Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke becomes largest private landowner in the U.S.

Stan Kroenke, the rancher and billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets and other major sports teams, is now the largest private landowner in the United States, according to The Land Report, which tracks private land holdings.

In December, the billionaire purchased 937,000 acres of noncontiguous land in New Mexico, according to the Land Report, making it the largest single land purchase in the U.S. since 2011 and nudging his total holdings to more than 2.7 million acres dotted across the American West and Canada.

Kroenke owns roughly 60 million square feet of commercial space, including huge sports venues in Inglewood, California, and Denver. He also owns the teams that play there — the LA Rams, Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets and Colorado Mammoth — as well as the Colorado Rapids and Arsenal’s men’s and women’s soccer teams in Britain. His wife, Ann Walton Kroenke, is an heir to the Walmart fortune.

Stan Kroenke’s new ranch land was previously owned by the heirs of Henry Singleton, founder of the tech company Teledyne. Neither the seller’s brokers nor the buyer’s brokers disclosed details of the transaction. The Land Report had been tracking Singleton Ranches for several years and confirmed the sale via public databases in four of the counties the property spans.

Kroenke’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Before the purchase of Singleton Ranches, Kroenke made headlines in 2016 with his purchase of Texas’ 535,000-acre Waggoner Ranch, which hadn’t changed ownership since its founding in 1849 and is the largest contiguous ranch in the state. Kroenke’s other high-profile purchases include the 124,000-acre Broken O Ranch in Montana in 2012 and the Winecup Gamble Ranch in Nevada, which he bought from former Reebok Chair Paul Fireman in 2019.