Enos Stanley Kroenke’s plucky little basketball squad just went out and Oppenheimered Anthony Edwards, Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Pat Riley. Future GOAT. Whiny GOAT. Old GOAT. Ancient GOAT. In that order.
You think he’d be scared of the stinking Dodgers?
You think he’d moan about the Padres’ payroll?
You think he’d let the Diamondbacks out-draft and out-develop him?
You think he’d stand in front of his customers over the winter and set the bar at playing “.500 ball?”
The man would ship the Rams back to St. Louis first.
We’re down this rabbit hole because word on the street, and via Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand, is that Stan Kroenke and the deep pockets over at Kroenke Sports Entertainment have engaged the Rockies about buying the latter’s television rights for 2024 and beyond.
Much like their baseball ops, the Rox have hit a dead-end on the broadcasting front. Warner Brothers Discovery, per Ourand, is done with AT&T Rocky Mountain, keeping the lights on just long enough for everybody to watch the Monforts find that elusive path to 100 losses for the first time.
Denver, at present, has two regional sports networks at a time when most corporate bean-counters think that’s two too many. Meanwhile, Altitude, KSE’s little engine that could, is looking for year-round live sports — the channel’s summer fare consists largely of fishing and poker shows — as a leverage play with carriers. Especially the one that rhymes with “Bombast.”
Mind you, that leverage probably only goes so far. People are desperate to watch the Nuggets and Avalanche, the two best teams in town, anchored by the best two front offices in town. The Rockies made an executive decision to become unwatchable four years ago and haven’t looked back. Or down.
If there’s a silver lining, maybe it’s the hope that putting three of Denver’s top four pro sports franchises on one channel melts the ice built up between KSE and Comcast, whose cold war — billionaires vs. billionaires, with customers serving as collateral damage — celebrates a birthday this week. Four years. Four years that feel like 14.
But why stop there, Stan? To paraphrase Quint, Robert Shaw’s crusty fisherman from the movie “Jaws,” for a mere $3 mil, you can probably have the head, the tail, the whole darned thing.
Think of it this way: If the Rockies were interesting — Lordy, if they were even remotely competitive — you’d have all the broadcast leverage needed to get Altitude in front of more eyeballs. That’s not happening under current management.
When a bad Rox team averages 38,045 at home for a three-game series with the awful, absentee Athletics, then averages 40,667 more when the even more insular and dysfunctional White Sox come to town, what’s ownership’s incentive to actually … try?
Rockies players are to Coors Field what the cast members are to Disneyland: polite, cheerful, wholesome background noise, inoffensive to a fault. Especially when at the plate.
Who’s on first? It doesn’t matter as long as Goofy plays left field and the kids get to hug Dinger. The park is the show. 20th and Blake is the Hoppiest Place on Earth.
But dang it, there’s a baseball giant lying dormant in LoDo, snoring away while Dick Monfort sneaks off to his swanky hotel on the corner to count his money.
Can you imagine what a Kroenke management team could pull off at Coors, if given a crack? “Imagine” being the key word, family business and all that. But a town can dream.
Stan and son Josh are stubborn enough Missouri mules to care about the on-field product, even if the current state of the Colorado Rapids gives one pause and two migraines. The only major domestic trophy missing from the KSE family case is the one they let Rob Manfred awkwardly hand out every autumn.
The Rockies don’t need fresh money. They need fresh ideas. Fresh eyes. Fresh legs. Fresh arms. Fresh bats. Fresh everything.
Building a core around young, cost-controlled starting pitching? Smart. Overpaying to keep it? Dumb. Handing Kris Bryant $182 million to shoot Dairy Queen commercials? Insanity.
Come on down, Stan. Take a swing. Forbes.com says you’re worth $12.9 billion all by your lonesome, and that the Rox could command at least $1.48 billion on the open market. Why not double that and see where the chips land?
If Enos Stanley Kroenke, a man named for two baseball players, could swap $3 billion for the Rockies, it would consummate the greatest trade in Denver sports since the Broncos fleeced the Colts for the draft rights to John Elway. Two scores and seven Super Bowls ago.
