Having just overseen a transfer window that saw Arsenal spend almost £250m, Stan Kroenke will be reflecting on the economics of football and when he will finally see a return on his investment.
The American sports and property colossus has sunk around £1bn into Arsenal in the form of equity funding, loans and the money paid to wrestle full control from Alisher Usmanov in 2018.
Stan Kroenke and the Gunners go back a lot further than that, of course. Almost 20 years, in fact. And in all that time, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment have yet to take any meaningful cash out of the club.
In the past, KSE have taken seven figures in the form of board salaries and management fees, but that’s the type of return that the Kroenkes – one of the world’s richest families – don’t bother getting out of bed for. If I gave you a tenner every time your heart beat, it would take you approximately half a century to accumulate Stan Kroenke’s net worth, which reportedly stands at around £16bn at the time of writing.
Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke attends an NFL match at SoFi Stadium, home of his LA Rams franchise
Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images
But that £16bn figure isn’t all liquid capital. A huge chunk of it is wrapped up in Arsenal. About £3.5bn, according to most research. And because, like every Premier League club owner besides Manchester United’s, KSE don’t take dividends, they will only realise the value of their investment when they sell up.
So when might that be? Arsenal’s transfer business this summer and in recent windows doesn’t suggest anything other than 100 per cent commitment. See also: their emphatic refusal when Spotify billionaire Daniel Ek enlisted Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Dennis Bergkamp to help on the PR front in his bid to buy the club back in 2021. The fact that plans are afoot to increase the capacity of the Emirates Stadium at enormous expense doesn’t signal that they are looking for an exit, either.
Updated chart showing the matchday incomes and stadium capacities of top English clubs
Matchday income and stadium capacities chart Credit: Adam Williams/TBR Football/GRV Media
That said, Kroenke’s business plan for his investment in North London changed overnight with the disintegration of the European Super League.
The 78-year-old personally helped put that plan together. Top executives from Arsenal regularly met with their opposite numbers at Manchester United and Liverpool to discuss the Super League over haute cuisine and expensive wine. It was the grand vision that unified the ostensible rivals behind the scenes.
Incidentally, the Super League was financially underwritten by J.P. Morgan, the investment bank that sponsors the Diamond Club at the Emirates and which brokered Kroenke’s takeover of Arsenal. When it collapsed amid righteous indignation from Arsenal fans, so did Kroenke’s dreams of a franchise-style league where profit was guaranteed and scale virtually unlimited.
In that sense, his investment in football is now very different from his buy-in in the NFL, NBA and NHL, where he owns the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche respectively.
Franchise Sport Major Honours in Kroenke era
Los Angeles Rams NFL (American Football) 1x Super Bowl Champion (2021)
Denver Nuggets NBA (Basketball) 1x NBA Champions (2023)
Colorado Avalanche NHL (Ice Hockey) 2x Stanley Cup Champions (2001, 2021–22)
Colorado Rapids MLS (Football) 1x MLS Cup Champion (2010)
Colorado Mammoth NLL (Lacrosse) 2x NLL Champions (2022, 2024)
All major honours won by Stan Kroenke-owned franchises
In the major US sports leagues, a system of salary caps, luxury taxes and dead money penalties ensure both a competitive product and stonking dividend cheques for owners.
And so while his play at Arsenal is one of capital appreciation – buy low, sell high – Kroenke’s sports cash machines on the other side of the Atlantic underpin the whole KSE operation.
Stan Kroenke’s LA Rams worth nearly £8bn, dwarfing Arsenal value
Superbowl champions in 2022, the LA Rams are Kroenke’s most valuable asset.
The SoFi Stadium, which has staged several Arsenal friendlies over the years, is arguably the world’s best sports arena. At around £5bn, it’s certainly the most expensive.
In their annual list of the most valuable NFL franchises, Forbes have now appraised the Rams’ enterprise value at nearly £8bn. That is second only to the Dallas Cowboys and has risen by 38 per cent in the last year alone. It is also more than triple Arsenal’s own value, according to the same outlet.
Forbes estimated Arsenal’s value at around £2.5bn in a similar study earlier this year, which was itself 31 per cent higher than in 2024. It’s an impressive figure, but one which is only around half the value of the least valuable NFL franchise.
Kroenke is one of four Premier League club owners who own an NFL team.
Manchester United’s Glazer family (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), Fulham’s Shahid Khan (Jacksonville Jaguars, Crystal Palace’s Josh Harris (Washington Commanders) and Leeds United’s 49ers Enterprises (San Francisco 49ers) are all in the NFL racket too.
How much did KSE really pay to fund Arsenal’s summer transfers?
It’s a truism that billionaires don’t like to spend their own money.
Arsenal’s takeover by Kroenke was largely funded by Deutsche Bank. If and when the Emirates Stadium gets the green-light for expansion, that will be paid for through debt too.
A closeup shot of the Arsenal badge on the exterior façade of the Emirates Stadium
Photo by Catherine Ivill – AMA/Getty Images
Kroenke has provided over £300m in ‘soft loans’ to Arsenal which have no interest attached and are not expected to be repaid any time soon, if ever. That’s money that the club needed to cover costs in recent years, with a prolonged absence from the Champions League hurting the bottom line. If he can help it, therefore, the owner doesn’t want to open his wallet again in North London.
However, Arsenal’s transfer business – which saw Martin Zubimendi, Eberechi Eze, Viktor Gyokeres, Noni Madueke, Christhian Mosquera, Christian Norgaard and Kepa Arrizabalaga join the club – is likely to have been at least partially funded by KSE themselves.
Yes, the £250m-plus that they spent will not all have been upfront. But per their last set of accounts, they owed other clubs £268m in transfer instalments, and that figure will have now increased significantly.
Club Transfer debt (£m)
Chelsea 498
Tottenham Hotspur 337
Manchester United 331
Arsenal 268
Manchester City 230
West Ham 191
Leeds United (2023) 190
Nottingham Forest 184
Newcastle United 160
Aston Villa 156
Wolves 135
Liverpool 128
Bournemouth 126
Brighton 104
Everton 74
Fulham 72
Crystal Palace 67
Brentford 61
Sheffield United 40
Luton Town 6
Premier League transfer debt 2023-24
Sales proceeds will have helped and the Gunners also have a £100m working capital facility with Barclays that they could have drawn from if cash was low, but football finance experts consulted by TBR Football argue that some owner funding was probably needed.
Arsenal fans will, however, have to wait until the club’s accounts for the current season are released in early 2027 to see whether the club’s debt to the owner has increased.