PREMIER LEAGUE
Who is Arsenal FC's owner? What is their net worth?
Arsenal’s men’s and women’s team plus the Emirates Stadium are owned by parent company Arsenal Holdings Limited. It has been in the hands of KSE since 2018.
Founded in 1886, Arsenal FC are one of the classic clubs of English football and were the first club from the south of the country to join the Football League. Up until relatively recently, shares in Arsenal were shared by the Hill-Wood family and descendants of former club chairman Sir Bracewell Smith. David Dein bought a 16.6% shareholding from the Hill-Wood family in the early 1980s. He held the position of vice-chairman until August 2007 when he left the club, selling the remaining 9,072 of his shares (14.58%) to Red & White Holdings Limited, a company jointly-owned by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov and Farhad Moshiri, for a reported $150.6 million. By February of the following year, Red & White Holdings were the maximum shareholders but Usmanov and Moshiri insisted that they had "no plans to become the full owners" - nor were they the only ones with a vested interest in the club.
In comes Kroenke
American businessman Stan Kroenke bid for a 30% controlling stake in the north London-based club in April 2007 and became a majority shareholder in April 2011 with a holding of 62.89%. That put him in a position to launch a formal takeover of the club. In August 2018, he bought out Usmanov to raise his shareholding to over 90%. Arsenal is owned solely by Kroenke’s firm Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE) - a Denver-based sports and entertainment holding company which he founded in 1999.
Like FSG, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment also have a large and diverse sports portfolio which also includes real estate such as Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium and the SoFi Stadium in California. They also own several teams - including Arsenal Women, the MLS outfit the Colorado Rapids, NFL team the Los Angeles Rams (his biggest asset) and NBA side the Denver Nuggets.
But not everyone is happy with Kroenke's grip on the club - that was evident when thousands of Gunners fans voiced their anger at his decision to take Arsenal into the proposed European Super League in April this year. In June, it was reported that Kroenke turned down a $2 billion bid to buy him out by Swedish billionaire and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.
According to Forbes, the 74-year-old Kroenke has a net worth of $10.7 billion and comes in at number 70 in their 400-person list of the richest Americans in 2021, while Bloomberg’s index has his net worth slightly higher at $11.2 billion.