Early this month, Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke agreed to buy the Los Angeles Angels from Arte Moreno for $4 billion. It’s a 43% premium to the valuation Forbes had placed on the club six months earlier, and is the fourth and final piece of his ownership across the major North American leagues.
Arsenal are coming off the back of a title-winning campaign and a runners-up Champions League season; the Angels’ last title was two seasons prior to Arsenal’s “Invincibles” campaign of 2003-04. So why would Kroenke pay nearly as much as Arsenal’s current valuation (£4 billion, or roughly $5.4 billion) for the Angels?
Football clubs out-earn … but also out-burn
Arsenal turned over £691 million of revenue in the year to May 2025 — £273 million broadcasting, £263 million commercial, £154 million matchday. The Angels took $377 million, roughly 40% as much. The vast reach of the Premier League equates to nearly £4 billion a year of TV revenue, with two-thirds of it shared relatively equally across the table. Baseball has national deals worth about $785 million a year in total (~$26 million a club), and each club sells its own local rights.
Arsenal out-earn every one of these American franchises — and are valued below Kroenke’s NFL club, the Rams. Sources: Forbes 2026 club valuations; reported sale price for the Angels.
Yet while Arsenal barely broke even, the Angels, despite all their losing, turned a (meagre) profit. Arsenal spent £347 million on wages last year; add in £172 million of transfer-fee amortisation, and seventy-five pence of every £1 Arsenal earned went to paying footballers. The club posted a £63 million operating loss, needing £82 million of profit on player sales to reach a pre-tax loss of £1.4 million. Meanwhile, thanks to a salary cap and free-agency model, the Angels spent only 63% of their revenue on player salaries.
The same five clubs on one measure: what a dollar of annual revenue costs to buy. Fenway Sports Group owns both Liverpool and the Red Sox, and the same gap shows up in their portfolio too.
The cultural stereotype inversion
Our historical cultural norms would suggest that America is the land of the free market, where workers are allowed to work and losers are allowed to lose, and Europe is the place of unions, protections and softened outcomes. Not so in sport.
The Premier League is the closest thing in world sport to an actual free market. Wages are only capped at a relative ratio by PSR rather than to a fixed amount. The transfer-market frenzy is pricing out even some of England’s bigger clubs. And three clubs a season are expelled on sporting merit, losing most of their revenue in a single afternoon. Just a few miles down the road from the Emirates, Tottenham’s ownership group have attempted to prevent another harrowing dance with relegation by investing over £300 million into their squad this summer.
Major League Baseball is a cartel of wealthy owners who negotiate a collective bargaining agreement once every few years with the MLB Players Association, one of the most effective unions in the US. Young players are drafted rather than being invested in by a youth academy; relegation is missing from the matchday programme. The Angels finished below the .500 mark for nine straight years, yet the club’s valuation appreciates anyway — as it just did, from the $183.5 million Moreno paid in 2003 to the $4 billion price tag today.
The ‘Rally Monkey’ at Angel Stadium in 2023 (photo by Wiki CC)
Stan Kroenke and his bankers are willing to deploy his capital for growth, or for reach — but any investor will gladly pay a premium for certainty. An MLB owner in the US knows roughly what his largest cost line will be five years out, and knows his club will still be in the top division. The Premier League structure can guarantee neither, introducing a meaningful haircut to a club’s valuation.
Super League … or Super Cashflows?
This is not news to Kroenke & his peers in European football. In April 2021, Arsenal were among the twelve founders of the European Super League, a competition whose defining feature was not the fixtures but the constitution. Fifteen permanent members & no relegation ever, backed by $4.8 billion of J.P. Morgan financing, with a welcome payment of up to €350 million a club merely for signing. Kroenke was reported to be in line for a seat on the board.
In the light of the Angels purchase, let alone the rest of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment’s holdings, the Super League looks less like a raid than a man trying to buy in London what he can buy off the shelf in Los Angeles. Closed membership, no relegation, cost certainty, control of the revenue stream. They might as well have included MLS and called it the European-American Super League.
Arsenal’s accounts for 2025/26’s highly successful campaign will be the most interesting numbers the club has released in twenty years. Forbes already has the valuation up 59% (on 2025 figures) against the £1.8 billion Arsenal were worth when Kroenke took full control in 2018. There is no indication that Kroenke is looking to move on from his Arsenal investment, but it will be interesting to note whether other clubs and owners take note, and how this may factor into upcoming sales (such as the one at their other London neighbour currently in the Championship).
Sources
Valuations and club financials: Forbes soccer, MLB and NFL team valuations (2025–26); CNBC, Sportico and ESPN on the Angels sale. Arsenal accounts to 31 May 2025: Arsenal FC. League aggregates: Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance. Player share of revenue: John Wall Street. CBA and salary-cap proposals: Sportico, ESPN. Franchise amortisation: IRS §197.
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