Spotify billionaire, Daniel Ek, has revealed he grew up as an Arsenal fan and would like to get his hands on Arsenal as fans try to force Stan Kroenke from the club with reports emerging that Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira are all getting involved.
Tweeting on Friday night amid scenes of thousands of Arsenal fans protesting at the Emirates, Daniel Elk, said, “As a kid growing up, I’ve cheered for @Arsenal as long as I can remember. If KSE would like to sell Arsenal I’d be happy to throw my hat in the ring.”
As a kid growing up, I’ve cheered for @Arsenal as long as I can remember. If KSE would like to sell Arsenal I'd be happy to throw my hat in the ring.
— Daniel Ek (@eldsjal) April 23, 2021
The 38-year-old Ek is worth a reported $4.7billion (£3.4bn) according to Forbes latest rich list and it is thought that an offer of around £2billion would see Stan Kroenke consider his place in London. Given that would amount to over half Ek’s fortune, it is believed he would likely form a consortium, even though the £1.4billion he would have remaining would be enough for him to live several lifetimes without ever having to worry about money for him or his family.
At the fan’s forum on Thursday, Josh Kroenke said his father had no plans to sell even though Ek’s offer, informal as it was, is said to be serious.
Ek currently owns 9% of Spotify which he helped to found in 2006, becoming a billionaire in 2019 just a year after taking his company public.
Spotify is worth around $54billion. “We have no comment on this beyond Daniel’s tweet,” a Spotify spokesperson said when contacted by Forbes.
On Monday, Matt Law of the Telegraph then tweeted to say that he had “it on good authority that Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Vieira have joined Daniel Ek in his bid to buy Arsenal FC and I am told it is very real.”
He adds in his article, “Telegraph Sport can reveal that Daniel Ek is working with Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Vieira, three key members of Arsenal’s 2003/04 Invincible team, on a bid to take control of the Gunners.
“If Ek is successful, then it is understood Henry, Bergkamp and Vieira could all return to Arsenal to be part of the new set-up, with their knowledge of the club and the fan-base already proving invaluable to his plans.”
Henry spoke this weekend about Arsenal, saying, “This club belongs to the fans, I love the club and I will support the club until I die, but I do not recognise my club and what happened just now, with them trying to join a league that would have been closed, makes no sense to me.
“They have been running the club like a company, not a football club, and they showed their hand. Maybe it’s a lack of understanding of the core football values and maybe the money was too big of a temptation. But whatever it was, they got it wrong. Badly wrong.
“Fans always decide, as you saw with the ESL. You have to listen to the fans and I can understand why they protested.
“The ESL didn’t happen because of the fans, not because anyone else was talking, Not only me, you and the fans said it was wrong, they (the owners) also said it was wrong. They showed their hand and that was disappointing.
“I remember when I arrived, not the Tottenham fans or our rivals, but a lot of the time I used to hear ‘my second team, if I had to pick one, is Arsenal’, because of the history, the culture, the class, the family. But I don’t hear that or see that anymore and it pains me. We need to get that image back. We need our identity back.”
It is worth noting that Matt Law, since joining the Telegraph, has seen a decline in the quality of his pieces, however, it’s a bit of ‘news’ that will certainly get Arsenal fans everywhere excited.