Possible new Broncos owner may want possible new Broncos stadium to replace 21-year-old one

The Denver Broncos are up for sale because their old owner died in 2019 and his family doesn’t want to keep running the team, and throughout the process there’s been a steady drumbeat of articles wondering if a new owner will want a new stadium, seeing as the old one is 21 years old and lacks that new-car smell that is half the fun of dropping billions of dollars on a pro sports franchise. And now that a pair of frontrunners have been identified — Walmart heir Rob Walton and New Jersey Devils/Philadelphia Sixers owner and private equity goon Josh Harris — at last, their wishes can be divined, or at least speculated upon:

Sources said that Walton is the favorite because (A) he can outbid Harris and associates (B) he has such a close connection to Kroenke, (C) he owns a home in Aspen (in addition to his three-home compound in Scottsdale, Ariz., (D) he has a son and family in Boulder (E) and he likely would build a new stadium in Denver to rival Kroenke’s in Los Angeles.

Those are presumably in descending order of importance, as the Bowlen family is far more likely to care about who’ll offer the most money than whether the new guy wants to build a new stadium or not. Also, that’s pretty weak sourcing on the claim that Walton would replace the Broncos’ current home: Unnamed “sources,” which could be just Walton’s people trying to hype their boss’s purchase bid for all we know, say that he will “likely” build a new stadium, with some money from somewhere.

As we saw with the infamous Bills-are-moving-to-Austin tweet, though, it doesn’t take much more than that to get the sports news echo chamber excited about omigod it’s new stadium time! Here, for example, is some Sports Illustrated-owned sports betting site absolutely raving about the possibilities:

Perhaps what will make even the most apathetic Broncos fans sit up and take notice is the fact that sources have suddenly revealed that a new stadium could well be in the pipeline. Dangling such a juicy carrot could instantly prove to be a pivotal bargaining chip with which to capture the hearts and minds of Broncos Country and also serve to smooth the sale process moving forward.

I’ve read that three times and still can’t make head or tail of what it means: A new Broncos stadium will be a “carrot” for fans and a “bargaining chip” for Walton to negotiate his purchase with … fans? The fans aren’t selling the team. Does FanNation think Broncos fans get to vote on who buys the team? Do Broncos fans get to vote on who buys the team? Has Colorado suddenly been taken over by radical libertarian Marxists? I really need to get out more…