'Sell the team': Angels fans got their wish. The Rams owner is the wrong buyer.

Stan Kroenke's holding company agreed on Sept. 1, 2026, to buy the Angels at a reported $4-billion valuation, pending Major League Baseball approval. My column argues the payroll was never the risk here.

The Angels have a buyer, at a $4-billion valuation, the highest ever attached to a Major League Baseball club. No terms were announced on Sept. 1, 2026, but a person with knowledge of the deal gave that figure to the Los Angeles Times, which reported the agreement. Rams owner Stan Kroenke is the buyer, through Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, and the deal still needs a regulatory review and approval from Major League Baseball, with a close expected in the first quarter of 2027.

Fans got the thing they've chanted for since spring. My read is that Anaheim just took on an exposure Arte Moreno never represented, and it has nothing to do with the roster. Moreno's failure was a losing baseball team. A losing baseball team stays where it is.

This lands on more people than the ones in the seats. The Angels play in a city-owned ballpark under a lease with Anaheim, a city that has already been through one collapsed attempt to sell the stadium land, and the Times' account says nothing about either.

Look at what's already been built up the road. Companies tied to Kroenke own the Rams, built SoFi Stadium and put 300 acres of development, Hollywood Park, around it in Inglewood, with events booked there for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics, the Times reported. The paper reads that record as a promise for Orange County, suggesting revitalization could reach the blocks around Angel Stadium.

Read it the other direction. The biggest thing on that resume isn't a stadium, it's the land a stadium anchors, and the Times itself calls Kroenke a billionaire real estate developer. His statement described the Angels as "a storied franchise anchored in a great market." That's a compliment to the market.

There's football in Inglewood because a team moved. The Times credits Kroenke with funding the Rams' relocation to Los Angeles and calls that fight hard-fought. It left a settlement behind in St. Louis; the figure and the date aren't in the Times' story, so they aren't going in this column either.

Now the strongest case against me, at full strength. He spends. The Times credits him with backing the deals that produced a Super Bowl win at SoFi Stadium on Feb. 13, 2022. The same Times story notes that the Nuggets, the Avalanche and Arsenal have each won championships during his ownership. Moreno employed Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout and got zero playoff wins out of the pairing, and the Times recounts that in February he told the Orange County Register that team surveys put winning outside fans' top five priorities. If the only test is October, the buyer beats the seller, and I'd say so without flinching.

Where that argument stops is the ground. Payroll is a decision you can reverse in one winter. A lease is decided once, and the party across the table from Anaheim now runs teams in six leagues on two continents.

Three pictures ran with the Times' story. In one, dated May 20, fans in the stands have their shirts off and over their heads in the eighth inning, chanting for a sale. In another, from Aug. 24, a line of people waits outside Angel Stadium before first pitch on a team headed for one of the worst records in baseball. Eleven straight seasons without a playoff appearance, and they still queued up.

That's the asset. It was never Moreno's and it was never Trout's. The third picture is Kroenke on the field at SoFi Stadium in February 2022, holding the Lombardi Trophy, and it's the one Anaheim is being invited to look at.

Moreno's own statement, per the Times, called Kroenke Sports and Entertainment the best next owner the franchise could have, which is the seller's job to say. Celebrate the sale. Then ask when the lease ends and who owns the parking lot the morning after it does. Nobody's printed a shirt for that one.

Source: latimes.com, retrieved September 2, 2026.