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| Josh Kroenke, left, chats with Arsenal captain Martin Ødegaard at last week's L.A. Rams training camp. Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images |
LOS ANGELES -- Arsenal co-chair Josh Kroenke is in a tent looking out over a field at Loyola Marymount University, where Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay have just finished coaching 100 children at a community event.
"Just seeing Mikel and Sean out there standing, talking with the kids around, it is kind of a full-circle moment that we have been building towards for a number of years," Kroenke says in an exclusive interview with ESPN. "I've always preached that we need to figure out a way to get our different groups together because it is apples, oranges and watermelon but it's all fruit to fruit."
Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE), founded by Josh's father, Stan, has enjoyed a ripe spell of late. It owns six professional teams and, in June 2023, the Denver Nuggets won their first NBA championship in their 48-year history. It was KSE's fourth title in 18 months after the Rams won the Super Bowl in 2021, the NHL's Colorado Avalanche claimed the 2021-22 Stanley Cup, and the Colorado Mammoth were crowned 2022 National Lacrosse League champions. MLS side Colorado Rapids and English Premier League club Arsenal complete the six, and altogether KSE was valued by Forbes in January at $15.59 billion, making it the world's largest privately held sports group.
"The benefit of the organisation my dad has built has given us the ability to cross-pollinate certain concepts and ideas across similar but different businesses, and those are our teams," Kroenke continues.
"When you go through your hiring process, whether that's your technical director/general manager-type role, a head coaching role, or you're getting into new commercial enterprise driving the business, there are a lot of similarities, but they are all very different at times. With Sean and Mikel in particular, there is a relative template to putting good people in positions, giving them time and resources to succeed."
There is a harmony within KSE these days. Stan is also in attendance to watch talent from two of his teams schooling children aged 7-12 from Inglewood and South L.A. Arteta and McVay speak regularly to share ideas, and, during Arsenal's preseason tour of the U.S., staff members from both teams -- plus others flown in from KSE's Denver teams -- had dinner together and held panel discussions they hope will lead to further improvement across the group.
Arsenal are beginning to reap the benefits, having finished fifth in the 2021-22 Premier League table before two second-place finishes in which they pushed Manchester City in incrementally closer title races. (Their points totals in those last two seasons, 89 and 84, would have been enough to win the league nearly any other season were it not for Pep Guardiola's remarkable work at Man City.) A steadfast belief in a transposable template is what enabled KSE to navigate the mutinous atmosphere that for so long threatened to define its involvement with Arsenal.
KSE's 2007 decision to buy a minority stake in the club was viewed with scepticism among Arsenal's fanbase, many questioning whether U.S. owners with no background in elite football could truly have the club's best intentions at heart. That scepticism grew into widespread hostility over the next decade as Arsenal's last Premier League title, back in 2004, increasingly felt like a bygone era.
The club's 2014 FA Cup win belatedly ended a nine-year wait for a trophy, but Arsenal's inability to challenge for bigger prizes led many supporters to feel that then-manager Arsène Wenger was not sufficiently held accountable for the expanding distance between former glories and present travails. Debt repayments linked to the move to Emirates Stadium limited Arsenal's transfer activity, and sights were consequently lowered from challenging for the title to simply qualifying for the Champions League. Between the second-place finishes in 2015-16 and 2022-23, the Gunners finished no higher than fifth and failed to even make it into the Champions League.
- James Olley, Senior Writer, ESPN FC
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