Stan Kroenke has eye on £2bn Arsenal profit as Downing Street steps in over takeover issue

03/25/2025 03:05 AM

Stan Kroenke bought the original self-financing club when he took over Arsenal in 2011. In business circles, they were a blueprint for others to follow, even if the view from the stands was rather different.

Arsenal have historically operated on a model that has seen whoever is in charge of recruitment, retention and the football department broadly asked to spend only what the club earns in revenue.

This was the vision behind ditching Highbury for the Emirates Stadium: increase turnover, manage the construction debt, and eventually get to a position wherein you have more muscle in the transfer market.

But since the switch in 2006, while matchday income has soared to well over £100m annually, success on the pitch has ultimately been very, very limited.

They won’t arrest their now 21-year wait for a Premier League title this season either, though the Champions League is still a possibility. They face Real Madrid in the quarter-final in early April.

Arsenal’s trophy record since moving to the Emirates Stadium

It is by no means a universal view, but some in the world of football finance lay the blame for their relative lack of trophies in the last two decades squarely at the door of the self-funding model.

Before Stan Kroenke moved past 50 per cent of Arsenal’s shares in 2011 and eventually forced a full takeover, his rival for power at the Emirates was Alisher Usmanov, whose philosophy was far more lavish.

The Uzbek billionaire made grandiose statements about his masterplan to restore the North Londoners to their former glories and, for many in N5, was the preferred choice to buy the club outright.

But the sundry tycoon never managed to go past 30 per cent of the club’s shares. Usmanov later returned to Premier League as a benefactor – though not a director shareholder – at Everton.

In the end, that what was best for Arsenal given he had his assets frozen due to his ties to Vladimir Putin and, just like Roman Abramovich in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, was forced to pull out of the UK.

However, for Arsenal fans who were weary of the restraint in the transfer market under Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE), it probably didn’t feel like that at the time.

In more recent seasons, the Kroenkes – who now count Stan’s son, Josh Kroenke, as their main representative in North London – have been forced to underwrite losses and increase spending.

It has now been seven financial years since the Gunners posted a profit.

KSE have lent the club money at low or no interest rates to cover the shortfall. The latest accounts show debts to the Kroenkes of £324m.

There was uproar when Arsenal failed to sign the world-class striker Mikel Arteta wanted in January but generally speaking, investment in recruitment and retention has increased fast than most recent years.

The space race in terms of wages and transfer fees in the Premier League has necessitated this, of course, but it is the financial rewards of European football that have been the main driver for the Kroenkes.

Arsenal spent seven seasons out of the Champions League between 2017-18 and 2022-23.

Mikel Arteta’s side’s run to the quarters last term was the first campaign in the competition since KSE became 100 per cent owners.

For an ownership regime who want reliable, high revenue in order to prove out the business model and one day sell the club at a huge markup, this was definitely not part of the plan.

But now they are back in the big time, are we starting to see the Kroenkes’ true, more risk-averse colours shine through again?

And if so, is that emblematic of the fact that KSE’s ultimate aim is to market the club to potential buyers and, in the long term, sell for a hue profit?

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Keir Starmer could scale back football regulator opposed by Arsenal

Broadly speaking, football club owners at the elite end of the spectrum don’t like red tape. To their mind, it creates needless layers of bureaucracy and is cost-ineffective.

Crucially for Kroenke and Arsenal, their view is that it also stifles investment, reducing the pool of would-be buyers in future years.

The UK government disagrees, as do most fans, who think that an independent football regulator – like Ofcom or Ofwat but for football – would safeguard their interests and make the sport more sustainable.

The idea of a football regulator was proposed seriously for the first time after Arsenal and the rest of the so-called Big Six joined the breakaway European Super League in 2021.

That competition would have seen the Gunners’ enterprise value explode overnight if it hadn’t been fudge, thanks to the collective will of thousands upon thousands of fans.

The regulator, whose bill proposal is making its way through Parliament, would have the power to block clubs from joining breakaway leagues. That might partly explain why Arsenal are opposed.

Stan Kroenke dispatched Tim Lewis, his right-hand man and vice-chair at the Emirates, to argue against the regulator in a round of media appearances earlier this year.

Now, the PR campaign that Lewis and a handful of his colleagues in Premier League boardrooms have engineered may have yielded a result – as far as their narrow interests are concerned, anyway.

Bloomberg have reported that prime minister Keir Starmer – who, incidentally, is famously an Arsenal fan – is considering stepping in to water down the powers of the regulator.

According to the report, Downing Street could scale back the version of the regulator proposed by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.

Labour’s massive majority in the House of Commons mean Starmer and his office effectively have free reign over the regulator’s remit.

It is said, in what will be music to Lewis and Kroenke’s ears, that they are specifically mindful of deterring foreign investors from buying football clubs.

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How much are Arsenal worth as a business?

In total, Kroenke has invested over £1bn into Arsenal, in the form of loans, equity and the price of his shares.

Recently, Sportico ranked Arsenal as the 65th-most valuable sports franchise in the world and the eight-most valuable football club at just over £3bn.

For all intents and purposes, that means that, if Kroenke decided to cash in his chips, he is already guaranteed a £2bn profit.

Under his capital appreciation model, however, he is adamant there is far more upside to be achieved leveraging technology, the Gunners’ intellectual property, and their international fanbase.

• READ MORE: Atletico Madrid are suddenly interested in signing Arsenal player who Mikel Arteta called 'terrific'

New benchmark for Stan Kroenke as world-record sports takeover complete

Arsenal are Kroenke’s only major sports investment this side of the Atlantic to date. It’s in the United States where the real money is made.

He owns franchises in the NBA, Major League Baseball, the NFL, National Hockey League, lacrosse and the MLS, all of whom have won titles under his custodianship.

In basketball, Kroenke’s Denver Nuggets have a new rival, with the Boston Celtics having just been acquired in the biggest sports takeover in history.

A consortium led by Bill Chisholm and backed by the private equity giants Sixth Street paid £4.7bn for the historic team, beating the likes of Everton owner Dan Friedkin in the process.

The NBA is more lucrative and less risky as an investment than a Premier League club, or indeed any European football club. Football’s merit-based system means revenues are far more volatiles.

In any case, however, the Celtics deal will act as a benchmark for future deals in sports, with the power of their brand and commercial operation a major factor in the price the Chisholm group paid.