Kroenke: pro sports' new breed.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: Kroenke Sports Enterprises

MODERN-DAY SPORTS INDUSTRY THEORY IS all about synergy and presence, and few in the game exemplify the strategy more than E. Stanley Kroenke.

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The Missouri real estate developer has put together the most comprehensive amalgamation of sports and entertainment properties Colorado has ever seen. Kroenke's sports management company. Kroenke Sports Enterprises, spans the holy trinity of sports assets, with teams, venues and a TV network that showcases them all, controlled from the company's Pepsi Center headquarters.

It's a neat compilation of content and distribution, and with the looming addition of a sprawling outdoor soccer arena and recreational park in Commerce City, it's only going to get bigger.

"They control the trifecta: the buildings, the teams and the media," says Arthur Steiker, the managing director of Denver sports consulting firm Bortz Media & Sports Group.

Kroenke is proof that the days of solo team owners are going, going, gone for good. George Steinbrenner bought the New York Yankees from CBS in 1973 for $10 million, most of it borrowed from limited partners. If Steinbrenner was starting out in the industry today, he'd never get away with such a shallow-minded business plan that risked everything on a single team. Instead, The Boss would need to weave together financing for a snazzy downtown ball-park, a regional cable TV sports network and a joint venture for co-ownership of a hockey arena that doubled in the off-season as a used car lot.

Or something like that.

"We call it the 21st century sports business model," says Don Hinchey, a vice president with the Denver-based Bonham Group, a sports consulting firm that works with team owners including KSE on sponsorship and naming-rights deals. "The name of the game is to maximize assets in multiple ways."

Not that Kroenke is infallible: The Altitude Sports Network that was launched in 2004 has been tormented by the absence of Colorado Avalanche games that were supposed to make up a centerpiece of the fledgling network's schedule.

And Kroenke is not the league's richest owner. Although Forbes lists Kroenke as a billionaire, he's far over-shadowed in the net-worth department by six other National Basketball Association owners, including one with a strong Denver connection...