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SPORT

Is football next for Spotify’s billionaire CEO? 

The owner of Spotify, Daniel Ek, has offered to buy Premier League club Arsenal amid supporter backlash against their unpopular American owner, Stan Kroenke.

Arsenal play to an empty stadium
Spotify's owner has set his sights on Arsenal. Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP

Spotify’s billionaire CEO, Daniel Ek, who revolutionised on-demand music listening for millions of people now hopes to bring his business acumen to “the beautiful game”.

The 38-year-old, known for his no-nonsense attitude, has offered to buy Premier League club Arsenal amid supporter backlash against unpopular American owner Stan Kroenke.

Ek co-founded Spotify with Martin Lorentzon in 2006, and the company which made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018 now has a market capitalisation of $56 billion.

The Swedish billionaire 

Bald, bearded and usually seen in sneakers, T-shirt and a blazer, Ek is known for his reserved style and pragmatism. He’s a shy problem-solver with a creative streak who takes long walks to think things through and prizes collective teamwork over the individual.

Ek got into computer programming as a young child, and was a dollar millionaire by the age of 23 when he sold his online advertising company, Advertigo, in 2006 for a reported $1.25 million.

“But he’s more of a businessman than a tech nerd,” Sven Carlsson, co-author of “The Spotify Play”, told AFP, painting him as a visionary.

“He’s always thinking six months ahead. He’s not into the details. He’s known for having ambitious, lofty goals, with no understanding for how unrealistic they are,” he said.

“He thinks big, and he has patience” to see those projects through to fruition.

Ek was raised in Stockholm’s working-class suburb of Rågsved. His father left the family when Daniel was young.

“He’s always had something to prove… Being left by his dad was a formative experience,” Carlsson said.

Pelle Snickars, co-author of “The Swedish Unicorn: the Story About Spotify”, describes Ek as “quite Swedish in terms of values”.

“We don’t see him on magazine covers alongside celebrities, he’s not hierarchical and does not hesitate to showcase his collaborators,” Snickars told AFP.

With around 9 percent of Spotify’s capital and 37 percent of voting rights, Forbes put Ek’s fortune at an estimated $4.8 billion in April 2021.

“Innovations are never entirely new”

In 2006, Ek and Lorentzon came up with the idea of creating a platform to distribute music online legally, a practice that was dominated by illegal file sharing sites at the time.

The duo experimented with sharing MP3 music files between the hard drives on their computers. In October 2008 Spotify was finally ready to go live after Ek pleaded with music labels to open their catalogues.

“Innovations are never entirely new,” Ek told the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm during a 2013 visit.

“The success comes from combining things that already exist and trying to solve a problem that one is really involved in,” he added.

Ek reportedly dropped out of the university’s engineering programme to pursue an IT career – though his enrolment at the school has never been proven, Carlsson noted.

He said Ek’s former colleagues nicknamed him “Spice.”

“They thought he always spiced up his stories a little to make them more interesting,” Carlsson said, adding that it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“Storytelling is something Spotify and Daniel Ek have always been good at.”

Football next? 

Ek’s perseverance may have led to the remarkable rise of the start-up, but artists have over the years complained of it paying them too little and cannibalising sales from their albums.

Ek has repeatedly argued that streaming is a better alternative for artists and that “piracy doesn’t pay (them) a penny – nothing, zilch, zero.”

Snickars and co-author Rasmus Fleischer dispute the idea that Spotify was founded to end piracy and force consumers to pay for music.

They claim that neither Ek nor Lorentzon “had any experience with working professionally with music”, but they had a common background from digital advertising.

“They weren’t particularly interested in music…they could have worked on skin products instead,” Snickars told AFP.

Now, Ek is ready to dive into the football arena.

“As a kid growing up, I’ve cheered for Arsenal as long as I can remember. If KSE [Kroenke Sports Enterprises] would like to sell Arsenal I’d be happy to throw my hat in the ring,” Ek wrote on Twitter on April 23.

Kroenke has however insisted Arsenal is not for sale, despite growing supporter unrest at the American billionaire’s ownership of the club, whose last Premier League title came in 2003/04.

Article by AFP’s Pia Ohlin.

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CRIME

Spain women’s World Cup players demand more heads roll as Rubiales in court

The crisis within Spanish football deepened Friday as the women's World Cup winners demanded more heads roll at its scandal-hit RFEF federation whose disgraced ex-boss appeared in court on sexual assault charges.

Spain women's World Cup players demand more heads roll as Rubiales in court

Just hours after Luis Rubiales was quizzed by a judge for kissing midfielder Jenni Hermoso, all but two of Spain’s 23 World Cup players said they would not don the national shirt without deeper changes within the RFEF, demanding its current interim head also resign.

The statement came as the squad’s new coach Montse Tome was to announce the lineup for two upcoming UEFA Women’s Nations League matches against Sweden and Switzerland, which was promptly postponed, federation sources said.

“The changes put in place are not enough,” said a statement signed by 39 players, among them 21 of the 23 World Cup winners.

Demanding “fundamental changes to the RFEF’s leadership”, they called for the “resignation of the RFEF president” Pedro Rocha, who took over as interim leader when FIFA suspended Rubiales on August 26.

But the federation insisted Rocha would “lead the transition process within the RFEF until the next election”, insisting any changes would be made “gradually”.

A federation source said a leadership election could take place early next year.

“This institution is more important than individuals and it’s crucial it remains strong. We’ll work tirelessly to create stability first in order to progress later,” Rocha said in the statement.

Despite a string of recent changes, the federation remains in the hands of officials appointed by Rubiales, and the players are demanding structural changes “within the office of the president and the secretary general”.

Brought to court by a kiss

The bombshell came after days of optimism within the RFEF that the players would come round after it sacked controversial coach Jorge Vilda, appointed Tome in his stead and pledged further changes, not to mention Rubiales’ long-awaited resignation on Sunday.

On August 25, 81 Spain players, including the 23 world champions, had started a mass strike saying they would not play for the national team without significant changes at the head of the federation.

Earlier on Friday, Rubiales appeared in court where he was quizzed by Judge Francisco de Jorge who is heading up the investigation into the kiss, which sparked international outrage and saw him brought up on sexual assault charges.

At the end of the closed-door hearing, in which Rubiales repeated his claim that the kiss was consensual, the judge ordered him not to come within 200 metres of Hermoso and barred him from any contact with the player.

At the weekend, the 46-year-old had described the kiss as “a spontaneous act, a mutual act, an act that both consented to, which was… 100 percent non-sexual” in an interview with British broadcaster Piers Morgan.

Hermoso, 33, has insisted it was not, describing it as “an impulsive, macho act, out of place and with no type of consent on my part”.

Speaking to reporters outside court, Hermoso’s lawyer Carla Vall said they were “very satisfied” with the hearing.

“Thanks to this video, everyone can see there was no consent whatsoever and that is what we will demonstrate in court.”

Allegations of coercion

Hermoso herself will also testify before the judge at some stage, who will then have to decide whether or not to push ahead with the prosecution. No date has been given for her testimony.

The complaint against Rubiales, which was filed by the public prosecutors’ office, cites alleged offences of sexual assault and coercion.

Under a recent reform of the Spanish penal code, a non-consensual kiss can be considered sexual assault, a category which groups all types of sexual violence.

If found guilty, Rubiales could face anything from a fine to four years in prison, sources at the public prosecutors’ office have said.

In their complaint, prosecutors explained the offence of coercion related to Hermoso’s statement saying she “and those close to her had suffered constant ongoing pressure by Luis Rubiales and his professional entourage to justify and condone” his actions.

At the hearing, Rubiales also denied coercion.

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