FCBARCELONA.CAT

18.11.2007 11:02

Club website now in seven languages

www.fcbarcelona.com

The FC Barcelona website is now also available in Korean and Arabic. This means that www.fcbarcelona.com can be accessed in seven languages, making it one of the leaders in European football.

The Club website is continuing to broaden its international appeal in a move that will increase its popularity, publicise the brand and bring the content closer to the Asian and Middle Eastern audience. Until now, the site has been available in Catalan, Spanish, English, Chinese and Japanese. Marc Ingla, Club vice-president for Marketing and Media told us: “Having the website in seven languages is a remarkable feat and pioneering in the world of football. Barça’s own media are key in the Club’s global projection. Connecting with our fans in their own language allows us to transmit spectacle and Barça values in a genuine way and thereby communicate better that Barça is “more than a club” and therefore different from all the rest”.

FC Barcelona is the first European club to have its website in Arabic. The new website ( http://www.barcaarabia.com/ ), which will serve some 23 countries with a total population of more than 300 million, will be updated daily with news items supplied by FC Barcelona and will also have video content in Arabic. It will maintain the institutional content available on www.fcbarcelona.cat. According to Marc Ingla: “Once again we have led the way ahead of the majority of European clubs in being the first to set up an Arabic website. Seeing the Barça content in Arabic is, frankly, impressive”.

The launch is the result of an agreement with LinkDotNet, which was officially unveiled during the visit of the senior squad to Cairo for a friendly on 24th April. LinkDotNet is the most important supplier of Internet solutions (Internet access, hosting, e-solutions, online advertising and content) in the region, as well as owning a number of websites and maintaining strategic alliances with other partners.

The Korean language website ( http://www.barca.co.kr/ ) will be managed by Media Corp for the next two years. Media Corp is Korea’s leading player in the area of new technologies with interests in entertainment (film production, talent management etc.), publishing (books, sports and cinema weeklies and music and entertainment monthlies) and digital content (including mobiles and internet). The company, founded in 1998, holds the rights to the Korean version of the UEFA, Liverpool and Arsenal websites.