Demoff said that Arteta and McVay’s competitive nature “is what drives them”. It is now driving the rest of the organisation too, as the working relationship between KSE’s most prominent coaches embodies how the group wants all of its staff to operate.
Besides KSE’s annual team summit, the cross-sport connections are more organic than prescriptive. But when those opportunities arise, such as the Rams’ recent London game, their staff are encouraged to share ideas and insights, to “think bigger picture and connect dots”.
Before the Rams’ first London game in 2012, they trained at Arsenal’s training base and saw their players wearing tracking devices. The Rams introduced them in 2013, allowing them to monitor player workload, and the team has since suffered the fewest injuries in the NFL.
Once when Arsenal trained at the Rams’ facility, Arteta noticed the number of cameras filming the players and said “this is the sort of thing that we need to do”.
Some of Demoff’s closest friends in the industry are at the San Francisco 49ers, who now own Leeds United and Rangers too, but “we’re all competitors. There’s only so much people are willing to share, whereas here, there is no limit. Everybody realises that being an open book makes us all better”.
In recent years, the vision of Stan and Josh Kroenke has been to bring KSE’s teams and entities closer together, in terms of both sport and commercially.
With the Rams playing international games this season and next, they have been working with Arsenal to see how they can grow their fanbase and brand globally.
And in January, KSE formed Kroenke Signature Properties (KSP), a division dedicated to sharing resources and making it easier for partners to connect if they wish to branch out from the UK market to the US, or vice-versa.
“It’s more joined up, it’s the ability to spread that reach,” said Garlick. “We can leverage those different areas we’ve got across the globe.”
Demoff added that “the goal is to grow revenue, to be helpful in the US and drive revenue into Arsenal, where obviously that’s valuable from a PSR (profit and sustainability rules) perspective.
“But also to tell a story of ‘there’s power when your brand shows up at Emirates Stadium or SoFi Stadium’, especially given the global events that are coming to Los Angeles via the World Cup (2026), the Super Bowl (2027) and the Olympics (2028).”
