Spotify and FC Barcelona Celebrate Drake’s Streaming Milestone With a Limited-Edition Shirt
From the start, we’ve had big plans for our partnership with FC Barcelona. We want to create a platform for artists that taps into the club’s massive global fan base. So as part of FC Barcelona’s El Clásico showdown this past Sunday—one of the most iconic events in all of sport—we teamed up with Drake and FC Barcelona to create a limited-edition kit.
Emblazoned with the signature OVO owl logo, the shirts reaffirm our commitment to bringing the worlds of music and football together.
“Our alliance with Spotify goes beyond a mere commercial relationship. It is a strategic relationship through which we seek to bring together two worlds that can arouse emotion, namely music and football,” said Juli Guiu, Vice President for the marketing area of FC Barcelona. “This initiative is another example of this desire and the innovative spirit of our collaboration.
“For the first time in our history, we are replacing the name of our main sponsor on the front of the jersey with an internationally acclaimed artist, Drake. This initiative shows our potential to become a unique platform to offer experiences that help bring us closer to our fans while reaching out to new audiences around the world.”
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Drake had the honor of unboxing the first shirt, which features the number 50 on the back because the global superstar is also celebrating an important milestone: He’s the first artist to have his tracks streamed 50 billion times on Spotify.
As October’s Very Own, there was no better match for Drake to debut the shirt than at this October’s El Clásico. To celebrate Drake and his impact on music, the men’s squad wore the shirts on Sunday when they stepped onto the pitch. And before the match, they even warmed up in training jerseys with “50” on the back.
But even beyond Drake’s record-setting numbers and FC Barcelona fandom, we couldn’t have imagined a more perfect fit for this collaboration. From the release of Thank Me Later in 2010 to this year’s Honestly, Nevermind, Drake has been a defining artist of the streaming era.
“We were really excited to celebrate one of the biggest games of the year and mark Drake’s milestone as the first artist to reach 50 billion streams,” Marc Hazan, Spotify VP of Partnerships, told For the Record. “We’ve always said that we want this partnership to be a celebration of fans, players, and artists on a global stage—and there’s no bigger stage than El Clásico.”
And because his passionate fans have played a vital role in his reaching this mark, Spotify will be thanking them—and select FC Barcelona members—with a giveaway of these special-edition FC Barcelona jerseys.
Spotify’s mission is to help artists unlock their creativity, connect with their fans, and make a living off their art. And whether it’s through experiences such as the FC Barcelona summer tour, pitchside ads, or the OVO shirt swap, we believe this partnership creates many opportunities to deliver on this mission in unique, imaginative ways.
Keep up with all the action on @spotify, @SpotifyNews, and @FCBarcelona.
El Clásico photos: German Parga/ FC Barcelona
