Pressing questions after Angels are sold for $4 billion
By SAM BLUM / THE ATHLETIC
After 23 years of largely unfulfilling ownership, Arte Moreno agreed this week to sell his Los Angeles Angels to Stan Kroenke. A billionaire real estate magnate who owns teams in nearly every major sports league, Kroenke is now the game’s richest owner, and his announced purchase sent joyous shock waves through a beaten-down fan base, even as the team is poised to finish off the worst season in its 65-year history.
Much about what this $4 billion sale means for the Angels remains to be seen. But as the transition to new ownership begins, here are some pressing questions, and what to consider in answering them.
Will the Angels spend?
You don’t pay a record price for a baseball franchise to pinch pennies. In recent years under Moreno, the Angels have operated as a small-market club.
Moreno signed Anthony Rendon to a seven-year, $245 million deal in late 2019, with disastrous results. Since then, the largest Angels contract has been $63 million over three years to Yusei Kikuchi.
The Angels should be a destination team for free agents — look no further than the likes of Paul Skenes, Freddie Freeman and Gerrit Cole, all of whom grew up as Angels fans. Players of that caliber could and should be fair game under new ownership.
Ultimately, the next collective bargaining agreement will determine the state of play.
But in lieu of those answers, it is to be expected that the sport’s richest owner will spend. Spend on free agents. Spend on extending young players. Spend on infrastructure, development, facilities, the works. All are areas in which the Angels have been woefully and noticeably deficient for many years.
Why now?
This will be one of the most fascinating questions to be answered in the coming months because the timing doesn’t make a ton of sense on its face. The Angels just elevated Molly Jolly to team president, and they just appointed a new interim general manager, John Mozeliak. There was a foundation of change being laid, and it seemed there was optimism about a more viable path forward under the new internal leadership.
Moreover, a new collective bargaining agreement, especially one that includes a salary cap, could help raise franchise values writ large. More predictability could translate to higher values. So selling before that was litigated is surprising. But $4 billion is $4 billion. And with Moreno at 80 years old, with his children uninterested in operating the team, his sale was only a matter of time.
This sale also came just nine months after the Angels settled a landmark wrongful-death lawsuit.
They paid out an undisclosed amount to the family of Tyler Skaggs, a pitcher who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2019 while with the team in Texas. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said his staff would review testimony from the three-month trial but has not commented on the matter since.
What does this mean for the stadium?
Potentially quite a bit. The current iteration of Angel Stadium is in need of significant upgrades, and Kroenke has a proven track record in this area.
Look no further than SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, a beautiful facility that is home to his Los Angeles Rams and is a top venue for major LA-based events. Kroenke developed and owns the venue.
The big question here is what form that takes. Might he look to upgrade the stadium, built in 1966? With the lease set to expire in 2032, could he purchase the venue and surrounding land, and build an entirely new stadium?
It’s hard to imagine Kroenke purchasing the Angels without an eye toward acquiring the stadium and the area around it. Moreno’s hope of doing so fell through in 2022.
What does this mean for team leadership?
Kroenke’s track record does not necessarily spell immediate sweeping changes. But given the Angels’ long-running failures, it’s hard to say how this situation will be viewed. It is also worth noting that manager Kurt Suzuki is on an expiring contract, and Mozeliak’s deal will run out in December.
The timing of the deal becoming official, expected in early 2027, makes this more interesting. Might the timeline increase the odds that Suzuki is brought back? Perhaps. Why would the Angels sign a new manager on a longer contract with the expectation of a new owner, who would want to implement his own vision? And the prospect of a lockout delaying the 2027 season only complicates things further.
Mozeliak has stated that his charge is to hire a new general manager. Is that now on hold? And what happens to Jolly, the new team president who has only started to enact her vision for the club?
The current iteration of Angels baseball has failed to deliver results. Changes will be made. And in the long term, they will likely be significant.
Will they be called the Anaheim Angels again?
Moreno was obsessed with marketing. After all, his wealth was amassed in billboards. He liked the Los Angeles branding, even though his team, of course, did not play in Los Angeles.
Perhaps it was a mistake. But the Kroenke news release referred to the team as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, a name the club held from 2005 to 2015 in order to comply with the terms of its stadium lease.
While it is certainly possible that a new owner will drop the Los Angeles facade, it remains to be seen. The same is true for larger questions of branding, color scheme and logo; under Disney ownership, the Angels used periwinkle blue. Under Gene Autry’s ownership, they were called the California Angels.
A new owner could mean significant changes on this front.
Why did the Angels sell for a record price?
The first answer is that franchise values have generally increased over time. The New York Mets, for example, sold at about $2.4 billion and are likely worth way more today. The San Diego Padres’ $3.9 billion valuation in their sale is further evidence of those rising values.
The other element to consider is that the Angels, despite their woes, are a sleeping giant. They play in the nation’s second-largest media market, with a dense population center in a baseball-crazed region. Their TV deal is very valuable. There is no reason the Angels should not be on par with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Yankees or the Chicago Cubs. This is a big-market club that has yet to act like one.
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