SPORTS KROENKE’S SOCCER VENTURE TRICKY
Rams owner finds role in England much different
After the Los Angeles Rams slipped to a third consecutive defeat in a scrappy game against the New York Giants on Sunday, owner Stan Kroenke stuck around in London just long enough to take care of a bit of business. A billion-dollar business, in fact.
Kroenke is known as “Silent Stan” for his reticence with the news media and public, earning him an air of mystery in his dealings amid the U.S. sports landscape, where the Rams, the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche are among his holdings.
Yet in the United Kingdom, he is regarded as even more of an enigma. Kroenke is majority owner of English Premier League team Arsenal, valued as the fifthbiggest soccer club in the world, but there is a slight catch.
With Arsenal being publicly traded, it means there is an annual shareholders meeting, which took place at Emirates Stadium on Monday and offered a rare glimpse of secretive Kroenke.
“We don’t know what he thinks, and we don’t actually know what he does for Arsenal,” shareholder Howard Blue told USA TODAY Sports. “It is all a bit confusing, and it makes it hard to say if he is good for the club or not.”
True to form, Kroenke didn’t say much, save for presenting a gift to coach Arsene Wenger in commemoration of 20 years of service and stating that he hoped Wenger would remain in charge past the end of his contract.
He had to listen as shareholders, virtually all fans of the club, questioned the organization’s fiscal dealings. Kroenke even faced a vote on his re-election to the board — until chairman Chips Keswick informed those gathered that he held proxies in Kroenke’s favor totaling 79%, making a mixed show of hands from the floor moot.
The autocratic nature of U.S. sports means that such occasions, where a board of directors of a sports entity must provide accountability and explanation of its actions for public consumption, are rare. Even if the Rams’ tumble stretches to the end of the season, Kroenke won’t sit before blue-and-yellow-clad doubters in Los Angeles anytime soon.
“Wouldn’t happen in American sports,” Arsenal CEO Ivan Gazidis told USA TODAY Sports, referring to the open nature of the proceedings. Gazidis played a pivotal role in developing Major League Soccer and was MLS deputy commissioner until taking the Arsenal job in 2008.
While some might have found Monday’s scrutiny tiresome, Ga- zidis said he enjoyed the opportunity to interact with those fans invested enough to, well, invest.
One thing that rankles the Arsenal fan base is that Kroenke is a different kind of owner from the likes of Roman Abramovich, Chelsea’s oil billionaire chief, and the ultra-wealthy Abu Dhabi consortium that purchased Manchester City. Those entities have plowed in vast sums of cash on top of their original investment, primarily to fund the acquisition of new star players.
Kroenke, as is his right, bought Arsenal as an investment, not a plaything.
“When you look at what those teams have done and the way it has built up their clubs, it does make you think what might have happened if we had someone else take over,” shareholder and lifelong fan Tony King said. “(Kroenke) will go at some stage, and he will have made a lot of money. We don’t have a problem with that, but I don’t know if he will have taken Arsenal forward.”
Kroenke is too distant to be the target of concerted vitriol, but such an approach also makes him difficult to warm to, and — for the most part — Arsenal fans haven’t. That said, Monday’s meeting was fairly tame compared with previous shareholder events, with such things tending to hinge on how the team is doing at that moment. Arsenal is in second place.
If the great moneymaking scheme in U.S. sports is getting taxpayers to fund new stadiums, in England it’s all about TV rights. Global interest in the EPL means that broadcast funds continue to pour in at an escalating level.
That presumably is what appealed to Kroenke when he began picking up shares in 2007, as it did with the Glazer family (Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United) and John Henry (Boston Red Sox and Liverpool).
Being involved with a leading EPL club is a moneymaking train that can be derailed only by poor management — or demotion from the top tier of English soccer. Arsenal has no fear of that, having finished fourth or better in each of the past 20 seasons. It has a shrewd coach in Wenger, who has developed and dealt players astutely. Gazidis has gained the backing of key board members with his arrangement of commercial deals, which are expanding.
Kroenke, whatever he does and however little he says, might not win any popularity contests. But when it comes to the bottom line, he is almost certain to triumph.