Arsenal clinched the Premier League title for the first time in 22 years after Manchester City failed to beat AFC Bournemouth, delivering a historic finish to the 2023/24 season.
The victory lands squarely on the club that Stan Kroenke and his family control. Kroenke became a minority owner of Arsenal in 2007 and completed full control in 2018 when he bought out Alisher Usmanov in a deal that valued the club at about $2.3 billion.
The scale of the achievement is clear: Arsenal won 28 Premier League games, scored 91 league goals and still managed to finish top despite suffering 27 injuries across the campaign. Viktor Gyokeres finished the season as Arsenal’s top scorer with 21 goals, a return he described succinctly: "I think if you feel nerves, I think it means that it matters for you."
Mikel Arteta, Arsenal’s manager for more than six years, presided over a squad that was reinforced in key areas to handle a gruelling season. New arrivals Noni Madueke, Piero Hincapie, Cristhian Mosquera and Eberechi Eze were explicitly brought in to improve depth — a planning detail that mattered as injuries piled up.
The title also transforms the lens on Kroenke’s long, often contentious relationship with Arsenal supporters. Fans protested outside Emirates Stadium in 2019 accusing ownership of treating the club as an investment vehicle, and more than 1,000 supporters held a "Kroenke out" demonstration in 2021 amid anger over the European Super League. The demonstrations had left ownership under sustained pressure for years.
Ownership has not been limited to London football. Kroenke Sports & Entertainment owns teams across sports, and that portfolio has produced trophies: the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 2001 and 2022, the Denver Nuggets won an NBA championship in 2023, the Colorado Rapids took the MLS Cup in 2010 and the Colorado Mammoth won NLL championships in 2006 and 2022; the Los Angeles Rams also won a Super Bowl in the last five years under Kroenke Sports & Entertainment. The group’s stated aim is unapologetic — in a message from Josh Kroenke and Stan Kroenke, they said, "We will give everything we’ve got to win major trophies and you can rest assured that everyone at the club will continue the hard work to make the coming weeks unforgettable." They added: "The connection we feel with our supporters fills us with pride. Between us, we are building something very special and, wherever this month of May takes us, there will be no standing still when the season ends." And, in the same statement, they insisted: "We are always forward in our approach, taking the learnings as we go and relentless in the pursuit of progress."
That line — relentless in the pursuit of progress — sits uneasily alongside decades of supporter criticism and Kroenke’s wider profile. Forbes put Stan Kroenke’s personal fortune at about $22.2 billion, and last year he became America’s largest landowner after buying 937,000 acres of ranchland in New Mexico, part of a total land portfolio estimated at 2.7 million acres. His wife, Ann Walton Kroenke, is the daughter of the late Walmart co‑founder James 'Bud' Walton, tying the family to significant U.S. wealth and influence.
The friction in this story is obvious: a long-running ownership feud meets a trophy that supporters demanded for more than two decades. Arsenal’s title shows the on-field project, under Arteta and with targeted signings, reached its peak this season. Yet one major prize remains elusive. Industry observers note the only major trophy still missing from Kroenke Sports & Entertainment’s cabinet at the top European level is the Champions League.
The central question now is exact and simple: will Kroenke and his group convert this domestic triumph into the different, costly investment and strategic shifts needed to win Europe’s biggest club prize? Mikel Arteta has proven he can take Arsenal to the summit of England; the next move — on transfers, on infrastructure and on how the club responds to its own supporters — will decide whether this title is a turning point in Kroenke’s legacy or merely its most recent chapter.
