Barcelona vice-president Marc Ingla has declared they can boast a staggering 160 million fans worldwide.

"We have the most exciting and attractive sports brand in the world," said Ingla. "We are in the top three (along with Manchester United and Real Madrid) of the most popular clubs in the world. More, even, than the big franchises of Major League Baseball and American Football, which theoretically are the richest sports markets on the planet.

"We are making a titanic effort to approach these 160 million fans and connect with them. About 80 per cent of our television audience is foreign, more than fifty per cent of our 'merchandising' is also abroad, we are distributing Barca TV to 155 countries, in Japan we have 15,000 subscribers to our multimedia content through mobile phones, and on our website, half of the nearly 60 million pageviews each month are in English."