The Norwegian Petter Stordalen bought the naming rights to the Friends arena in Solna.
Swedish the home stadium of the men's national football team in Solna near Stockholm has been given a new name. The stadium known as Friends-arena will be called Strawberry-arena in the future.
The reason is that the Norwegian billionaire Petter Stordalen has bought the naming rights to the stadium and named the arena after the Strawberry hotel chain it owns. The purchase price has not been disclosed.
The Clarion hotel in Helsinki's Jätkäsaari belongs to the same chain. And more will come. Stordalen's hotel chain Strawberry has two hotels around Helsinki-Vantaa airport, and two new ones are coming this year.
Strawberry was previously known as Nordic Choice Hotels. The new name comes from Stordalen's past: he started his working life as a schoolboy selling strawberries.
In August of last year, Petter Stordalen told about the new hotels coming up at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.
Solna the stadium has been known as Friends for more than 11 years, but this period of the “national arena” – as the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet calls the stadium – will end on July 12.
Stockholm-based AIK plays its home matches in a stadium that can hold 50,000 spectators. In addition, concerts and other events are organized in the arena.
Swedish football people are not very excited about the new name, which means strawberry.
“It's not our arena, so that won't concern me. But I'm grateful that our arena doesn't have that name,” commented the sports director of Stockholm's Djurgården Boss Andersson for Aftonbladet.
However, Andersson softens his view of the new name a little.
“The Friends arena was also mocked at the beginning. There used to be more traditional names, but this is how things go in the commercial football world. I guess there are even weirder names than this.”
Musician Mats Rubarth is a former AIK player and a loyal supporter of the club. He turns it into a positive.
“I'm not particularly happy with the name, but when you don't own the arena, the name can become something a little strange. However, we were lucky, it could have been called the Imodium plus (diarrhea medicine) arena,” said Rubarth.
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