Who is Stanley Kroenke, the Denver Nuggets owner? What is his net worth?
With arguably the largest privately owned sports empire in the world and ties to the wealthiest family today, the 75-year-old American is a formidable businessman.
From the English Premier League to the NBA, the billionaire has got an extensive sports portfolio and it would appear that he’s had success in all of them as the chairman of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment. Indeed, 2023 could yet be a year of unprecedented success for the group with the Denver Nuggets - the team is owned by Kroenke - in the NBA Finals.
Who is Stan Kroenke and what’s his net worth?
With a net worth of $12.9 billion according to Forbes, Stan Kroenke is an American billionaire and owner of the Denver Nuggets, one of a number of professional sports teams which he owns. Indeed, as the chairman of the above mentioned Kroenke Sports & Entertainment group, Kroenke is also married to Ann Walton, heiress to multinational retail giant Walmart, a tie that brings with it a great deal of prestige as well.
Raised in the tiny town of Mora, Missouri, Kroenke’s father owned Mora Lumber Company, the business with which Stan would get his first job sweeping floors before eventually being promoted to bookkeeper. He would go on to graduate from Cole Camp High School where he played both basketball and baseball, while also participating in track and field. From there, he would attend the University of Missouri while also maintaining a job as a busboy at Mizzou. Interestingly, Stan would later be granted a $1,500 loan from his father so that he could invest in a local clothing shop. It would be the first of his many lucrative investments to come. Yet, perhaps the biggest investment he made in his life was in the relationship he began with Ann Walton after meeting her during a ski trip in 1971. Kroenke would marry the daughter of Walmart’s co-founder Bud Walton just three years later.
How did Stan Kroenke make his money?
In 1983 Kroenke founded the Kroenke Group, a real estate development firm. The move came just under a decade after he married into the wealthiest family in the world and effectively fast tracked his path into extreme wealth. To be clear, many of the Kroenke Group’s shopping centers featured Walmarts, a strategy that only added to the empire of the family that is worth a combined $224.5 billion. His next venture was the founding of yet another real estate development firm called THF Realty in 1991. The company owns a number of companies across half of the United States while continuing to maintain ties with Walmart. Today it is worth more than $2 billion.
What about the Denver Nuggets?
In 1999 Kroenke founded Kroenke Sports & Entertainment and shortly thereafter began negotiations with the NBA team such that in 2000, Kroenke bought the Nuggets, along with the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche and Ball Arena (formerly Pepsi Center) in downtown Denver, for combined $450 million. Incidentally, it was not his first foray into team ownership. Just five years prior, he purchased a 30% stake in the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, which incidentally allowed for their immediate jump to St. Louis and after their relocation back to Los Angeles in 2017. “I love the NBA; that’s what eventually started me down this path,” he said at the time. Now in their first ever NBA Finals appearance and led by one of the league’s best players in Nikola Jokic, the Nuggets are now worth a reported $1.93 billion.
What else does Stan Kroenke own?
As the founder of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, Kroenke owns the Nuggets and Avalanche as mentioned before, as well as Arsenal F.C. of the English Premier League, Aresnal W.F.C. - the team’s women’s equivalent, the Colorado Rapids and National Lacrosse League’s Colorado Mammoth. KSE’s collection of assets—including esports teams the Los Angeles Gladiators and Los Angeles Guerrillas, regional broadcaster Altitude Sports and Entertainment and Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium, among many others is currently valued at $12.75 billion.
In addition to his portfolio of teams and companies, Kroenke also has a sizeable collection of real estate related acquisitions such as 1.5 million acres in ranch land, including north Texas’ historic Waggoner Ranch, America’s largest ranch within one fenceline. Then there is also the Screaming Eagle Winery and Vineyards as well as a self-storage company by the name of StorageMart.