"As a sports investor, Kroenke is on a generational run right now." That's sports business writer Joe Pompliano's take — and looking at the numbers, it's hard to argue.
Arsenal's Premier League title — their first in 22 years — is just the latest addition to a collection that spans the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, and now the English top flight. Stan Kroenke, the 78-year-old Missouri-born real estate billionaire, owns sports franchises the way most people own loyalty cards. And they keep winning.
The trophy haul is genuinely hard to believe
Run through the list: the Los Angeles Rams won the Super Bowl in 2000 and again in 2022. The Denver Nuggets took the NBA title in 2023. The Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 2001 and 2022. The Colorado Rapids claimed the MLS Cup in 2010. The Colorado Mammoth won the National Lacrosse League in 2006 and 2022. And now Arsenal.
That is not a coincidence. That is a pattern.
His formula, according to former USMNT goalkeeper Tim Howard, is disarmingly simple: hire a good manager and stay out of the way. "The idea is to hire a really good manager and get the heck out of the way," Howard said on SiriusXM. "City have done that, Liverpool have done that and Arsenal have done that — and the others haven't." Credit where it's due: Kroenke backed Mikel Arteta through the lean years when the instinct of lesser owners would have been to panic and sack him.
Arsenal fans didn't always see it that way
The goodwill now being extended to Kroenke is relatively new. In 2019, fans gathered outside the Emirates to protest his ownership, accusing him of treating the club as an "investment vehicle" rather than a football institution. In 2021, over 1,000 supporters showed up for a "Kroenke Out" rally after his involvement in the botched European Super League project.
Those grievances were legitimate. The Super League fiasco was a naked cash grab dressed up as football innovation. But Arteta's project — patient, structured, genuinely exciting to watch — has shifted the conversation. It's difficult to maintain a protest movement when your team is lifting the title.
Whether Kroenke deserves personal credit for Arsenal's rebuild or simply deserves credit for not wrecking it is a distinction worth making. The infrastructure investment happened. The right people were kept in place. And the results speak for themselves.
- Kroenke became a minority Arsenal shareholder in 2007
- He bought out Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov in 2018 in a deal valuing Arsenal at $2.3 billion
- His personal net worth is now estimated at $22.2 billion — nearly triple his 2021 figure of $8.2 billion
- His wife, Ann Walton Kroenke, adds another $15 billion to the family balance sheet as daughter of Walmart co-founder Bud Walton
Back in the States, his Colorado Avalanche are about to face the Las Vegas Golden Knights in Game 1 of the NHL Central Division conference finals. Another shot at another Stanley Cup. At this point, betting against a Kroenke-owned team in a major final feels increasingly unwise.
In St. Louis, none of this lands well. Kroenke remains deeply unpopular there after relocating the Rams back to LA in 2016 following a dispute over stadium funding. Fans still wear anti-Kroenke T-shirts to UFL games. A 2021 YouTube video titled "Stan Kroenke is a Liar" has been sitting on the internet ever since.
"Bye. And don't let the door hit you in the butt," said one St. Louis local when asked what he'd say to the man. That one quote has aged into something close to a city motto.
Kroenke's response to the move, in a 2016 radio interview, was characteristically cold: "There's the emotional argument and then there's rational. And rationally, unless you argue that you should make a massive donation just to support with, it doesn't make any sense." He then built the $5.5 billion SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. The Rams won the Super Bowl there in 2022.
Silent Stan. Largest private landowner in America. 22-year wait over for Arsenal. Whatever you think of how he operates, the trophies keep coming.
