"I'm very serious, I have secured the funds" - Daniel Ek on his Arsenal takeover bid

but you know what we are going to start with that breaking news that is just reaching us here on sky sports news and arsenal fans listen in uh because we've just heard from the spotify chairman and chief executive that is daniel eck you'll all be very aware of who he is he's been speaking to our colleagues at cnbc in the united states that's on the business channel over there and he's just said that he is serious about buying arsenal from the conquerors and he's already secured the funds needed to complete that deal this is the very first listen on british tv here it is i've been an arsenal fan since i was eight years old arsenal is my team i love the history i love the players and of course i love the fans so as i look at that i just see a tremendous opportunity to set a real vision for the club to bring it back to its glory and i want to establish trust with fans and i want to engage the fans again so to answer your question i'm very serious you know i have secured the funds for it and i want to uh bring a what i think is a very compelling offer to the owners and i hope they hear me out daniel they don't seem to be interested in selling though and unlike a public company where there's other things you can do to conceivably pressure them here i suppose it's only the fan base but you know they've made it clear we're not sellers yeah but you know as i started out saying i've been a fan for 30 years of this club and i certainly didn't expect that this would happen overnight and i'm prepared that this could be a long journey but you know all i can do is prepare what i think is a very thoughtful offer and bring it to them and hope they hear me out well one of the things that they're saying is that they're not interested that to me sounds like an opening offer uh you have a lot of cash you are the fan owner everyone wants to see an owner who identifies with the fans i don't want to slam the uh the cronkies too much but they own a lot of teams and it seems like this is just some asset for them and nothing real particular doesn't that call you doesn't that make you feel angry well you know i just focus on the club i focus on the fans and i focus focus on trying to bring the club back to glory and as you said i'm first and foremost a fan that's the most important uh thing for me and i want the club to do better that's my primary interest there you go then let's say bringing carver solo call who's back with us he promised to come back this hour once he'd spoken to cnbc our colleagues over in the united states um and we were wondering whether he was going to speak about arsenal well he certainly has he says he's put together the finances for the deal and so on but you know the guy was quite right there to say that to him as far as where the club's not for sale is it i mean what are your thoughts on all of this look the skeptics were saying this was a publicity stunt the cynics were saying there's no way this is going to happen well we have heard from the main man himself now we've heard from daniel eck and he's made it clear that he's very serious about trying to buy arsenal he has secured the funds we know that arsenal are valued at at least two billion pounds so it would suggest that he's managed to get that kind of finance together to try and push ahead with this proposed deal and he describes it as a very compelling thoughtful offer and he is saying to the cronkite please listen to me i'm going to make this offer in the next few days it's going to be put in front of you then it's up to you to make up your mind now he already knows that the cronkies have said arsenal is not for sale wow that's not a surprise of course no one's going to come out and say their premier league club which is worth billions of pounds is for sale but in business as our colleagues at cnbc pointed out everything has a price everything has a price so if he can tempt to the cronkies to sell then he is ready to move in and buy arsenal now long term what i think is interesting is that he himself said that he is prepared for a long journey he's expecting his offer to be rebuffed he's expecting the cronkies to say to him the club is not for sale but now he's always going to be in the background we know he's a real fan he's been a fan for 30 years we know now he's close to thierry henry he's close to dennis bergkamp he's close to patrick vieira he's got the legends on board and these fans who are unhappy with the cronkies now have somebody they can rally behind so in the future if things don't improve on and off the pitch at arsenal he will always be in the background the fans will always think we've got this guy look what he's done with spotify he started off with nothing he's a billionaire now the company is growing and growing and growing spotify's shares have doubled in the past 12 months he's got a vision for arsenal yes the cronkites are also very very rich but in a way they represent old money they've made their money from real estate property sports clubs whereas this guy is you know a tech titan he's the future of business and he says he's got a vision for arsenal and what's more he is an arsenal supporter as well so look i know a lot of people at arsenal would want this to go away they want to sweep it under the carpet they want to draw a line under it and say arsenal is not for sale but now they do have a problem because daniel eck is saying i'm not going away i've got the money i want to buy arsenal i'm an arsenal supporter and i've got a vision for the future of the club and that vision involves legends of the club and making arsenal great again and that all just ramps the pressure up on the cronkites doesn't it you know from the fans and so on we've seen the protests outside the emirates we've seen that the arsenal fans aren't happy but we also know that you know that this statement was very clear i mean do you expect that the the conquerors the types of people that are going to be affected by fan pressure do you think i don't think the cronkies have ever sold any of their uh clubs before uh i think stan cronkite himself is almost twice as rich as daniel eck so nobody is going to bully stan cronkite into selling arsenal it is his club if he doesn't want to sell it he's not going to sell it but i make the point again if things don't improve then this proposed deal is always going to be in the background and it's supported and backed by some of the biggest legends to have ever played for arsenal to be fair to the cronkite family and we should always put the other side of the story as well although sometimes we get some abuse from arsenal fans for doing so but the club belongs to the cronkites they've put a lot of money into the club through bad times they've put their money in they've supported the manager they've invested money in the transfer market as well i know they've taken some really difficult controversial decisions uh during the pandemic making people redundant that has not gone down well at all with the club's fans and people inside the club as well i think they would admit that they have made some big mistakes when it comes to running such a great club one of the biggest mistakes was to agree to join the european super league but if i can just be the devil's advocate i would point out that they have tried to uh speak to the fans with josh cronky attending that fans forum yesterday josh crunker also spoke to everybody who works at arsenal they've made statements saying that we're sorry we're going to learn from this we want to engage with the fans to take this club forward so there is another side to the story as well i think what is really key is what arsenal fans think because our information is that if daniel eck was to buy the club he would be open to having fan representation on the arsenal board he would be open to the fans having a say to the fans having a golden share the cronkites have talked about engaging with the fans listening to them it'll be interesting to see going forward quite what involvement the fans do have in the running of arsenal if the cronkites don't sell and let's be clear they've said they're not selling and they're 100 committed to the club yeah it sounds like this one could run and run doesn't it carve thanks for bringing us right up today appreciate it [Music]

Channel: Sky Sports News

Views: 555,830

Keywords: Daniel Ek, Arsenal, Arsenal Takeover, Daniel Ek Arsenal, Takeover, Stan Kroenke, Kroenke, Buyout, Arsenal Owner, Spotify, Arsenal Spotify, Interview, Premier League, CNBC, Sky Sports News, Sky Sports, Sky Sports Football, News, Sport News, Breaking News, Football News

Id: _A04U9cwC2A

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021