Who Owns Arsenal?

Stan Kroenke, a property billionaire, first became involved in Arsenal in 2007, when his KSE UK Inc. bought a 9.9% stake in the club, which then rose to 12.19%. His power within the club, as well as the stake he owned in it, rose in the following year. He became a board member, gaining voting rights of 29.9% of the club’s stocks. By 2011, Kroenke owned 62.89%. By 2018, he owned the club outright after buying out rival Alisher Usmanov.

Arsenal has not been a fan-owned club since 1893, when it became a limited liability company. The last majority shareholder of the club before Kroenke was David Dein. Whilst a shrewd businessman, Dein’s reputation is one of a man who loved Arsenal, and brought them huge successes from the ’80s to the ’00s. He’s associated with bringing in Arsene Wenger, the club legends who are now backing Ek, and presiding over the ‘Invincible season’.

What might be overlooked here is the role that Dein played in the formation of the Premier League, which itself precipitated the influx of billionaire club owners, keen to profit from television broadcasting rights.

Within the realms of billionaires owning football clubs, Kroenke hasn’t done anything particularly egregious. This, of course, is an extremely low bar – some of them are run using sovereign wealth funds from countries guilty of human rights abuses. However, while continually extracting wealth from the club, the KSE ownership has seen it constantly mismanaged. This has shown on the pitch, with players not performing being given huge contracts and poor signings being bought over the odds.

More offensive has been the way that club staff have been treated throughout the pandemic. In August, it was announced that 55 members of staff would be made redundant. This came despite the first team players and manager Mikel Arteta agreeing a pay cut earlier in the pandemic, in order to guard against this happening.

Many see Kroenke’s ownership of Arsenal as an erosion of the club’s ‘values’—decency, tradition, belonging—whether or not these were really in place when he took over. The ‘Kroenke Out’ protests were clear in their initial demand, but vague on what would come next. The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust said they ‘will support any potential purchaser who will allow fans to own a real equity stake and give fans a meaningful say in how our club is run.’

Daniel Ek’s Monetisation of Music

Spotify’s owner Daniel Ek is worth $4.2 billion. This personal wealth comes despite the platform continually making losses. Spotify has become perhaps the most unanimous method of consuming music, with the app having around 345 million monthly users. However, it is almost impossible for musicians to make any income from the platform due to its payment structure.

All artists on Spotify are paid from one pot of money, which is divided by the total number of all plays globally, before being distributed accordingly. The outcome of this is that not only do artists with greater plays get more money in the traditional sense, but also that each ‘play’ that they amass devalues the work of lesser-streamed artist.

Spotify has drawn criticism from across the music industry. Taylor Swift boycotted the platform for a few years, as did Radiohead’s Thom Yorke – though both eventually gave up and allowed their music onto the platform. Both of these examples illustrate the hegemonic reality of Spotify for musicians. Even some of the world’s largest artists relent in their stances against it, due to its ubiquity.

In the case of Taylor Swift, Ek has claimed to be personally responsible for convincing her to return to the platform, stating that she eventually ‘saw the fans were asking for it’. Streaming is now so ubiquitous that even the most successful artists find themselves in this bind. Smaller artists are on the flipside of the same bind: they can’t make any money from Spotify streaming, but it’s hard to get recognition without songs on Spotify.

Platform Music, Platform Football

Though by no means an exact analogue, there are certainly parallels between the modes of capitalism which lie behind the music and football industries of today. Broadcasting football and streaming music have both had the effect of undermining ‘traditional’ forms of raising revenue. In the case of football, these traditional forms would have been selling tickets to games, food and drink at matches, club shirts, etc.; the musical equivalents being gig tickets, merchandise, records. All of these things still exist, but they are not how those at the very top make their millions or billions.

The two circumstances are slightly different in that the music industry’s traditional revenue methods were initially undermined by illegal download sites, such as Napster. Streaming services were able to save the profits of large stakeholders, but were less beneficial for musicians.

Key to these developments in both football and music is the bringing together of a broad, disparate culture into one place, via technology. Part of Spotify’s value is that it attempts to present all of recorded music history in one easy app. Similarly, football subscriptions with Sky or BT Sports allow the viewer access to football matches from across different continents and leagues. Both rely on cumulative, collective cultures, which predate the formation of these new technological platforms. Football’s rich and diverse history is what gives it value: the same is true of music.

Football broadcasting and music streaming both shun the social element of the culture from which they are profiting, but continue to rely on the value that it gives their products. This is perhaps more prevalent in football. As has been clear since the pandemic, football games without fans are much less engrossing for the viewer at home, making them a less valuable product. Football fans continue to watch because of their allegiances and interest in the sport, but also due to the promise of fans eventually returning.

The relationship between broadcasters and stadium-going fans is at the heart of the football industry’s exploitative relationship with fans. The value created by fans is a sort of hidden labour, as is that of musicians whose hard, creative work allows Spotify to boast a diverse streaming experience, with almost no tangible return for those artists.

In welcoming Ek’s takeover of Arsenal, fans would be welcoming a billionaire who has made that money off the backs of those whose creative work gives Spotify legitimacy. Whilst the frustrations over the current Kroenke ownership are understandable, it would seem a backwards step to have the club taken over by someone whose business model is analogous with the sort of exploitation that is so rife in football.

The European Super League was a galvanising moment for football fans. It was a warning shot that the current trend of billionaires running football for their own benefit, taking fans for granted in the process, will simply continue without intervention. The timing of Ek’s intervention could not be more cynical, with football fans angered by the ESL announcement and looking for an alternative. That shouldn’t cloud the fact that Ek’s billions have been made at the expense of the musical culture he has monetised – and we should expect the same to be true of football.