Barcelona hold back LaLiga title bonus from employees
The workers at the Catalan club were used to receiving a special bonus as reward for their contributions, but this tradition appears to have stopped.
When a team wins a big title, it is not only the manager and players that received a financial prize. The contributions of all those employees at the club are often also rewarded…or certainly that’s what used to happen.
Barcelona staff losing hope for bonus
After the jubilation that followed another LaLiga title sewn up for FC Barcelona, the employees would expect to see an attractive bonus in their pay packets for their efforts. Obviously the amount is much lower than that received by the players, those who have it stipulated in their contracts, but the tradition was that they would receive something appropriate to boost their annual salary. To give an idea of how much this could be, when Barça won the league and cup double in the 2017/18 season, non-players that worked with the first team received 25,000 euros as a bonus.
It is an award that, until now, had always been distributed among the employees around the first team in recognition of the important work they do within the four walls of the dressing room. And it’s a ‘bonus’ received not only by those directly involved with the first team but by all club employees.
Last summer’s title celebrations, however, have not been followed up on, and employees, having had no word on the additional payment, fear that the bonus tap may have been turned off for them. They only had to wait until September following the end of the season previously to recoup their winnings, but now into March of 2020 they are still waiting. Many have started to assume that they will not receive that special award, something, it should be noted, that the club is not obliged to give as it was only a gesture of gratitude towards their employees.
There are some, of course, who have pointed to the almost 200,000 euros that Barcelona have been controversially paying annually to I3 Venture, the company hired to monitor social networks. This figure represents more or less the same value that it would have cost to reward the hardworking team of employees that sit out of the limelight.