Arsenal: The Stan Kroenke takeover that rips the heart out of football

Stan Kroenke is now the sole owner of Arsenal football club. His takeover rips the heart out of football, like many other takeovers have in the past.

The fan in football has been forgotten. This is not something that happened overnight. Sir Alex Ferguson was complaining about the abhorrent scheduling forced by TV companies in the early noughties; Arsene Wenger has frequently bemoaned the lack of focus on the matchday fan, repeatedly criticising the business bending of the sport.

The influx of foreign and domestic owners that do not understand football and football culture has led to a diluting of the sport that has changed its very fabric. From the likes of Vincent Tan changing Cardiff City’s kit from blue to red to make them more marketable in East Asia, even though the team’s nickname is ‘The Bluebirds’, to Mike Ashley and his profit-at-all-costs management of Newcastle United, which is used more to promote Sports Direct than it is to try and win trophies, there are plenty of owners that exploit the undying love of the fans to their own ends. And Arsenal have their own aristocratic, distant, indignant dictator.

Stan Kroenke may not have treated Arsenal in the way a Vincent Tan might — for that, fans can rest a little easier. But that does not mean that he has been a productive and progressive owner, not by any stretch of the imagination. He does not see Arsenal as a sports team. He sees them as a business venture, an organisation out of which every last penny can be wrung, an economic avenue to explore, as the commercial speak would say. For Kroenke, it is only the size of his wallet that he cares about, not the fullness of the trophy cabinet.

This single-minded desire to rake in cash has seen him make his move for sole ownership of the club. His primary competitor in the Gunners power struggle, Alisher Usmanov, accepted an offer for his remaining 30% stake, valuing the club at £1.8 billion, the most expensive deal ever for a club. Due to business and commercial law, once a shareholder reaches a certain threshold, the remaining, minority shareholders are required to sell their shares at the price set by the accepted deal, in this case, £29,000 each. That meant that hundreds of minority shareholders, many of which are fans, were forced into selling their shares to Kroenke.

This brilliant piece by Rory Smith of the New York Times provides a few backstories of those minority shareholders, how and why they came to buy the share/s in the first place, what having to sell means to them, and how disconnected they have become to the club as a result of Kroenke’s somewhat heartless decision.

Kroenke is far from the worst owner in football. And there are plenty of other decisions that he could have taken to sour his tenure. But his takeover helps illustrate the growing disenchantment between fans and football. Kroenke is not really to blame for these stories. The deal is between him and Usmanov. The ramifications of having to buy all the shares is merely a consequence of the law, not out of Kroenke’s own volition.

But that does not change the stories themselves. Stories are the heart and soul of football. They are the heart and soul of sport. Stories of great grandeur and great failure; stories of masterful champions and sorrowful losers. And this ends many fans’ chapters with Arsenal football club. That is a sad realisation and consequence, one in which the fan will quickly be forgotten.