Kroenke’s never ending profits and why he wants the Super league by Dan
Stan Kroenke is not a great football owner but that doesn’t mean he’s not a world class businessman. Don’t ever confuse the two.
The day he dies, his legacy will be of a genius who knew how to make serious money in the sporting market.
I read an article the other day where a couple of Gooners didn’t understand why the word ‘hate’ was too strong. Take our emotion out of the subject and the man hasn’t broken any laws.
Every human has a right to (legally) attempt to make as much money as possible and no one has an entitlement to tell another person how they must spend their wealth.
Forbes this week released the top 50 worldwide sport ‘franchises’ based on value. Arsenal are placed in 38th on the list.
So when the Gunners yet again this summer pretend to be poor just remember that there are only 37 other sports team worth more than us in the entire world!
With a lot of research, I found out a few more eye watering stats.
In 2011 Arsenal were bought (in terms of shares brought over a period of time) for 1.1 billion. They are currently valued at 2.3 billion.
In the last 5 years that is a rise in value of 39 percent. That’s incredible when you think what’s happened on and off the pitch in the last 5 years.
We have fallen out of the Champions League and for over a year have been without match day revenue. You could go as far as saying the last decade has been one of the worst in our history, yet our value has increased. Which makes you understand why our business model no longer cares about winning titles or where we finish.
Yet the more successful on the pitch we are, would make us even more valuable, but when an asset is already worth billions that’s enough to be content with.
The Club has almost doubled in value since the Kroenke Family first took power on our board. They could now attempt to invest in the team to make a greater return or sell up.
Daniel Ek has confirmed he has the money to launch a bid between 1.8 – 2 billion. Either way the Kroenke’s are going to make a huge profit on an investment they have zero connection to.
Living in America they are away from the scrutiny of our fanbase, but you do wonder if you could double your money for something you’re not interested in why wouldn’t you?
The argument is the example of The LA Rams.
You know what I said about Mr. Kroenke being a world class businessman? He’s only one of two individuals to own two of the most 38 valuable sports teams in the world with Forbes ranking them 13th on the list.
When he took full control of the then Saint Louis Rams, he paid 750 million. Their valuation in 2021 is 4 billion!
The only other company to be represented twice in the top 38 are John Henry and Tom Werner, thanks to the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool.
Their honours include a Premiership, Champions League and 5 World Series, proving it’s possible to make a fortune and win at the same time.
Our owner has perfected a portfolio of increasing value no matter how unsuccessful his teams or customer backlash.
It was in the NFL where the nickname ‘Silent Stan’ emerged due to his refusal to answer allegations that he misled Rams fans, promising he would never move the Rams from their ‘home’ (which is why we don’t ever want to join a breakaway league).
Of the top 38 most valuable teams in the world 29 have won their main Championship under current ownership. Of the 9 who haven’t 2 are owned by Stan Kroenke.
Under the Kroenke Banner, the Rams did end a 14-year drought for a division title and play-off appearance but they lost their first Super Bowl appearance in 35 years 13-3 to the Patriots.
If you count regional or division titles, then Arsenal are the only team in the top 38 most valuable teams not to win a title since their last takeover. Either way the Gunners are the odd ones out.
Of the 9 teams mentioned not to win their main prize since their last owner, one plays in the NBA the other 7 in the NFL.
Arsenal are the only European franchise out of the 9.
If we extend the list to the 50 most valuable teams, PSG enter the conversation at 43rd.
Meaning out of the 10 football teams in this list Arsenal are the only ones not to win their domestic title under their current regime (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man United, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City are also in top 38).
Football is the only sport outside of America on this top 50 list with the 10 clubs representing UEFA. The other 40 teams either compete in the MLB, NFL or NBA.
If ever you want to know why the Premiership’s ‘big six’ owners wanted to create a Super League, Forbes table shows why.
Of the 12 who signed up originally, 8 are on this list. Yet they are surrounded by three brands which commercially make more money.
The NFL, NBA and MLB each have one of the top 3 most valuable clubs in the world. That’s why the Super League was going to try and copy their pyramid model of zero relegation and play offs.
Of England’s big six, 4 are owned by Americans who would have grown up with sport looking this way. Kroenke owns a side in the NBA and NFL, Henry and Warner make money in the MLB and the Glazers own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from the NFL.
So not just did these men grow up watching these sports they have evidence that serious money can be made by a Super League.
That’s why the UK fans who followed their clubs for years were never the target audience.
This will never be admitted but long term, I believe that Arsenal would have been moved from London and football (soccer) run under the NBA format.
In conclusion, don’t let anyone tell you that if Stan Kroenke wanted to, he couldn’t make Arsenal great again.
When people say, ‘remember how Leeds slid down the table’. Leeds was a publicly traded company who ran out of money.
Arsenal are owned by a man who has two clubs in the top 38 most valuable in the world, worth over 6 billion. That’s before you include the Denver Nuggets and the other franchises he owns…
Be kind in the Comments
Dan
He got money from dad, and did the right broad. Brilliant, Stanley. He’s 74 this summer, but will never see the day when LA Rams win Super Bowl. If he not come to his senses, selling Arsenal and buy Tom Brady.
Little to no investment at Arsenal means fewer to no trophy, which will lead to decreasing popularity and fewer new fans. Other big clubs will overtake us and Arsenal’s stock value will go down, if we don’t get EPL or CL trophy in the next decade
So Kroenke definitely needs to invest correctly, not badly as what he’s been doing in the last five years
Agreed. Stan in an interview talks of brand loyalty and it’s influence on making money. He knew Arsenal were a strong brand and it makes a lot of money. However if that brand becomes irrelevant, say goodbye to the money.
well 300m spent in the last 3 years….
thats 100m a year
Almost equivalent to Pep’s spending 1 billion in 10 years
This conclusion is incorrect.
Arsenal has prospered as a brand despite not winning the coveted trophies they have competed for over the last five years.
$1.1b–$2.3b over 5years is excellent returns without any investment in playing personnel.
KSE may expect increased value with success on the pitch, they certainly lose nothing if they refuse to invest.
Seventeen years without EPL and CL trophies may not be long enough to make Arsenal’s value go down. But we can see the symptoms from the amount of our new fans, as compared to Man City’s, Chelsea’s, Man United’s and Liverpool’s
Newcastle, Everton, Leeds and Aston Villa are some examples of the declines in market valuations
KSE must’ve realized this. Hence they’ve been buying many 30+ M players in the last five years, although their spending isn’t as big as the oil clubs’
well we are catching up
last 3 years we have spend almost 300m
almost 100m a year
Most interesting research here. I think our owners are inevitably indifferent to fans’ concerns. This began when Wenger was underfunded after the new ground was built. Remember all that talk of increased revenues and competing financially with rich Man Utd.? It will be interesting to see fans reactions when we are allowed back in the ground.
TBF Stan shouldn’t need to overall the squad 2-3 players max as this squad is good enough for top4 its just the manager who isn’t ,you give wenger this team and we would have been playing CL football next season no doubt about it ,Arteta as blamed everybody but himself and now his fan club are back out after we beat the mighty Brom and got pummelled for 90mins Against Chelsea but they seem to forget where we are in the league and what has transpired here this season ,really fans know the truth .
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Get rid Arteta and hire a real coach/ manager: Ralf Rangnick, Alex Allegri, Diego Simeone, Brendan Rogers… or, why not, Graham Potter. With Arteta it will be the same situation this Christmas as last: Arsenal in position fifteen, one point after Leeds, three after Wolves, Newcastle and Crystal Palace, seven behind Everton and West Ham, eight after Aston Villa and so on up to Tottenham Hotspurs at the top of the table – 12 points ahead. Four wins, one tie and seven losses. Ten goals in twelve matches. That’s the naked facts.
And about that glorious victory yesterday against Chelsea: It’s always almost as fun to beat Chelski as it is to beat Rottenham, but the game looked like the semi and final of FA last summer… Eleven men in defence and a little luck up front. It’s the way Fulham, WBA and Sheffield United play nowadays. Quite depressing to watch if you want The Gunners to challenge for the Premiership.
“I read an article the other day where a couple of Gooners didn’t understand why the word ‘hate’ was too strong”
Well that’s just moral relativism, just because it’s too strong for you doesnt mean it’s too strong.
All of this food for thought, but you got one thing wrong. The Rams appeared in 3 consecutive Super Bowls winning it twice in 1999 and 2000. So the 35 years thing is in accurate.
Silent Stan this man know how to make money. Money is his GOD and leopards do not change their spots
Stan Kroenke is about making money. His idea of a self sustainable model is for the club to make enough money for him to pocket, not to reinvest to win titles.
Some intersting stats Dan but what stood out to my moral thinking mind was the sheer immorality , even though legally correct, statement of yours, namely:”every human has the right legally attempt to make as much money as possible”.
I passionately believe that the words “and morally” need to be inserted after the word “legally”. In my book NO human has any MORAL right to make money from other humans misery. And Kroenke has caused misery to fans of all his franchised clubs. He is loathed in the USA by fans, just as he is by us and no wonder!
BALDLY STATED I can never agree with your rapacious capitalism statement that maning money legally (but not morally, by implication) is allowable. It is NOT!
I hope you will have the guts to make a clarification and/or a retraction of your incompete statement. It is not what you said but what was you did not go on to say that so offends all decent humans.
To try to defend this appalling “human” being in his business dealings is a huge mistake on your part and I FOR ONE HEREBY CALL YOU OUT FOR DOING SO.
PLEASE ANSWER THIS POST PROPERLY OR BE REGARDED AS A LESSER PERSON THAN I HAVE PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT YOU DAN!
Spot on Jon. I think firing 55 staff during a pandemic would come under a lack of “moral thinking”!
Agree that Kroenke’s moral compass is no better than the next billionaire’s Grantygooner, possibly literally if Ek takes over
Hot on the heels of letting 55 staff go from one of his companies spending £45 million during the Pandemic isn’t particularly moral either but with less income at least he tried to do something to improve the team, not yet paid back with performances I admit but I still have high hopes of Partey next season
Jon
I really agree. Both morals and ethics are rarely used enough. Morals and ethics are what make us different. Without them life would be a free for all. People like the Kroenke’s are often a stain on morals and ethics.
I concur Jon
This is a much deeper issue than football, JF. If you take his wife’s fortune, it was made off the backs of Chinese sweat shop workers manufacturing the cheap products for the Walmart stores. Things are not much better for Walmart’s American employees working in insecure non unionised jobs on a minimum wage. It’s something which always made me smirk when people compared Arsenal’s moral bearings to Abramovich’s dirty money. No, Arsenal have never occupied some moral high ground.
Good, good article Dan. There may be (or not) a mitigating circumstance to get Kroenke to sell. He has borrowed enormously for his LA Olympic/Rams project and right now is losing money. Forgetting his alleged so called refusal to sell, it may we’ll be good business to sell to have money set against his loans rather than a stagnant asset set against his loans.
Also in the UK you cannot own more than one club, it could predudice expenditure or even provoke criminal activity (re gambling etc.). What we have learnt is that Global ownership like Kroenke’s still predudices expenditure in favour of his other clubs such as the LA Rams. Will our government have the bottle to change the rules, unlikely with the present government. A big bid may in reality work to get Kroenke to sell Arsenal, but until supporters have some influences we will become dependent on altruism and no control.
Thanks for taking the time to research this properly and share it with us Dan
Would I take Kroenke for a pint in the Gunners Pub, no, but I am encouraged by your piece that he can financially afford to be patient enough to allow the time needed for Arsenal to be successful again, which I believe we will be
Yes, Kroenke is a probably a shrewd businessman. That is why he has let Arsenal invest heavily in improwing the team, as he can see the correlation between good results (Champions League Football etc.) and making money. His problem though, the perople managing Arsenal (team managers and people in charge of buying and selling) have not spent the money well, nor have they managed to improve the assets (the players) enough.
Kroenke has absolutely no interest allowing/keeping in the current state of affairs. It is BS to claim that.
He has a clear business interest in seeing us regain a top spot and coming back into the CL.
The comparison to Liverpool is interesting. Liverpool have spent years being behind us, and have managed to overtake us with much less investment in the team. Only they have been managed better. Same goes for Spurs.
That is the simple truth. So any hate towards Kroenke should be based on him not employing the right people to run Arsenal and the team over the past 10-12 years.
Kronke is a businessman first and foremost and I’m sure has come to the following conclusions.
Expenditures are worth the short term loss to get back into the CL where there are massive profits merely for participating. In his mind this is worth the expenditure, however, the cost of challenging for titles is not cost effective.
Merely advancing out of the group stages in CL brings in massive profits, yet spending to compete with City and Utd for the PL title is not worthwhile.
If we ever are in a position to compete for PL titles again (Under Kronke), it will be purely by talented youth we have retained in the team, or a manager over-achieving with his squad.
How many years did he refuse to bring in the 1 or 2 top players to get us to the top of the league? Remember only bringing in Cech and no one else? Or a top striker to compete with Giroud when we were in the top 4? Never got a proper DM either.
Cheers Durand…I’ve studied his business model at great length and depth, which leads me to agree with your assessment…he’s certainly not the only one who has adopted this seemingly cynical approach to owning sporting franchises, unfortunately only a handful of those teams have ever achieved anything close to greatness…maybe luck will prevail, as I doubt those presently in charge can properly develop our more youthful prospects…I guess there’s always the outside chance that Kroenke will revise his currently problematic financial model, as he has with the Rams, but I’m exceedingly skeptical that he would overextend himself on two fronts concurrently
as for your final paragraph, it still makes me wonder if that was more Wenger’s doing than always Kroenke…remember that Gazidis spoke on numerous occasions about being rife with funds, yet Arsene was always quick to suggest that he simply couldn’t find players of the necessary quality, like good ole Kim Kallstrom(lol)…the fact that Gazidis has come good since arriving in Milan, only adds credence to this opinion
RVL
we share the same thoughts on many topics, and not surprisingly it is the same here. Kronke never gets emotionally invested in his teams, and one could argue there can be positives to this.
I think there was a lot going on behind the scenes at the club between Gazidis, Wenger, and owner that we fans will never know.
Was there or was there not transfer money? Who had the final say in terms of those monetary decisions?
Who determined whether a player was “good enough” to bring in; we often heard club was looking, but couldn’t find those players seemingly in most transfer windows.
Kronke tends to hire people to manage the sporting side he stays away from. For us the hires have been abysmal. Had Sven but fired him cause Raul said so, then Raul turned out to be shady as ****, now Edu gets starry eyed for anything Brazilian, and still living off the Martinelli deal.
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Good article Dan. It would be interesting to conduct a similar assessment of clubs by total operating revenue. As arsenals business model is suppose to be self funding unlike man city and chelsea. While the football market is ever increasing, thus increasing the value of football clubs. Revenue is more a reflection of how the club is managed. I would assume most clubs have had a decrease in total revenue due to losses attributed to covid.
Kroenke’s gain is Arsenal fans pain. They are a horrible indictment of what Arsenal has become. Show some love like the Man. United supporters.
It is good for Kroenke’s tax bill to have loss making ventures, especially like Arsenal who will still have a massive market value even sustaining losses. Do not even compare Kroenke with ethical human beings. Just look at Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch as well, they live in a different world enlivened only by their own greed, desires, and power.
Some very good and eye opening comments here and the Article made me think 👏👏 very interesting stats.
Stan is a businessman first and foremost to make as much money as possible to leave to his kids and they are already there. He doesnt get emotionally involved but that is where Josh comes in
He seems to want to help Arsenal and Daddy has promised this club to be left to him so Daniel Ek will need to cough up alot more than £2b to get even into negotiations but this will fall flat as the only way this club is being sold is if somebody comes in with a silly over the top offer he cant refuse and I’d say that’s close to £3b.
We actually have a decent squad but we need a proper manager with experience to guide them but Mikel just isnt there yet & we dont have time to wait as we are already so far behind the top teams, just in England, Europe we arnt even in he conversations at all.
It’s up to Stan if he wants Arsenal to Succeed with major honours and that means a big investment to help this squad but we still need to get rid of quite a few players and be ruthless about it…. and also with the Manager too as this isnt good enough for Arsenal FC.
Unless Kroenke sells the club, Arsenal will not win the league for a long time, it’s already 17 years and counting. The league title will be won by clubs like Utd who generate massive revenue, or clubs like City and Chelsea who have owners with bottomless pockets. We need to accept Arsenal has become the Everton of the south, a club with great tradition and history, but who are now comfortably cruising in midtable.
Do Arsenal fans think Kroenke, because he is a billionaire, can just write a 100 million cheuque from his own pocket and give it to Arsenal? And somehow this would not be in breach of FFP?
I am getting a bit bored with our constant whining about how Kroenke should invest more of his personal money without a detailed explanation of how he can do this without being in breach of FFP.
FFP does not allow him to give Arsenal 160 million to buy Mbappe. On top of that, we have to spend a large amount of money on largely poor and incomplete players and this started under Wenger and has continued under Edu/Arteta.
Do we think our previous owners would have had the know-how to say to Wenger “don’t waste this much money on Xhaka and Mustafi” or “70 million is too much for Pepe” to Emery and whoever else is in charge?
All clubs make mistakes in the transfer market. Torres anyone? Falcao?
The problem is we have made too many and as a result, our money has not worked for us the way it should have. We have a disjointed team that doesn’t fit together. We have 2 top strikers who can’t play together despite 3 managers trying. That’s a waste of money. We have in Xhaka a midfield player who can pass but is not very mobile and poor in the tackles, that was a waste of money. In bellerin (yes, we didn’t pay a lot for him) we have a right-back who can’t defend and no longer has the pace to be much of a threat going forward, making us a predictable team. We have a keeper who is a good shot blocker but doesn’t command his box, is susceptible against crosses, and doesn’t communicate very well.
We have a deeply flawed squad that is in the process of rebuilding but it is a stretch to blame Kroenke for that because he can’t write us a cheque and we can hardly expect him to pick the players we sign. He has not stood in the way of us spending the money we can afford and is in compliance with FFP.
I doubt Bracewell-Smith or Hill-wood or Usmanov picked the players we bought. Most likely they relied on Wenger.