Sports tycoon Stan Kroenke surges to top spot among US private landowners

Billionaire sports owner Stan Kroenke is now America’s largest private landowner, underscoring how ultrawealthy investors are using land as a long-term store of value — and largely outside the reach of typical clients and advisors.

According to the newly released Land Report ranking this week, Kroenke controls about 2.7 million acres across the country, a footprint larger than Yellowstone National Park and roughly equal to about 2 million football fields.

His latest move, the December purchase of nearly 1 million acres of New Mexico ranchland from the family behind industrial conglomerate Teledyne, propelled him to the top of the list. The Singleton Ranches deal is reportedly the largest US land acquisition in more than a decade.

The transaction pushed Kroenke past the Emmerson family, whose Sierra Pacific Industries controls an estimated 2.44 million acres of timberland, as well as media billionaires John Malone and Ted Turner. The Singleton family, which sold the New Mexico properties, still ranks among the country’s 100 biggest private landowners with 171,000 acres.

Farmland and ranchland have become a favored defensive asset for billionaires seeking protection from inflation, public market swings, and geopolitical shocks.

As reported by CNBC, government data show US farmland values rose at an average annual pace of 5.8% between 2019 and 2024, or about 2% after inflation. That combination of relatively steady appreciation and low correlation to stocks continues to attract deep-pocketed buyers.

High-profile names extend well beyond Kroenke. Bill Gates, through his investment firm Cascade Investment, owns about 275,000 acres and is considered the largest private holder of US farmland, with crops ranging from soybeans and corn to cotton, rice, and potatoes used for McDonald’s french fries. Online brokerage billionaire Thomas Peterffy and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos hold hundreds of thousands of acres as well.

Kroenke has built his empire by scooping up legacy ranches that had been in the same families for generations, including the Waggoner Ranch in North Texas, acquired in 2016 for $725 million after 160 years of family ownership.

With trillions of dollars in motion amid the Great Wealth Transfer, ranch brokers say that type of intergenerational break is becoming more common as heirs choose liquidity over lifestyle.

“For the buyer who made their money in the dot-com era, they had a grand idea about a family legacy, or whatever,” said Bill McDavid, a broker at high-end ranch firm Hall and Hall, recounting one such transaction in a separate CNBC report. “And then their kids got older, and they didn’t move to the ranch because nobody ever moved to the ranch. I mean, the dot-com guy, he came out and visited for at most the summer.”

For the next generation, he added, “it was never in the cards for them to take over the ranch.”