Mike Goldberg
Amid the debate of how Arsenal is run and what influence Kroenke, the Board or Arsene Wegner has on the overall approach I thought it would be interesting to see how Kroenke’s U.S. teams have performed during his ownership period. The results are very disturbing if we expect to see a meaningful change in direction at the club.
Kroenke has material ownership of four teams in four different sports; he also owns a Lacrosse franchise which I have omitted from this review. Three of the teams are based in Denver, Colorado, the Avalanche in the National Hockey League (NHL), the Nuggets in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Rapids in the Major Soccer League (MSL). He also owns the St. Louis Rams in the National Football League (NFL) in St. Louis, Missouri.
Kroenke purchased a 40% interest in the Rams in 1995 and bought the balance in 2010. He acquired 100% ownership of the Avalanche and Nuggets in 2000 and subsequently has turned over the ownership to his son as the NFL does not allow owners to hold a majority stake in any other sports franchise. Kroenke purchased the Rapids in 2004.
How have these teams performed over the last 12 years? The answer is not very well. The table illustrated shows the regular season ranking. North American sports are organized into regional conferences and divisions; teams play an unbalanced schedule, i.e. they play more against teams in their division and conference, therefore the ranking is not a true league table as we know it, but still present a very good indicator of relative performance. Playoff games are ignored for this purpose.
The general conclusion is that all of Kroenke’s teams have been mediocre at best. The Avalanche and the Rams have been some of the poorest teams in their respective sports over the last seven years. The Rapids and Nuggets have been “mid-table” and have never challenged the top. The only success his teams have had, were the Avalanche in 2001, Kroenke’s first year of ownership and therefore he had little influence and the Rams in 2001 when he was a minority owner.
There of course of lot of other variables at play, Denver and St. Louis are “small market teams”, 19th and 21st sized cities in the U.S. the equivalent of Wolverhampton and Stoke in England. However, North American sports are designed to have a more balanced field of play. Every year in each sport, a draft of eligible players is established where the team with the worse record picks first; in the NFL especially a team can build a successful team through the draft. The Rams with nine years of high draft choices have failed to do so.
Also in each sport the leagues have a salary cap, i.e. there is a limit on how much you can pay players, and there is revenue sharing. It is the equivalent of Financial Fair Play, it varies enormously by sport and the rules are highly complex. Like FFP there are loopholes but combined with the draft process it is designed to give teams from smaller markets with lower revenue a chance of success.
Kroenke’s teams have not been successful under his ownership and nor is there any apparent effort to change that. We do not know the financial story but in Denver he developed and owns the arena and football ground in which his teams play and the local TV station that broadcast their games.
At the recent Arsenal AGM it was stated that the Board run the club and not Kroenke; I’m sure that is true but what is obvious is that the majority owner, the person who puts up the money and takes the financial risk determines the direction and the strategy of the organization and typically he then delegates the day to day affairs to a Board or a management team. If Kroenke’s record with his American teams is any indication he does not put playing success as a top priority, four teams over the last ten years not even close to winning anything. Why would we expect anything different at Arsenal?
