Spotify Closing In on Sponsorship Deal With Barcelona Soccer Club

MADRID — Spotify is close to reaching a sponsorship deal with F.C. Barcelona, one of Europe’s leading soccer clubs, less than a year after Spotify’s founder, Daniel Ek, made an unsuccessful takeover bid for U.K. club Arsenal.

According to Spanish media, a sponsorship deal could be announced as early as next week. The club says it would not comment on ongoing negotiations, which have been prompted by the fact that Barcelona’s current jersey sponsor, Rakuten, decided not to renew its agreement with Barcelona, which ends in June.

Last year, Ek sought to buy Arsenal, saying that it would fulfill a childhood dream. “I’ve cheered for Arsenal as long as I can remember,” he said. But the family of Stan Kroenke, which currently owns Arsenal, rejected the Swedish billionaire’s offer, saying they were “not selling any stake in the club.”

Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce firm, decided to end its sponsorship relationship with Barcelona after the club lost its star Argentine player, Lionel Messi, last summer. He now plays for Paris Saint-Germain, the French club. Last June, Rakuten also complained after two other Barcelona players mocked Japanese hotel employees on social media.

The talks between the soccer club and the music streaming company have been over a larger sponsorship package valued in the tens of millions of euros a year, rather than only replacing Rakuten’s name on the players’ jerseys, according to Spanish media. Barcelona is looking to sell naming rights to its stadium, which could be renamed Camp Nou Spotify as part of a broader deal. Spotify could also feature on Barcelona’s training apparel, since the club’s separate sponsorship deal with appliance maker Beko also expires in June.

Spotify did not respond to a request for comment.

Barcelona was once a dominant force in European soccer, winning the continent’s most important competition, the Champions League, four times in a decade, between 2006 and 2015. More recently, its situation has worsened both on and off the field. This season, Barcelona made an early exit from both the Champions League and Spain’s domestic King’s Cup and is languishing in fifth place in La Liga. The club has accumulated debt of more than 1 billion euros, and its new president, Joan Laporta, has recently called on public prosecutors to investigate mismanagement and possible fraud by his predecessor, Josep Maria Bartomeu.

Barcelona was reported to have also initiated talks with several other possible sponsors — including Chinese gaming giant Tencent (the parent company of Tencent Music Entertainment, a rival streaming platform to Spotify), online marketplace VeganNation and Polkadot, a blockchain platform and cryptocurrency.

The Spanish club once also stood out among its European soccer rivals for refusing paid sponsorship. It broke that rule in 2010 when it signed a deal with the Qatar Foundation, just as Qatar was also selected as the host nation for the 2022 World Cup.

For Ek, the potential Spotify sponsorship deal is the latest foray by the streaming platform or Ek’s investment company, Prima Materia, outside of the world of music. Last year Ek invested more than $114 million in Helsing, a European security startup that manufactures artificial intelligence software to help soldiers detect enemy drones and hostile troops, leading to a social-media backlash by some artists.

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