Barça to renew with Qatar for one more year ahead of potential Amazon agreement

Barcelona are close to reaching an agreement to extend their shirt sponsorship deal with Qatar for one more year, which would act as a bridge to the club then finding a long-term agreement in the form of another company, such as Amazon, next summer. 

Barça and Amazon have been in talks for weeks and SPORT can reveal what is on the table: Given the consequences of the arbitral award for the land at Can Rigalt, Barça need to generate some income quickly, and one of the options they are contemplating is extending the Qatar contract for an additional season. This agreement must be ratified by the Commitment Assembly and would likely be under similar conditions to the previous deal, which was worth 35 million euros annually. 

After 'saving' sponsorship for the 2016/17 season, the next step in Barcelona's mind is to reach an agreement for a four-year deal with Amazon, which would kick in from the summer of 2017, once the company has its logistics centre up and running in El Prat de Llobregat. 

Barcelona and Amazon are in talks regarding a contract which would run until the end of the 2020/21 season and the numbers being mentioned are a long way from the figures stipulated in the Qatar contract, which should have been signed after last summer's election, but in the end wasn't. In no case can Amazon be the club's sponsor for the coming season. 

Therefore, Barça are trying to close a deal which takes them up until the end of Josep Maria Bartomeu's mandate. He was elected last summer and in theory has five more years as the club's president ahead of him. A pairing of Qatar and Amazon has been presented as an alternative. 

Barcelona and Amazon are in the initial phase of their conversations. As SPORT revealed, the agreement would never be for this current season and the leaking of the talks put the continuity of the discussions in danger.