Barcelona have announced that naming rights for their Camp Nou home will be ceded to the club’s Barca Foundation for the 2020-21 campaign.
Money from that agreement will be used in the ongoing fight against Covid-19 by health services in Catalunya.
The Liga giants, as one of the leading institutions in world sport, are aware of their responsibilities when it comes to helping contain and eventually eradicate a global pandemic.
The Barca Foundation is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2020 and continues to work towards improving the welfare of children at risk of social exclusion across the planet.
It is set to benefit from an injection of funds once a sponsor is found for Camp Nou.
Barca have never ventured down that path before, with their iconic home having stood in its current guise and surroundings since 1957.
The decision was taken in 2014, though, to transform Camp Nou into the best sporting complex in the world and finance is required to complete that project.
Naming rights will form part of that, but for now the Barca Foundation will be the ones to distribute income as it sees fit.
Jordi Cardoner, vice-president of FC Barcelona and the Barca Foundation, told the club’s official website : “We are very happy to be able to drive forward this initiative that offers something as emblematic as the name of our stadium, so that institutions, organisations, businesses who wise may associate themselves with it and as such, contribute to the fight against Covid-19, given that their investment will be used to finance research projects on the illness and projects that are working to eradicate or lessen its effects.
“Right now, we can quantify the effects of this health crisis but what we do know is that it will require all our resources to defeat it and for that reason it is so important that we all together make a solid, firm commitment.
“We are facing a global crisis without precedent in our modern history and we have to assume with courage and calm the responsibility that we have.
“For that reason, from both the club and the Foundation, we consider it vital at this time of humanitarian crisis to use all the resources available at the organisation to fight against the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences. It forms part of our way of doing things and of being as an institution.
“The cause, fighting against the coronavirus, is a global one. Being the top sporting entity on a world scale implies that we take on this challenge as fully as we can and if we can serve as inspiration for other organisations involved in the battle, perhaps we can create a wave of hope for millions of people around the world who are suffering due to this pandemic.”