Kroenke Buys the Angels and Inherits a Stadium Fight

Stan Kroenke has agreed to buy a controlling stake in the Los Angeles Angels at a $4 billion valuation, a record for a Major League Baseball club. The Sept. 1 announcement still needs league approval and is not due to close until the first quarter of 2027.

Arte Moreno, 80, stays on with an undisclosed minority share. The city of Anaheim still owns the ballpark the club has occupied since 1966.

$4 Billion Buys the Club, Not the Yard

Kroenke Sports & Entertainment said it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a controlling interest from the Moreno family. People briefed on the terms put the price on the club and its regional sports network at $4 billion, $100 million above the $3.9 billion sale of the San Diego Padres that owners approved in August.

Moreno paid $184 million for the team in 2003, more than 21 times less than the figure now attached to the same franchise. Spokespeople for both sides declined to confirm a number and pointed back to the joint release.

THE SALE ON PAPER

• The stake: KSE is buying control, not every remaining share, and Moreno remains a minority owner.
• The clock: Closing is slated for the first quarter of 2027, pending a vote of MLB clubs.
• The park: Angel Stadium and its parking lots stay on the city’s books.
• The record: The Angels were 53-85 and tied for the worst mark in the American League when the deal was announced.

The club posted the news itself, restoring “of Anaheim” in the headline of the release after years of dropping the city’s name from everyday use.

OFFICIAL: Kroenke Sports & Entertainment ("KSE") announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a controlling interest in the Los Angeles Angels Baseball Club from the Moreno Family.

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, subject… pic.twitter.com/sy60AAz5Bp

— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) September 1, 2026

“The Angels are a storied franchise anchored in a great market,” Kroenke, 79, said in that statement. “We look forward to an exciting future with the Angels organization.”

Moreno called KSE “the best next owner for the franchise” after 23 years as steward. Interim general manager John Mozeliak learned of the sale that morning from club president Molly Jolly and said the news was a surprise even though Moreno had once mentioned a sale as a possibility.

Shirtless Decks Finally Got Their Sale

The upper deck spent 2026 half-naked on purpose. Fans in the “Tarps Off” sections pulled off their shirts, waved them over their heads, and chanted “sell the team” and “we want play-offs” at a club that has not had a winning record since 2015.

They got the first chant answered. They did not get October baseball with it. The Angels are in a 12th straight season without the playoffs, the longest active drought in the majors, and they have not won a postseason game since 2009. At 53-85 they are on pace to lose about 100 games, which the franchise has never done.

HOW THE DROUGHT STACKED UP

1. 2003: Moreno buys the club a year after its only World Series title, won as the Anaheim Angels.
2. 2004-09: The team takes five division titles and keeps a winner on the field.
3. 2014: The last playoff trip, a three-game sweep, and the sixth division flag under Moreno.
4. 2015: The last winning record; the club also strips “of Anaheim” from daily use.
5. 2022: Moreno floats a sale, then keeps the team; a plan to buy the stadium site collapses in a city hall scandal.
6. Sept. 1, 2026: He sells control to Kroenke with the club tied for last in the American League.

Perry Minasian was dismissed as general manager in early June. John Carpino retired as club president and Jolly replaced him. Mozeliak, on a deal that ends in December, moved seven players at the trade deadline and said he has not decided whether to stay. Change on the baseball side started before the sale. The sale does not finish it.

On the night the news broke, the same shirtless sections turned the chant toward the incoming owner’s name and toward Anaheim. Local fans who read the release closely also noticed the first thing that was missing. The dirt under the Big A was not in the $4 billion.

Anaheim Still Owns Angel Stadium

Angel Stadium is the fourth-oldest park in the majors, renovated in 1996-98 and left to age on city land. The club’s lease through Dec. 31, 2032 stays in force, with two further options that could run the stay to 2038. Mayor Ashleigh Aitken said as much in a text after the announcement, adding that it is too early to talk about new development.

If the deal is approved, the current lease will remain in place. It’s premature to discuss any future development, but I do plan on seeing more October baseball in Anaheim.

Ashleigh Aitken, mayor of Anaheim

Four years ago a plan to sell the stadium site to Moreno’s group imploded after an FBI corruption probe into city hall. Former mayor Harry Sidhu resigned and pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about expected campaign money from the Angels and to wire fraud. California Attorney General Rob Bonta had already fined Anaheim close to $100 million for alleged violations of the Surplus Land Act, the state rule that forces public agencies to offer surplus ground to affordable-housing buyers before a private sale.

The city still has not published a full condition report on the taxpayer-owned park. Jolly said it is too soon to map the next stadium move, only that the building buzz inside the club is real. Kroenke’s company is the party now sitting across from that unfinished file, and it is the party that already built a football palace without asking a city to write the check.

The Same Owner Who Left St. Louis

KSE already owns the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, MLS’s Colorado Rapids, and Premier League champion Arsenal. The Rams played at Angel Stadium from 1980 to 1994, then left for St. Louis. Kroenke became a part-owner in 1995 and was central to bringing the franchise back to Los Angeles in 2016 around a privately financed stadium in Inglewood.

SoFi Stadium cost $5.5 billion and sits inside a 300-acre Hollywood Park district KSE controls. That is the product Angels fans are actually buying: an owner who treats venues as the asset and who has already moved a team when a market would not give him the yard he wanted. Anaheim officials spent years unable to close a land deal with Moreno. They now face a buyer who does not need Anaheim in order to have a Southern California address.

TITLES ALREADY ON KROENKE’S SHELF

Arsenal supporters protested his full takeover and later the Super League plan, then watched the club win its first league title in 22 years. The Nuggets, Avalanche, and Rams all hoisted trophies in a short stretch. The winning record is real, and so is the relocation record. Both travel with him to Orange County.

Trout Has Four Years Left in Anaheim

Mike Trout has spent his entire 16-year career with the Angels and has been to the playoffs once, in 2014. He said he had a good relationship with Moreno and still called the sale a change the clubhouse needed. He has four years remaining on his contract and a no-trade clause, which means the face of the franchise will still be on the roster when, and if, KSE takes control next year.

Kroenke’s got a track record of success and winning championships with his teams. I’m super excited about it and can’t wait to meet him.

Mike Trout, Angels outfielder

Mozeliak is still looking for a permanent general manager. The manager’s chair is a separate decision. None of that baseball work is Kroenke’s until MLB owners vote and the money clears, which leaves a winter of 2026-27 in a strange split: Moreno still on the cap table, KSE named as the future, and a 53-85 roster trying not to finish as the worst team the franchise has put on the field.

California Traded a Housing Break for a Name

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2512, the Home Run for Anaheim Act, on Aug. 28, four days before the sale. Assemblymember Avelino Valencia wrote it. The law does not force a rename on its own. It sets a bargain on the same surplus-land fight that wrecked the last stadium deal.

WHAT AB 2512 LOCKS IN

• The trigger: If Anaheim wins an exemption from Surplus Land Act housing rules for a sale or lease of Angel Stadium to the club, printed materials must refer to that team as the Anaheim Angels.
• The out: The name rule does not apply if the city and the club reach their own deal on how the team is identified.
• The leverage: Housing-law relief is the chip Anaheim can slide across the table in talks over a new or rebuilt park.
• The history: The only World Series in this building was won under the Anaheim name in 2002.

Valencia said new ownership means new possibilities and that Anaheim is ready to work toward “the return of the Anaheim Angels.” Aitken has made the same pitch, calling Orange County its own fan base and noting, with a superstition attached, that the title arrived when Anaheim was on the jersey. KSE’s own release already reached for “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim,” a small tell that the incoming owner heard the room.

A rename would be cheap goodwill. A land deal is the expensive half, and it still has to clear the housing statute that cost Anaheim nine figures the last time it tried to sell the site in private.

A First-Quarter Close and a Minority Stake

MLB did not comment on the day of the announcement. Owners had just voted unanimously in August to let José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones take control of the Padres at $3.9 billion, a process that ran from a spring agreement to a late-summer call. Kroenke’s file will go through the same club-by-club review, with a target close in the first quarter of 2027.

Until then the Angels remain Moreno’s on paper, with KSE named as buyer and a city lease that Aitken says will not move. Mozeliak and Jolly said they had not even spoken with KSE yet. Business as usual, they called it, which on this roster means finishing a last-place season and hiring a baseball operations lead whose boss may change before opening day 2027.

The fans who took their shirts off all summer got the owner they demanded. They also got a six-month wait, a minority stake left in the old owner’s hands, and a ballpark that still belongs to Anaheim. Kroenke can point to rings in four other leagues. The dirt under the Big A is the job he actually bought, and he does not own it yet.