Arsenal'sPremier League winwas the team’s first in 22 years — and it alsomarked the latest trophyfor American billionaire Stan Kroenke's international stable of sports teams.
Through his Denver-based Kroenke Sports & Entertainment holding company, the 78-year-old real estate mogul owns pro football, basketball, hockey, soccer and lacrosse franchises that have each racked up at least one championship since he bought them.
Arsenal's success came after Kroenke became a minority owner of the team in 2007, and steadily increased his share beforebuying outrival co-owner and Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov in a 2018 deal that ended a standoff between the tycoons and valued the team at about $2.3 billion.
The team’s victory led independent sports business writer Joe Pompliano to declare on X that as a sports investor, Kroenke "is on a generational run right now."
But the years leading up to Arsenal becoming champions of the Premier League were marked by intense anger from the Gunners’ fans toward Kroneke, including a protest outside the team’s Emirates Stadium in 2019 over complaints that he was treating Arsenal as an“investment vehicle.”
In 2021, an even larger rallyof more than 1,000 football fans gathered for a “Kroenke out” demonstration sparked by the owner’s role in failed efforts to create a European Super League.
Kroenke is the world's 114th richest person, with a personal fortune estimated at $22.2 billion, nearly triple his 2021 net worth of $8.2 billion, according toForbes.
Last year, he became America's largest landowner with the purchase of 937,000 acres of ranchland in New Mexico, bringing his total portfolio to an estimated 2.7 million acres, according to theLandReportwebsite. His Kroenke Vineyards also produce wines from two sprawling estates in California's Santa Barbara region.
Kroenke's wife, Ann Walton Kroenke, is also a billionaire in her own right as daughter of the late Walmart co-founder James "Bud" Walton, with a personal net worth of $15 billion, according toForbes.
On Wednesday night, another of Kroenke’s teams — the Colorado Avalanche, which won hockey’s Stanley Cup in 2001 and 2022 — is set to face off against the Las Vegas Golden Knights in Game 1 of the NHL Central Division conference finals.
Kroenke bought the Avalanche in 2000 as part of a reported $450 million package deal for the Denver Nuggets and Denver's Pepsi Center, since renamed the Ball Arena.
Three years later, the Nuggets won the NBA championship.
Kroenke's Colorado Rapids soccer team also won the 2010 Major League Soccer Cup and his Colorado Mammoth won the National Lacrosse League championship in 2006 and 2022.
Although Kroenke maintains a generally low profile that'sled to the nickname"Silent Stan," the Missouri native is widely reviled in St. Louis, where he helped relocate the Los Angeles Rams football team in 1995.
Advertisement
The move came after Kroenke became a 40 percent co-owner of the Rams with socialite Georgia Frontiere, who inherited control of the team following the 1979 drowning of her sixth husband, former Baltimore Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom.
The St. Louis Rams won the 2000 Super Bowl and Kroenke bought Frontiere's 60 percent majority share for $750 million following her 2008 death.
But Kroenke — who in 1993 had tried to bring a new expansion team to St. Louis, which lost the Cardinals to Arizona six years earlier —moved the Rams backto LA in 2016 after clashing with St. Louis officials over his demand for more than $700 million in upgrades to the city's Edward Jones Dome, since renamed The Dome at America's Center.
St. Louis fans were furious, with online headlines calling him “The Most Hated Man in Missouri” and saying, “F*** You, Stan Kroenke, and the Toupee You Rode in Under.” St. Louis native Andy Cohen giving him a double middle-finger salute on his Bravo! cable TV talk show.
It appears those feelings have yet to subside. YouTube’s STL Sport Central posting a 7-minutevideoin 2021 titled “Stan Kroenke is a Liar" that included a clip of him pledging, “We're here to work hard and be very successful in St. Louis,” as well as an unidentified man in a Veterans of Foreign Wars cap being asked what he’d say to Kroenke if given the chance.
“Bye. And don't let the door hit you in the butt,” he answered.
Last year,ESPNreported that many fans attending home-field games of the United Football League’s St. Louis Battlehawks wore T-shirts and waved homemade signs referencing the Rams owner.
“It's a community experience with a shared interest in spring football and a shared hatred of Stan Kroenke," said John Lewis.
During a 2016 interview for Southern California Public Radio'sTake Twoprogram, Kroenke defended his decision to move the Rams out of St. Louis, saying “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.”
When asked if he regretted it, he replied: “Well, sure, but it’s emotional.”
Kroenke later built the $5.5 billion SoFi Stadium complex in Inglewood, California, on land that included 60 acres he quietly bought in a deal that became public in early 2014, during discussions over his proposed improvements to the St. Louis stadium.
In 2022, the Rams won the Super Bowl at SoFi, narrowly defeating the Cincinnati Bengals, 23-20, in a come-from-behind victory late in the fourth quarter.
American former soccer player Tim Howard said Wednesday onSiriusXMthat Kroenke, his son and team co-owner Josh and manager Mikel Arteta all deserved credit for Arsenal coming out on top of the Premier League.
"I give the Kroenke family a lot of credit because it's in vogue to get rid of managers when you think you know better," he said.
"And the idea is to hire a really good manager and get the heck out of the way. And (Manchester) City have done that, Liverpool have done that and Arsenal have done that — and the others haven't."
Arsenal'sPremier League winwas the team’s first in 22 years — and it alsomarked the latest trophyfor American billionaire Stan Kroe...
