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FC Barcelona has been criticized for signing a three-year sponsorship deal with a Samoa-based cryptocurrency company promoted by controversial influencer Andrew Tate.
The Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) company, followed only three online accounts, FC Barcelona, Bitcoin and Andrew Tate, when the deal was announced. The company reveals no leadership or ownership, while claiming $100 million in funding.
The move has intensified scrutiny of Barcelona’s search for revenue as the club faces heavy debt and a costly stadium redevelopment, raising fears it is taking commercial and reputational risks through an opaque crypto company.
“It sounds like a bad joke, but unfortunately it’s real,” former Barcelona board director Xavier Vilajoana told X, calling on the club to “explain the due diligence process carried out before approving this deal.”
It seems like an acute illness, but the illness is real.
FC Barcelona announced a Patrocini agreement with ZKP, a poc coneguda blockchain company registered in Samoa, a jurisdiction that the EU includes in the list of tax havens. When announcing the agreement, she…
– Xavier Vilajoana (@XaviVilajoana) November 18, 2025
Connections to Andrew Tate
Vilajoana demanded that Barcelona “clarify whether ZKP has a direct or indirect link with Andrew Tate,” saying the influencer has “faces charges of human trafficking, rape and membership in a criminal organization. »
He added that since the deal was announced, “Tate released a video promoting the ZKP, adding even more concern to the public.”
He urged Barcelona must “act with immediate transparency” and explain what due diligence they carried out before signing the deal.
Although ZKP’s website claims a commitment to transparency, the company provides few details about the people behind it all.
“Everyone asks, ‘Who’s behind this?’ As if knowing the names would make the code stronger,” he said on his website. “It won’t. We’re real: engineers, cryptographers, ex-founders, system killers. But we’re not playing the PR game.”
FC Barcelona’s financial pressure is increasing
The decision to partner with ZKP comes as FC Barcelona faces increasing financial pressures. The root cause of the crisis lies in the club’s exorbitant spending on players, transfers and salaries over the past decade.
Financial pressure worsened with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a collapse in match revenues. This hit the club particularly hard, as this revenue was one of its main sources of income.
Over the years, the club has also been punished for repeatedly exceeding Spanish football’s spending limit, with its latest accounts showing a net debt of €469 million.
The club has also embarked on a massive renovation project, Espai Barça, to rebuild and modernize Barcelona’s stadium, Camp Nou. The move placed a large long-term debt and financing burden on the sports giant’s balance sheet, with financial records showing more than €900 million in stadium-related borrowing.
Barcelona has tried to repair its finances by selling assets, including part of its long-term television revenue. However, costly delays in renovating the stadium have increased the urgency to generate revenue.
The club has engaged in other Web3 projects over the years, many of which failed. Despite the setbacks, Barcelona has maintained its digital initiatives.
Barcelona sold its first non-fungible token (NFT) for $693,000 at Sotheby’s in July 2022. It also launched the FC Barcelona token through Chilliz and Socios in June 2020. These fan tokens sold released for $1.3 million in less than two hours.
Over the past year, the club’s fan token has seen its price drop by more than 73%, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
FC Barcelona Fan Token Price (Source: CoinMarketCap)
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