Enos Stan Kroenke was not born in to great wealth.
The controlling shareholder of Arsenal FC was raised in a modest middle class family
in the tiny village of Mora, Missouri. His father
owned a lumber yard and Kroenke would sweep wood chip and help with the books after school
before leaving to study business at the University of
Missouri in Columbia, 80 miles north east.
He showed a flare for business, paying for college from the proceeds of a clothes shop he started.
After graduating he moved into real estate and developing strip malls.
He was already independently wealthy before taking a ski
trip to Aspen that would change his life.
There he met Ann Walton , the niece and heir to the fortune
of Stan Walton, the founder of the world’s largest retailer Wal-Mart . They married in 1974.
The Waltons are now the richest family in America.
The seven heirs – including Ann – are worth $130 billion.
But they are also controversial.
Wal-Mart's business model means paying bottom basement wages with few benefits for its employees,
many of whom have to rely on government assistance – like food stamps and subsidised
housing – to survive.
In a 2016 campaign speech, Bernie Sanders attacked Wal-Mart, calling it “the major
beneficiary of welfare in America.”
According to the US think tank Demos, Wal-Mart donated $80 million to
Republican campaigns between 2000 and 2014, with the aim of preventing polices that would
eat into their profits, like raising the minimum wage.
In January this year Kroenke donated $1 million to US president Donald Trump 's inauguration fund.
Kroenke sat on Wal-Mart's board for five years and at one point owned 2 per cent of the stock.
It was a highly profitable association.
He anchored many of his developments with Wal-Mart stores
and leveraged huge tax subsidies in the process, something he would later utilise when he moved
into sports franchise ownership.
Stan ($7.5 billion) and Ann ($6 billion) are listed separately on the
Forbes rich list . In 1995 Kroenke – who had always been obsessed
with sports – bought a 30 per cent stake in NFL franchise the St Louis Rams.
Owner Georgia Frontiere had controversially just been given
permission by the league to move from Los Angeles to St Louis.
A state of the art stadium had been built for their arrival.
Kroenke was hailed for bringing an NFL franchise back to his home state of Missouri.
The Rams won Super Bowl 34 and became known as “The
Greatest Show on Turf” . His Kroenke Sports Entertainment company went on to purchase
NBA franchise the Denver Nuggets , Colorado Avalanche in the National Hockey League, MLS
franchise the Colorado Rapids and even a lacrosse team.
After picking up a newspaper on a business trip in Hong Kong – and seeing nothing but
coverage of the English Premier League – Kroenke
decided to invest abroad, in Arsenal FC, where he has
battled for financial control of the club with Alisher Usminov . Usminov is one of the
world's richest men; a controversial Uzbek oligarch
who enjoys a close relationship with Russian president
Vladimir Putin . But Kroenke won and took full effective control of the club in 2011.
But it was back in St Louis where a better assessment of Kroenke's approach to sports
franchise ownership could be made.
After Georgia Frontiere died suddenly in 2008, Kroenke had first option on full ownership of The Rams.
He beat Shahid Khan – who would later buy Fulham FC – with a $750 million bid.
Under NFL rules, he spun his other US franchise investments to his son.​
Almost straight away, Kroenke agitated for state subsides for a brand new stadium to
be built or he would move the franchise to a more amenable city.
This is a common move in US sports franchise ownership.
Neil deMause, author of Field of Schemes , calls this little more than “blackmail”
and estimates that American taxpayers are handing
over as much as $2billion a year to US sports franchise owners in an effort to keep them from moving.
Before buying Manchester United in a Leveraged Buy Out, the Glazer family purchased NFL
franchise the Tampa Bay Buccaneers , and successful lobbied for a state wide sales tax to pay
for the new stadium, effectively transferring
money from the poorest in Florida, to the richest.
Tom Hicks , before his disastrous co-ownership of Liverpool FC , bought the Texas Rangers
baseball franchise and, again, leveraged the team's popularity to push through a sales
tax to pay for the new stadium.
A new stadium would cost St Louisian tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars.
But the original contract had a “State of the Art” clause,
meaning that if a franchise's stadium was not one of the most developed in the league, Kroenke could break the lease.
The threat saw the city do everything they could keep The Rams in St Louis – who
had now become one of the least successful franchises in history – but could not offer enough.
Finally, in January 2016, Kroenke got his wish and the
Rams moved back to LA . Once feted, Kroenke was now hated in St Louis.
The mayor, politicians, journalists and football fans all lined up to denounce him.
One Rams fan – a prominent accident and injury lawyer called
Terry Crouppen – even ran an advert during Super Bowl half time to #slamstan.
But for Kroenke – in pure financial terms – the move made
sense: Forbes estimated that the Rams' value doubled to $2.9 billion overnight.
At the first home game as the LA Rams, in the autumn of 2016 Stan Kroenke watched as
the Red Hot Chile Peppers played a concert on the
field before the match wearing the famous gold and blue uniforms.
Cee-Lo Green sung the national anthem.
The Rams had a disastrous season , losing all but one of its last 12 matches.
But at least some were enjoying the terrible football.
The highest TV viewing figures for the LA Rams were not in Los Angeles.
That honour was reserved for the city of St Louis.