge TV operator, maybe something will change.
"I discuss it very often with Joan Laporta. It’s all surreal. Laporta says what he says on record but those words do not have a foundation to rely on.
"At the start of all the Super League process, there was, apparently, a big loan from JP Morgan. That’s fine, but as I was saying, any loan must be paid back.
"After this, it was said that clubs would get €300m just by being part of the competition. It’s impossible! This money does not exist in the industry.
"Who is giving money — not a loan — to the clubs? Is it going to be sponsors? TV operators? We speak to every big TV operator in the world every day because that’s our job, and there is no one who’s described the Super League as an appealing project with huge figures.
"As a business model, it only makes sense if you believe you’ll win every year, and no team wins every year.
"Just to give an example: Barcelona can play against Liverpool at the Camp Nou, but if Barcelona ranks, let’s say ninth, in a hypothetical Super League, this game might not have any appeal at all.
"On TV rights, Juventus earns right now around €80m. Bayern, around €80-90m. PSG, less than that. If you are Barcelona, Real Madrid or any English top team who earns around €160m, why would you want to enrich your direct rivals? It doesn’t make any sense.
"If you are Madrid or Barcelona, who plead for the Super League, what interest do they have in Bayern going from getting €80m per year to the figures they mention? Especially when Bayern, without all this money, has managed to batter you (Barcelona) on the pitch over the last few years."
The man who claims so is called Jaume Roures. If you are to describe him in as few words as possible, he's a producer and a media mogul.
In 1994, he founded Mediapro, an award-winning Spanish multimedia group. Before that, in 1988, he had helped Barcelona close the deal with TV3 for TV rights. Barca used the funds from the deal (2bn pesetas or around €57m in today's money) to build Johan Cruyff's Champions League-winning team.
Among many others, he has connections to Joan Laporta, Florentino Perez and Javier Tebas. He maintains a great relationship with Laporta but did not get along with the previous board. He also considers Tebas his friend.
His company Mediapro works closely with Spain's main broadcaster Movistar and still manages La Liga's international rights.
One of Roures’ companies, Orpheus Media, pulled the 'fourth lever' last summer by buying a 24.5% share of Barca Studios for €100m.
To sum up, the 74-year-old Jaume Roures is almost like a grey cardinal of Spanish football.
At the moment, Barca, Real Madrid, and Juventus are the only clubs still officially involved in the Super League project.
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