They might have lost to Chelsea in the Champions League and surrendered their La Liga title to Real Madrid, but FC Barcelona remain one of the great football clubs in the world.
With its "more than a club" slogan, it also is a flagship for Catalonia, while at the same time being one of the globe's major sporting brands.
The club estimates it has 349 million fans or followers around the world, including 145 million in the fast-growing Asian market, and some 77 million in the US.
And although its Nou Camp stadium has the biggest capacity in Europe at 99,354, that still means only a small proportion of the worldwide fanbase can actually buy match tickets and get to games.
So the club is looking to use new media not only to inform those other millions, stretching from South East Asia to North America, but to attract overseas supporters to become FCB customers too.
The club is one of the most progressive in using new media and social media to reach those potential consumers.
'Expanding fan numbers'
"We have been looking at ways of expanding, and generating revenue," says Pasi Lankinen, Barcelona's business intelligence manager.
"We have expanded fan numbers in our country and in Europe.
"Now we are looking at gaining a global, profitable, fanbase."
As part of that, the club's website is now in six languages, and its Twitter feeds are in three.
Twitter and Facebook are a large part of Barcelona's new-media strategy, as are YouTube and the provision of phone apps, as well as looking to other sites such as QQ in China.
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