Stan Kroenke of the Los Angeles Rams on the sideline during a game against the Philadelphia Eagles at SoFi Stadium Inglewood, California, Oct. 8, 2023.
Ric Tapia | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Stanley Kroenke owns the world’s most valuable sports empire, including the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. Now the sports tycoon is also America’s largest private landowner, according to the newly released Land Report.
At 2.7 million acres, Kroenke’s holdings are larger than Yellowstone National Park — or the equivalent of roughly 2 million football fields.
Kroenke bought nearly 1 million acres of New Mexico ranchland in December from the family behind industrial conglomerate Teledyne, per The Land Report. According to the trade publication, the Singleton Ranches transaction is the largest land purchase in the U.S. in more than a decade. Late Teledyne founder Henry Singleton started his namesake ranch in the 1980s, and it’s grown into one of the nation’s largest cattle- and horse-breeding operations.
The acquisition vaulted Kroenke from fourth to first on The Land Report’s annual ranking of the country’s 100 largest private landowners, leapfrogging the Emmerson lumber family as well as billionaire media moguls John Malone and Ted Turner.
Most of the top 100 landowners aren’t boldface names like Kroenke. The Emmerson family, which ranks second, owns an estimated 2.44 million acres through their forest-products company Sierra Pacific Industries. The Singleton family, which sold the New Mexico ranches to Kroenke, still made the cut at 98th place with 171,000 acres.
However, investing in U.S. farmland has become popular among the ultra wealthy as a hedge against inflation and stock market volatility. From 2019 to 2024, farmland values have grown at an average annual rate of 5.8%, or 2% after inflation, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Billionaire entrepreneurs from Bill Gates to Philip Anschutz are increasingly buying up swaths of land for farming, ranching and forestry. Gates ranks 44th overall on The Land Report list with 275,000 acres but is still the largest private owner of U.S. farmland, specifically. Owned through his investment group, Cascade Investment, Gates’ farmland grows soybeans, corn, cotton, rice and even potatoes used for McDonald’s french fries.
Online brokerage billionaire Thomas Peterffy and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also made the cut, with 647,000 acres and 462,000 acres, respectively.
Kroenke has been able to grow his land holdings relatively quickly by acquiring massive ranches that have been held in families for decades or even generations. He bought one of his largest ranches, Waggoner Ranch in north Texas, for $725 million in 2016, ending 160 years of family ownership. While these one-of-a-kind ranches are in short supply, more are hitting the market as heirs decide to sell rather than carry on the family business.
