Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno announced yesterday that he is selling the team to Los Angeles Rams/Denver Nuggets/Colorado Avalanche owner Stan Kroenke, and most of the news coverage has — rightly — focused on Moreno not letting the door hit him in the butt on the way out. Moreno, a billionaire billboard baron, bought the Angels in 2003 from Disney for $180 million, and since then has: angered locals by changing the name of the team from the Anaheim Angels to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to try to appeal to more fans from the populous city to the north; squandered the presence of the best player of his generation by surrounding him with every overpriced, washed-up free agent he could find; tried to obtain $500 million worth of city land around his stadium for only $150 million, and almost getting away with it until the whole thing blew up in an FBI bribery investigation; and declaring that fans don’t care about winning after conducting a survey that didn’t include “winning” as one of the choices, among other lowlights. By this season, fans were openly chanting “Sell the team!” at home games, and it was apparently enough for Moreno to cash in his chips and sell to the Walmart-heir-by-marriage up the road at a huge profit.
Even as fans exulted in Moreno’s departure, some expressed concern about what a new owner — one who already broke the Rams’ lease in St. Louis so he could move them back to L.A. (The Athletic terms this a “proven track record” in stadium development, which is certainly one way of looking at it) — might mean for the Angels’ future. The team’s lease expires in 2032, though ownership has a series of one-year options that could extend it to 2038. And that juicy stadium parking lot land is still sitting there, though complicated by the fact that the state’s Surplus Land Act requires public property to be considered first for affordable housing before it can be devoted to other uses, something the city of Anaheim already paid a $96 million fine for ignoring once.
In addition, just last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law the Home Run for Anaheim Act, which requires the team to revert to being called the Anaheim Angels in any future lease negotiation or land sale agreement (CORRECTION: Only if the team first gets an exemption from the Surplus Land Act), which may or may not matter depending on whether Kroenke shares Moreno’s obsession with the L.A. name. The 79-year-old Kroenke inherits a stadium situation that is ripe for either opportunity or extortion, depending on how you look at it, and his track record for playing hardball in such matters should encourage Anaheim officials to sleep with one eye open, at least.
The other potential fallout from the sale involves the price tag: We don’t know how big a stake the “controlling interest” is that Kroenke is buying from Moreno, but we do know that it values the entire franchise at a new-MLB-record $4 billion. Coming on the heels of the San Diego Padres‘ sale for a $3.9 billion valuation, this is a sign that there are still plenty of billionaires willing to shell out top dollar for MLB franchises. That’s likely to whet league owners’ appetite for cashing in by creating two expansion teams; even if the available open markets are underwhelming and adding teams would just dilute existing owners’ shares of national TV contracts, it’s got to be tough to pass up a cut of what could be a pair of $4 billion or more checks. With the Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays stadium situations now seemingly settled — though we’ve said that before — the next step may be setting up a bidding war among the Portlands and Nashvilles and Salt Lake Citys of the world, to see if any wants to pay enough toward a new stadium to help an expansion owner afford that multibillion-dollar expansion fee. All the kids are doing it!
The folks in Anaheim will also have to worry about Kroenke moving the team to another part of the Los Angeles area, possibly those with a better claim to using “Los Angeles” in the team name. There’s probably enough land around SoFi that could host a baseball stadium, and let’s not forget about the small parcel of land in Long Beach as well.
We can probably forget about the small parcel of land in Long Beach, as it’s crazy small. Inglewood, though…
I don’t see an Inglewood move. You’d be moving an hour away from a location that regularly draws 3 million fans (for a bad team). And an hour closer to the Dodgers. Kronke calls himself a real estate guy. I think his goal is to shake down Anaheim for as much as possible in order to build a Cobb County type development. Normally you’d say that’s going to cannibalize his Inglewood development, but the Orange County region is probably big enough for both.
This assumes that the ‘location factor’ that matters (for purposes of drawing such solid attendance) is being in the City of Anaheim specifically (and not, say, being in Orange County more broadly, or being in the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area more broadly still).
I know the discourse on places like Reddit and Twitter assumes this to be fact, but I’m fairly skeptical. We (the general public) don’t know the breakdown, but (considering the population size discrepancy – LA County has more than three times as many people as Orange County does) the Angels almost certainly rely considerably on drawing fans from LA County (and from the Inland Empire).
Any relocation involves trade-offs. It’s entirely possible that a move north toward the region’s population density core (whether that’s Long Beach or Inglewood or other) loses some OC fans (perhaps even hardcore fans) but results in an overall net gain of fans in the aggregate.
Kroenke already has the beginnings of a Cobb County-type development in Inglewood. YouTube Theater (a 6,000 seat venue in its own right), Hollywood Park Casino, a cineplex, several restaurants, some condos, a COSM location, probably other stuff I’m forgetting … oh yeah, can’t forget the flagship Raising Canes location.
The difference is that Kroenke has an ownership interest in the land in Inglewood, while he’d be building on leased public land in Anaheim, if I understand correctly.
I think the land in Anaheim carries a lot more litigation risk. I know the City of Anaheim is eager to play ball (pun intended) and facilitate a new or refurbished stadium. However, I’m not certain that they’re the only entity that would have standing to sue under the various statutes that govern private development on public lands with respect to the affordable housing requirements and so forth.
I actually think an ideal multi-party transaction here would be … Angels move to Inglewood … Angel Stadium site is developed by the City of Anaheim as the location of a new Anaheim Convention Center … the site of the current Anaheim Convention Center is sold to Disney (it’s across the street from the backside of Disney’s California Adventure, and I mean that in the most literal sense, thus it would be ideal for a park expansion or third gate).
With all that said, it’s highly likely that Kroenke just tries to redevelop the Anaheim site out of inertia and so as to avoid political conflict. However, I’d think he’d fall back on his Inglewood district pretty quickly if anything comes up in Anaheim that seems like a roadblock.
Would the land around Anaheim Stadium be larger than the current Anaheim Convention Center? I have heard speculation that ties up with such a land swap, with Disney being a main driver so they can expand Disneyland in some capacity.
How would that help? Either way, Anaheim would have to get around the Surplus Land Act, no?
“The 79-year-old Kroenke inherits a stadium situation that is ripe for either opportunity or extortion”
I believe the word you’re looking for is “extortitunity.”
I would think if anything this means that you COULDN’T get 4 billion for an expansion team – why pay 4 billion for an expansion team in Portland if 4 billion can get you the Angels or the Padres or whomever?
Yeah, I wonder what “controlling interest” means. Did he buy 51% of the team? And if he bought complete interest would it be a lot more. I mean half of Los Angeles has to worth a lot more than all of San Diego.
The $4B and $3.9B are team values, not sale prices. So if Kroenke bought 75% of the Angels, say, he paid $3B.
So what is the base price for an MLB club? Padres and angels have real world valuations of $4 Billion. Rays with the the 11th biggest market sell for $1.7 Billion and immediate get $2.5 billion i goodies from taxpayers. It has to be at least $4 Billion now.
three fitty
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law the Home Run for Anaheim Act, which requires the team to revert to being called the Anaheim Angels in any future lease negotiation or land sale agreement.”
This isn’t true. The city can provide the owner with more flexibility in development by obtaining an exemption from a state law, in which case the owner would have to go with Anaheim Angels. But the owner could develop the land in accordance with the law, as the city and team had agreed in their 2019 deal.
Thanks, Bill, will correct.
Here’s Bill’s article explaining the bill in full, FYI:
https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2026-08-28/gov-gavin-newsom-signs-anaheim-angels-bill-into-law
I hate to hijack the Angels convo, but with Neil saying the Athletics’ relocation is ‘settled’, I have to go back and ask, “where’s the rest of the construction money coming from?”. I’m not trying to bring the A’s back to Oakland, but I’m sincerely interested to know who has covered the remainder of this construction bill. Links appreciated. Links with sarcastic quips reluctantly appreciated.
No, and we’re not likely to until and unless Fisher runs out of money. He has $??? from Mark Cuban and $??? from whatever Gap stock he inherited from his mom and $??? if he sells the Earthquakes, but only he and his accountant know for sure.