Last summer, FC Barcelona player Gerard Piqué and his pop star partner Shakira organised a dinner in San Francisco.

去年夏天，巴塞罗纳足球俱乐部（FC Barcelona，简称：巴萨）球员杰拉德.皮克(Gerard Piqué)和其流行歌手女友夏奇拉(Shakira)在旧金山组织了一次宴会。

Attendees included the football club’s new president Josep Maria Bartomeu and an unlikely friend of Piqué’s, Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder² of Rakuten, Japan’s largest internet retailer³ by sales.

与会者包括巴萨新任主席何塞普.马里亚.巴托梅乌(Josep Maria Bartomeu)，以及一个本不太可能是皮克朋友的人——以销售额计日本最大互联网零售商乐天(Rakuten)的创始人三木谷浩史(Hiroshi Mikitani)。

Mr Mikitani spent the evening talking to Mr Bartomeu about the sport he loves.

三木谷整晚都在和巴托梅乌谈他喜欢的运动。

But he ended the dinner with a business proposal: Rakuten should become Barcelona’s new shirt sponsor.

不过，宴会结束时他却提出了一个商业建议：乐天应当成为巴萨新的球衣胸前广告赞助商。

On Wednesday, he got his wish as Rakuten inked a deal with Barcelona worth at least EURO220m, sealing one of the world’s largest football shirt sponsorships in the latest display of how the value of commercial deals for top-tier clubs continues to rise.

本周三，他达成了这个愿望。乐天与巴萨签订了一项价值至少2.2亿欧元的协议，这是世界上最大手笔的足球衬衫广告赞助交易之一，也是证明顶级俱乐部商业交易价值不断攀升的最新例证。

Speaking to the Financial Times, Mr Mikitani insists that the deal is not just about the vanity of seeing his company’s logo emblazoned across the chests of the world’s best players, such as Lionel Messi and Neymar.

在接受英国《金融时报》采访时，三木谷坚称，签订该协议不仅仅为了满足看到自己公司标识出现在莱昂内尔.梅西(Lionel Messi)和内马尔(Neymar)等全球最佳球员胸前的虚荣心。

The deal with one of Europe’s most successful football teams is a chance for Rakuten to gain recognition outside Japan where it is already a household name.

对乐天来说，这项与欧洲最成功球队之一签订的协议，是在日本以外赢得知名度的一次机遇。在日本国内，乐天早已是个家喻户晓的品牌。

Not so many people know about Rakuten, to be very honest, he says.

说老实话，知道乐天的人并不太多。

This is our first step to globalise our brand, which is going to be very important for our future strategy.

三木谷说，这是我们品牌走向全球的第一步，这种全球化对我们未来的战略非常重要。

Mr Mikitani founded Rakuten in 1997 and has built it into a company known as Japan’s Amazon.

三木谷在1997年创立了乐天，并将其打造成了一家被称为日本的亚马逊(Amazon)的公司。

It operates the country’s biggest online marketplace for 44,300 small businesses that sells everything from books and cars to electronics.

该公司运营着日本最大的网上集市，上面有4.43万家小商户，这些商户销售从书籍、汽车到电子产品等各种商品。

The ecommerce group, which is worth $15.6bn, also offers property and electricity services and is an active investor⁴ in early-phase technology start-ups.

这家市值156亿美元的电子商务集团，还提供不动产和电力服务，并积极投资处于早期阶段的科技初创企业。

Just putting our brand in front of many, many eyeballs is itself very, very valuable, he says.

三木谷说：仅仅是让我们的品牌出现在无数眼球前面这件事本身，就极具价值。

But partnering with Barcelona, demonstrating what we do, will help synchronising our brand.

不过，与巴萨合作、展示我们的业务，将有助于传播我们的品牌。

It will make this partnership⁵ much more valuable than what we are paying.

这将让这种合作关系的价值，大大超过我们所掏的钱。

The Catalan club and the Japanese company have signed a four-season deal, with an option to extend to a fifth, worth EURO55m a year.

这个加泰罗尼亚俱乐部和这家日企签订的协议涵盖四个赛季，并可选择再延长一个赛季，每年的赞助额为5500万欧元。