E. Stanley Kroenke is gearing up to have his third team locked out in just over a year. The billionaire owns the Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Rapids soccer team, Arsenal English premier league soccer team and the St. Louis Rams. While his son Josh Kroenke technically owns the Avalanche and Nuggets because of the NFL’s policy that its owners cannot own teams in other leagues, Stan is still the man for the Colorado hockey team. Having already been on the winning side in the NFL and NBA lockout, he’s ready to lockdown with the NHL owners.
With their experience from the 2004-2005 lockout, it was reported last year that the duo NHL and NBA owners told their brethren that losing a season was worth getting what they wanted from the players. Now the tables are flipped as the owners watched the players fold in the NBA after losing a month of the season. The 50/50 revenue split is now the model in both the NBA and NFL, but the owners are asking for a lower share for the players this time around. Kroenke is one of six owners with both a basketball and hockey team.
With Kroenke’s $3.2 billion net worth, losing revenues on regular season games in the NHL for the Avalanche would not make a dent. As a team that has hugged the salary cap floor since watching their club get demolished after the last lockout, Kroenke seems more than happy to watch the paycheck for the Avalanche drop again. The Avalanche represents Kroenke’s only two championships as an owner, unless you count the Rapids.
Before the previous lockout, the Avalanche were a perennial spender under Stan Kroenke. He was also known to dish out money when the Denver Nuggets had Carmelo Anthony. However, critics of the billionaire have called him stingy in the last few years. Arsenal and the Avalanche are the two examples that they point to. Kroenke has never been a lover of hockey, so not freezing the Pepsi Center floor for a couple of months will not cause him to lose a lot of sleep.
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