FC Barcelona Supporters Clubs World Confederation celebrates third anniversary

The FC Barcelona Supporters Clubs World Confederation, the organisation that caters for the FC Barcelona supporters club movement, celebrated its third anniversary on March 7. Created in 2015, and presided by Antoni Guil, the organisation promotes the professionalization and development of federations and penyes. In its first three years, 82 new penyes have been endorsed, 42 of which are international, which certifies the interest in Barça around the world.

“For three years we have focused our efforts on constantly improving the services that we offer to each and every one of the federations and penyes in the Barça universe, making us a global trendsetter as a supporters movement”, says Antoni Guil.

Comprehensive expansion plan

Fruit of these constant improvements, the body has been promoting in recent years the second part of the project called Penyes Segle XXI (2016-2021), a comprehensive six-year plan to foster the ties between penyes and the values of FC Barcelona and its members. Penyes Segle XXI (2016-2021) consists of a series of plans to transform the penyes movement as follows:

-Federations Plan, which provides the 30 territorial federations in the Confederation with the necessary resources and structure to better attend to the 1,200 Barça penyes around the world.
-Communication Plan, which promotes the necessary tools for club members and fans to know more about the penyes movement.
-Sponsorship Plan, focused on achieving the necessary resources to set up the activities that need to be developed.
-Socis, Fem Penya, a plan created to bring FC Barcelona members in closer contact with the penyes, so that they see them as theirs and opt to join one.
-Penya Model Plan, which modernises and revitalises the penyes model and its activities, making them the veritable ambassadors for the club on the ground.
-Penyes City Project, which improves the presence of penyes as leading associations in their neighbourhoods.
-Penyes and Sport Plan, which revitalises Barça clubs and fosters FC Barcelona’s sporting values among the youngest members to encourage youth sport.
-Solidarity Council Plan, which fosters social responsibility by developing projects promoted by the penyes movement.
-“From Catalunya to the World” project, focused on increasing the number of international penyes and boosting loyalty among fans on all five continents.

Support from FC Barcelona

Since it was created, FC Barcelona has been firmly committed to the Confederation, with which it signed a collaboration agreement in the 2014-15 season to accredit the excellent relationship between FC Barcelona and the supporters club movement. “Penyes are the soul of Barça support in the territory. That’s why it’s so fundamental for the relationship and communication between the two entities to be smooth and based on joint efforts and dialogue”, continues Guil.

Good proof of this is the joint efforts by both institutions that were evident from the successful organisation of the recent elections for Federations held in the 2016-17 season and the huge turnout for the biggest event in the penyes movement, the Supporters Clubs World Congress in August, which was attended by 1,280 people.

Greater visibility of penyes

In line with one of its prime targets, the Supporters Clubs World Confederation has in these three years improved the way it communicates and reports affairs. In this regard, in the 2016-17 season, it set up the Blaugranes magazine, a publication that reports on the most interesting initiatives involving the movement around the world and that is distributed in both printed and online formats for all penyes.

Along similar lines, the organisation reached an agreement with FC Barcelona’s Premium Partners, a series of brands that share the same values as the Confederation and FC Barcelona, for support for the different activities run by the club and thereby boosting their impact.

Quality activities and services

In recent years, the Confederation has also promoted a series of activities to revitalise the movement in different spheres. These include the concerted decision to foster youth sport and potentiate the more charitable aspects of the penyes movement in collaboration with the Barça Foundation.

Of similar relevance was the recent launch of the moving Penyes Football Games Tournament that in 2018 and until the holding of the Congress, brings together players representing each of the federations to play each other at e-sports.