Last summer, FC Barcelona player Gerard Piqué and his pop star partner Shakira organised a dinner in San Francisco. Attendees included the football club’s new president Josep Maria Bartomeu and an unlikely friend of Piqué’s, Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder of Rakuten, Japan’s largest internet retailer by sales.
Mr Mikitani spent the evening talking to Mr Bartomeu about the sport he loves. But he ended the dinner with a business proposal: Rakuten should become Barcelona’s new shirt sponsor.
On Wednesday, he got his wish as Rakuten inked a deal with Barcelona worth at least €220m, sealing one of the world’s largest football shirt sponsorships in the latest display of how the value of commercial deals for top-tier clubs continues to rise.
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