Rams owner Stan Kroenke enters agreement to buy Angels from Arte Moreno for reported MLB record $4 billion

The Los Angeles Angels are the latest professional sports team to be sold in 2026. The Angels have been purchased by Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke, his company announced Tuesday.

The Angels confirmed the news Tuesday, with Kroenke saying the team has an "exciting future." Outgoing owner Arte Moreno also issued a statement, saying his family "has been honored to steward the Angels for 23 years."

The deal is expected to close early in 2027. Kroenke's company — Kroenke Sports & Entertainment — did not divulge how much Kroenke paid to take over the Angels. The team was valued at $2.8 billion by Forbes in March.

The Angels were reportedly purchased for an MLB record $4 billion , the The Athletic. The San Diego Padres, which sold earlier in 2026 , held the previous record at $3.9 billion .

The move sends yet another shockwave through the Los Angeles sports landscape, coming just weeks after Mark Walter sold the Los Angeles Lakers to a group led by Josh Kushner and Bob Iger.

In addition to those two teams, the Padres, Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle Seahawks have all changed ownership in 2026 .

The Arte Moreno era is over in Los Angeles

The decision to sell ends a mostly disappointing ownership tenure by Moreno, the first Latino majority owner in the sport. Moreno, 80, took over the Angels in 2003, when he purchased the franchise from the Walt Disney Company for $180 million.

Things started out positively, as the Angels — fresh off a World Series title — made the playoffs in five of the first seven years of Moreno's ownership. After a four-year drought, the team reached the postseason again in 2014, getting swept in the first round. The Angels haven't made the playoffs since then, the longest active postseason drought in the sport.

While Moreno always showed a willingness to spend, his penchant for buying stars often backfired. Vladimir Guerrero, whom the team signed ahead of the 2004 MLB season, had a successful second half of his career with the franchise. But future free-agent splurges — like Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton and Anthony Rendon — failed to live up to their former luster, often leaving the franchise in a rough financial spot.

All of those signings happened to overlap with perhaps the biggest win — and failure — of Moreno's ownership tenure. The Angels drafted Mike Trout in 2009, promoted him to the majors in 2011 and proceeded to have eight straight seasons in which he was arguably the best player in the majors. Despite Trout's excellence, the team made the postseason just once during his stardom, when it was swept in 2014.

As Trout started to slow down, the team managed to convince two-way star Shohei Ohtani to sign with the Angels. Despite the presence of both players, the Angels never made the postseason with the pair. Moreno ultimately couldn't re-sign Ohtani in 2023, paving the way for him to join the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he immediately won two straight World Series.

Stan Kroenke continues to buy sports teams

The name Stan Kroenke should sound pretty familiar in the professional sports realm. On top of owning the Rams, Kroenke also holds ownership stakes in the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Rapids and Colorado Mammoth — a professional lacrosse team.

He's had plenty of success with those franchises, winning two Super Bowls with the Rams (one as a majority owner, one as a minority partner), two Stanley Cups with the Avalanche, one NBA championship with the Nuggets and an MLS Cup with the Rapids. He's an MLB title away from owning the sports equivalent of Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet.

Getting the Angels back to championship level won't be easy. The franchise has not experienced a winning season since 2015. There's some young talent on the roster — Zach Neto and Nolan Schanuel on the hitting side and Reid Detmers and Walbert Ureña in the rotation — but the team still seems far off from competing again … even with Trout turning in his best year since 2022.

Some of the team's stumbles along the way have been attributed to Moreno, who reportedly played a major role in the team signing some of those bad contracts and received criticism for the upkeep of team facilities .

If Kroenke is willing to invest in upgrades that meaningfully improve those facilities and stay out of the way when it comes to personnel moves, that might be enough to get the Angels back on the right track. Kroenke has shown an ability to do that with his other teams, so it might not be that long before the Angels are taken seriously again.