Soccer, civil religion, and public relations: Devotional–promotional communication and Barcelona Football Club

On November 1, 2006 elections to the Catalan Parliament were held. During the electoral campaign, the leaders of the main Catalan parties had met the Chairman of the city's main soccer club, BCF, for breakfast in a Barcelona street café, each on a different day. These breakfast meetings were given extensive press coverage and formed part of the political parties’ publicity strategy. Days later the world awoke to a story of worldwide importance – the former president of Iraq Saddam Hussein had been sentenced to the death penalty by the jury of his special tribunal. Among the images that reverberated around the world were those of the Shia community celebrating. One of the pictures showed a young man in a BFC top jumping for joy. Some weeks later, at the Soccerex soccer exhibition, BFC was ranked the number one “power brand” in soccer because it has developed innovative ways of reaching a global audience.¹

These independent events reveal the scope of BFC beyond its sporting and local dimensions. Indeed, as Salvador (2004) noted, if a group of ethnologists were sent from an alien planet to study Catalan culture and customs, once they had done their observation, read the press, watched the television, strolled through its cities, admired the work of architect Gaudí and artists such as Picasso, Miró and Dalí, listened in on conversations, looked at young people's idols and games, and identified the primary symbols of identity, they would conclude that it is not Catalonia's politics, economy, culture, family life, art or religion that take up most of its people's mental and physical spaces, but BFC – popularly known as Barça – that chiefly captures and monopolizes definitions of Catalan identity. This not only enters into every area of the lives of many people but into every area of society as a whole and the fact that members, supporters and fans are aware of this is what gave rise to the maxim that best conveys what Barça is to them: “More than a club”.

Of all sports bodies BFC has the most members and the highest number of sporting activities in the world. To be precise, it has some 130,000 members (January 14, 2005)² and 1638 official Barça supporters clubs (September 26, 2005). However, the social masses who would call themselves Barça fans with varying degrees of devotion is incalculable, and an array of indicators and data point to the scale being this large³.

Data on the scale of the phenomenon not only refers to its presence in the media. The Club's budget for 2006 was over €240 million, far surpassing the total budget for Catalonia's second-largest city, Tarragona, which stood at €123 million for the same year, for instance. Celebrations for its biggest victories literally brought the region to a standstill. When Barça won the Champions League on May 17, 2006, more than one and a half million people took to the streets in various cities throughout Catalonia. Barça is the hottest topic of conversation for countless people in bars, offices, family get-togethers, with friends and so on. Supporters are passionate and devote much of their time to pre-season matches, league games, championships (for days before and after the event) and to keeping abreast of new signings. The Barça brand means big business for everything it involves and that revolves around it.

This article aims to demonstrate that BFC can be seen as a type of civil religion and the role of public relations in establishing and above all upholding this symbology by using a devotional–promotional communication model. According to Mickey (1997), “A critical view of the signs and symbols of a culture allow one to see the allocation of power and the dominant ideology” (p. 271). From this standpoint, this essay offers a critical approach to public relations theory and practice.