Barcelona’s last-minute Basel friendly locked behind Spanish broadcast rights

Barcelona play their penultimate preseason friendly against FC Basel in Switzerland on Sunday, but many Barça fans will not be able to watch it.

The match came together basically at the last minute because Barça were supposed to play a friendly in Morocco which was cancelled, so the Blaugrana had to scramble to find an opponent for this weekend and were able to strike a deal with Basel.

The Catalans do not hold any broadcast rights overseas for the game, so the club’s official channels on their website and YouTube Premium subscription will only be able to show the match in Spain.

LiveSoccerTV reports the game will be shown in most of Africa on MBC Shahid and MBC Action, but anyone in Europe outside of Spain as well as Asia and the Americas will not have any legal ways to watch the game.

“We do not encourage anyone to post or discuss illegal streams at Barca Blaugranes, so we obviously won’t do it ourselves,” the outlet notes. “And because the game is basically impossible to watch, we will not have a live match thread.”

Lineups and match updates will be posted in The Feed, and a short match recap will be posted on the main page after the final whistle. The publication apologised for the lack of usual coverage, saying it is “truly beyond our control”.