Opinion | How FC Barcelona plans to cash in on Chinese tourists with massive development on country’s ‘Hawaii’
The Spanish giants are to open a football academy, museum and megastore on Hainan Island as they seek to compete with billionaire-backed European powerhouses
It’s two days after FC Barcelona’s 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain and Xavier Asensi is understandably not too happy.
The defeat rankles with the managing director of the Spanish giants’ Asia-Pacific arm as it would with any fan, and underlines for him the necessity of a venture he has led that will see the club try to capture the hearts – and wallets – of China’s growing middle class.
Club legend Ronaldinho will visit Hainan, the island off the country’s south coast optimistically branded as ‘China’s Hawaii’, next week to announce a joint venture with Mission Hills Group, the largest private landowner in Haikou, the province’s capital city.
Barca will open what Asensi says will be the world’s largest football academy, an FCB museum and a megastore selling merchandise in the massive resort that occupies about the same amount of land as Haikou city itself.
“We are not owned by a Russian billionaire or rich Americans,” says Asensi in Barca’s HQ on the 25th floor of a tower block in Hong Kong’s Central.
“We are owned by the members, that’s what makes the club special, ‘more than a club’.