KSE expands sports empire, finally buys an MLB team

Kroenke Sports & Entertainment refused to pay the full extent of a luxury tax bill that could have been north of $200 million to keep the Denver Nuggets together this summer, but on Tuesday the company announced it has bought a Major League Baseball franchise to fill the lone empty slot in its sports empire crown.

KSE has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a controlling interest in the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim from the Moreno family. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Bill Shaikin from the LA Times reports it’s a Major League record price, north of Padres sale of $3.9 billion. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, subject to customary conditions and MLB approval.

“The Angels are a storied franchise anchored in a great market,” KSE owner and chairman E. Stanley Kroenke said in a statement. “We look forward to an exciting future with the Angels organization.”

Welcome to the family, Mike Trout. Nikola Jokic, Cale Makar, Aaron Donald and Bukayo Saka are your co-workers now. Hope you like company retreats where they wear each other’s jerseys.

The deal ends Arte Moreno’s 23-year run as the Angels’ controlling owner. Moreno, MLB’s first Latino owner, purchased the club from the Walt Disney Company in 2003, just after the franchise’s only World Series title. What followed was the most successful decade in club history — five AL West titles and two ALCS appearances from 2004 to 2009 — and then a plunge. The Angels have not won a playoff game since. They have posted losing seasons every year from 2016 through 2026 despite employing generational talents in Shohei Ohtani and Trout, and fans have spent months chanting “sell the team” at Angel Stadium.

Moreno publicly explored a sale in August 2022, then reversed course five months later and said he would keep the team. He told Sports Illustrated in 2023 that he had to “make a decision that we have to do better.” The Angels finished last in 2024, last in 2025 and are in the AL West cellar again in 2026.

For Angels fans who endured all of that, the instinct will be to celebrate. The relief, however, may be complicated. Denver knows a thing or two about KSE’s willingness — or lack thereof — to open the wallet. The Nuggets gutted their luxury tax exposure this offseason rather than pay the big repeater penalties required to keep a championship-caliber roster intact around Jokic. Kroenke had the money — he is the largest private landowner in the country — he simply chose not to spend it.

To be fair, KSE did just authorize the richest contract in NHL history — an eight-year, $163.2 million extension for Makar at $20.4 million per year, announced last Friday. KSE also dropped $10 million on a Rapids transfer today, though that comes after selling $25 million in MLS talent in recent weeks — the checkbook opens, but it tends to come with a tight expense report. For instance, the Nuggets are projected to give Jokic the largest contract in basketball history next summer, if the three-time MVP re-signs.

Kroenke, 79, has coveted a Southern California baseball team for years. He was a backup bidder when the Dodgers sold more than a decade ago. The Angels acquisition drops KSE’s flag into MLB for the first time and deepens an already staggering SoCal footprint.

Kroenke-affiliated entities own the Rams and developed SoFi Stadium and the surrounding Hollywood Park district in Inglewood — a complex set to host Olympic events in 2028. Angel Stadium sits roughly 30 miles southeast in Anaheim, on 150 acres that amounts to a second canvas for the kind of mixed-use development KSE printed the playbook on in Inglewood and plans to make happen around Ball Arena. This is as much a real estate play as it is a baseball acquisition — just as the Rapids once were.

It’s worth wondering if that Ball Arena redevelopment is actually a priority or if it will take a backseat to all that is going on in SoCal.

Earlier this year another branch of the family, the Walton-Penner group, KSE’s Walmart-heir cousins across the ownership aisle with the Broncos — bought a 40 percent stake in the Colorado Rockies for an estimated $670 million. Greg Penner said at Broncos camp in August that the family is focused on being “supportive minority partners” with the Monforts still in control. Both of Denver’s Walmart billionaire ownership factions are now invested in baseball, just at very different levels of commitment.

KSE’s full portfolio is wild: the Rams (NFL), Nuggets (NBA), Avalanche (NHL), Rapids (MLS), Mammoth (NLL), Arsenal (Premier League) and now the Angels (MLB). Add in Altitude Sports & Entertainment, Ball Arena, DICK’S Sporting Goods Park and Outdoor Sportsman Group, and you are looking at what Forbes has called the most valuable sports empire on the planet.

Anyway — Angels fans, welcome to the empire.

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