FC Barcelona and The Rolling Stones Team Up For El Clásico
On March 15, 2022, FC Barcelona and the Swedish digital music platform Spotify announced their groundbreaking partnership. Through this announcement, Spotify became the main partner and ‘title partner’ of FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou Stadium. This weekend’s El Clásico between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid will see Barça wearing The Rolling Stones legendary “tongue and lips” on the front of their jersey.
The strategic collaboration between FC Barcelona and Spotify created a revolutionary innovation that transcends the limits of sport and music. This exciting partnership transformed the Barça shirt into much more than a sports jersey; it has become a way for artists to showcase their brands, music, and personalities. The FC Barcelona and Spotify relationship allows followers of artists like Drake, who had the privilege of seeing his logo emblazoned on the Blaugrana shirt, get closer to the world of soccer while at the same time bringing the ‘culers’ the music of some of the world’s most popular artists. It’s a perfect example of how the synergy between one of the world’s biggest sports organizations and one of the best music platforms turned into a powerful and creative connection and partnership.
El Clásico, the epicenter of soccer
El Clásico is one of the best sports rivalries in the world. The match between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid transcends football. With an average audience of 650 million viewers in 185 countries, the two teams with the most titles in Spanish football bring millions of people together in front of TV, smartphones, tablets, and computers. Across the UEFA Champions League teams, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are the top two organizations based on social media followers.
The Rolling Stones are Team Barça
Saturday’s El Clásico will be the third time FC Barcelona will wear a band or artist’s logo on the front of its jersey. Last week on October 19, the team took to social media to announce that they signed a deal with The Rolling Stones with 35 posts across their platforms — the first on Instagram showing a video of Mick Jagger reading a newspaper headline: Barça Makes Deal with the Rolling Stones to the backdrop of “Start Me Up”. The post has earned 375,000 engagements and nearly 6.4 million video views.
Throughout the rest of the day, FC Barcelona posted images on social media of The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and Ronnie Wood holding the El Clásico kit with the band’s tongue and lips using fun captions from some of the band’s most popular songs: “Paint it, Blaugrana” (“Paint It, Black”) and Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m the new FC Barcelona x @therollingstones limited edition jersey 👅🎶 (“Sympathy for the Devil”).
Drake’s debuts as Barça’s First Artist Kit Sponsor for 2022’s El Clásico
The first time Barça sported a musical artist on its kit was October 16, 2022 with Drake, who was the first artist to reach 50 billion streams on Spotify.
Barcelona announced the collaboration with the Canadian rapper and singer with two images showing Drake in a FC Barcelona kit. FC Barcelona used the social media trend of “How it started, How it’s going” to showcase the collab, achieving more than 1.7 million engagements on social media. Drake also shared the image with the jersey and his owl logo on across his social networks and surpassed 4.1 million engagements.
This collaboration was not only shared by FC Barcelona and opponent Real Madrid (from game images), but also global media companies.
Rosalía finds her spot on Barça’s Kit for March 2023’s El Clásico
During March 2023’s El Clásico, FC Barcelona won the league title and celebrated in the locker room to the rhythm of the Catalan singer Rosalía. The Spanish artist broke records with her third album, MOTOMAMI, and the album was placed on the Barça shirt for the match against Real Madrid to celebrate the album’s anniversary.
Fans took to social media to celebrate the connection of music and soccer. FC Barcelona shared a video on the team’s TikTok of Rosalía sporting the special kit while singing MOTOMAMI to the rhythm of the Barcelona anthem, earning 77 million video views.
FC Barcelona and Spotify show how sports sponsorship can think outside of the box and create a world that brings sports and music together. What’s also wonderful to see is how this partnership creates activations around special events and games like El Clásico. This innovative approach promises significant changes in the industry, paving the way for a new era of versatile and attractive sports sponsorship that seek to reach a new audiences.
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