How Kroenke’s sports empire pieces work together to influence Arsenal, MLS, 2026 World Cup

PALM BEACH, Fla. — The hustle and bustle of the NFL’s annual meetings was crawling to an end earlier this month as Kevin Demoff settled into a chair in a back room off the lobby where, a couple hours prior, media members had huddled around different team owners seeking a note or quote on NFL business.

Crews at The Breakers, a high-end resort in one of the wealthiest towns in America, were cleaning up and breaking down desks and tents that hosted press conferences and media work rooms. The hundreds of journalists, executives and coaches that had descended on this historic hotel were headed back to their cities across the country.

This was the second of three owners meetings Demoff would be attending in a three-week span. The NBA’s meetings had been held the week prior in New York. The NFL was next just off the beach on the Atlantic Coast. A week later, Demoff would be headed to Chicago for MLS’ board meeting.

Such is life as president of team and media operations for Kroenke Sports and Entertainment (KSE), which has a vast sports holdings that includes professional teams in four of five major men’s professional sports league in the U.S. — the NFL’s LA Rams, NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, NBA’s Denver Nuggets and MLS’ Colorado Rapids — as well as the Premier League’s Arsenal FC.

Demoff sat with The Athletic to discuss how KSE leverages its experience in each respective league to boost partner teams, including the recent launch of Kroenke Sports Properties (KSP), which was created with an aim to sell sponsorships across its full portfolio.

KSP could especially have an impact on Arsenal considering the Premier League’s spending rules.

“While in North America it is obviously important to grow your brands and to grow your teams, certainly in the Premier League, the more revenue you can drive does affect the product that you can put on the pitch,” Demoff said. “So any way we can leverage the entire power of KSE to drive revenue for Arsenal is going to be better for the team that, ultimately, Andrea (Berta) and Mikel (Arteta) can field.”

Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke at the Emirates, taking in a Champions League match vs. PSG in October. (Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images)

Demoff laughs when asked what he has learned about leveraging a multi-team model to try to sell sponsorships that work across all properties. It has proven to be a massive challenge for any multi-club arrangement, let alone an entity like KSE, which works across continents and across sports.

“It’s really hard to do,” Demoff said. “I talked to all of my counterparts at multi-club teams as I took on this role, to learn, and I’m like, ‘What works?’ They’re like, ‘Probably less works than you would think.’”

The reality is that a sponsorship that works for an NFL team in Los Angeles might not work the same for a football club in London, or for that matter, a soccer team in Denver. Demoff said the “holy grail” is participation between teams where they can jointly sell and partners have “a menu of teams and opportunities and moments and you can pull those strings to make it easier.”

That is, in part, the idea behind KSP. The hope was to leverage the knowledge and experience working across all of its sports teams to find the best partners.

“We haven’t changed any of the structure of the way the local teams operate, so Arsenal still has Arsenal’s commercial structure, the Rams still have the Rams’ commercial structure, the Denver teams still have their commercial structure,” Demoff said. “That hasn’t changed. What we have done is taken pieces of that, from Hollywood Park and other places and say, ‘Hey, let’s make sure, if we’re going to go collectively sell across all these teams, we can leverage the power of five teams, two of them in the biggest cities in the world, and that we can approach partners with a more global offering.’”

Demoff pointed to the fact that Arsenal has a strategic partnership with Google, as does KSE in Los Angeles. YouTube TV, meanwhile, is one of the NBA’s partners. The aim is for Kroenke Sports to now have a point person for Google to speak to that can work across all of their sports properties, whether it’s Arsenal, the Rams or the Nuggets.

Demoff lent his insight into a few other areas of the company and how they impact Arsenal, the 2026 World Cup and MLS.

SoFi Stadium project informs potential Emirates expansion

Leveraging their multi-sport properties goes beyond just commercial partners. With news that Arsenal is considering expanding the Emirates Stadium, it would seem prudent for KSE to apply their learnings from building the NFL’s $5.5billion (£4.1bn) SoFi Stadium, which will host eight World Cup matches, including the U.S. men’s opener.

Demoff joked that there were some things you learn not to do from SoFi’s construction, with any work at the Emirates hopefully coming in “on budget and on time, not necessarily like SoFi.”

“But I do think if you look at something like Emirates, there are a lot of things that you would look at at SoFi and say, ‘Are there ways that we could bring some of this to drive revenue, to improve the fan experience?’” Demoff said. “You also have to be very cognizant that the fan experience in the Premier League and what Arsenal fans value is very different than what Rams fans value.”

SoFi, for example, has a 110-meter-long dual-sided ovular video board that hangs from the roof of the stadium. That wouldn’t be a fit for the Premier League just “given the current restrictions around video that you can show.” But Demoff said there were important learnings in holding off on building out technology infrastructure into SoFi as the final step, so that it was the most up-to-date possible.

Hospitality plays a big part simply because it can drive significantly more revenue. So ideas like pitchside seating concepts or clubs that can be built in at the Emirates are enticing options.

“That’s the kind of envelope-pushing you want,” Demoff said. “And then I think that’s really for the Arsenal leadership team to decide, ‘Hey, that could work here in its real version or in a tweaked version,’ or, ‘That’s just not going to fly at all with our fans.’”

Arsenal and Man United play a friendly at SoFi Stadium as part of their 2024-25 preseason. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

SoFi’s Nations League test pitch passes for World Cup prep

SoFi Stadium will have the eyes of the world on it when the World Cup kicks off next summer. While Mexico City’s famed Estadio Azteca will host the opening game, it’s SoFi that will kick off the U.S.’s run.

Demoff said that they understand that it will likely be the most-watched game in the U.S. outside of the final, and they see it as an opportunity to shine a positive light on the building and the city. His hope is that SoFi can become something of a Wembley Stadium for the national team to play its biggest games in L.A.

This past spring’s Concacaf Nations League semifinals and final were held at SoFi, as was a U.S. women’s national team friendly against Brazil, as a test run for the pitch that will be installed in the stadium for the World Cup.

The reviews from U.S. men’s players after the games were mostly positive. The games were played on a narrower field than will be used for the World Cup, but the surface held up well compared to some of the temporary versions of grass fields that have caused issues in soccer games at NFL stadiums in the past. The process used for this field is far different from those short-term temporary pitches, but the Nations League was an important trial run.

“I loved seeing the test pitch, how it looked, and, more importantly, how it played,” Demoff said. “Talking to FIFA and to the players and to the managers, I think everybody was very satisfied with the pitch. One of the challenges historically has been laying really good pitches in NFL stadiums and if you’re going to bring the world’s greatest soccer/football event to the U.S. that’s something we have to do.

“Obviously this system, which we were able to test, a number of stadiums are putting in. I think it played really well. And so I think that is both a relief and an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, this is something that we have checked that box, and we can now feel very comfortable how the surface is going to play.’”

Demoff acknowledged that there was a “rocky start” to the venue’s relationship with FIFA as they worked toward a deal to host games, but said “we’ve had a really good working relationship with FIFA.”

“It was great to see so many of them at SoFi stadium and to kind of check back in and see how we’re doing,” Demoff said. “And I think that partnership has really strengthened and evolved over the past two years. And if you’d asked me two years ago, would I think it would be as strong as it is today, I’d probably have said no. But they’re committed to making Los Angeles a focal point of what they do at the World Cup. When they come to the stadium each time, they’re amazed by just how it looks, how it plays. And I know if we can continue to do that, we’re going to have a lot of special FIFA events in our building over many decades to come.”

The bigger picture on a potential MLS calendar change

MLS owners opted not to officially vote on a switch to a fall-to-spring calendar shift during its recent board meeting in Chicago, but the league seems on the path to making that change in due time — perhaps as soon as this summer’s board meeting.

The Colorado Rapids would be considered a swing vote on the issue simply because the Denver-based team will undoubtedly face weather issues with league games being played in early February or early December. Demoff, though, said the organization understands the importance of voting for what it believes is best for the league, even if it creates business challenges on the team level.

The Colorado Rapids hosted Guatemala’s Comunicaciones FC February 2022. (Ron Chenoy/USA TODAY Sports)

“We’re fortunate as an ownership group to see so many leagues (govern), and leagues are best when owners make decisions in the best interest of the leagues, maybe not their individual markets or teams,” Demoff said. “When you look at the FIFA calendar flip, I would hope that everybody would look at it from the perspective of: What’s best for MLS to continue to grow?”

The calendar switch will help align the U.S. with the global transfer market in a way that allows MLS teams to better leverage the market — both as buyers and sellers. That should help the product improve, and ultimately will help the league grow.

“I give MLS a ton of credit in this process,” Demoff said. “They have been very intentional about talking to teams over and over and over again about their concerns, and they have taken feedback very well when we have voiced, ‘Hey, this is our concern about this iteration or this iteration.’ I do feel at the end of this all clubs will have felt that their voices were heard. And I do think when you’re making a decision like this, that is important.

“To me, no club can be healthy without a league being healthy, right? You can be the best club in an unhealthy league, and that does no good. I truly do believe, if it is the best thing for MLS is to go to the FIFA calendar, then we will be supportive of that, because I do believe it is important for MLS to continue to grow.”

(Top photo: Stan Kroenke and Kevin Demoff; Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports)

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