Meet The Billionaire Who Just Became The Largest Landowner In America

If you had to guess who is the largest landowner in the United States, you might think Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos.

However, none of these billionaires can claim the top spot of the largest landlord in the United States.

Los Angeles Rams owner Stanley Kroenke, instead, has just been rewarded with the title of the largest landowner in the United States.

CNBC reported more on Kroenke’s new deal that makes him America’s largest landowner:

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.

Advertisement

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.

Here’s a photo of Kroenke in case you have never seen him:

Land Report reported who is behind Kroenke:

In 2026, America’s largest private landowner is Stan Kroenke, who controls an estimated 2,700,000 acres nationwide. In December, Kroenke cemented his position at the top of the rankings by completing the single-largest land purchase in the United States in more than a decade—acquiring more than 937,000 deeded acres of ranchland in New Mexico from the heirs of Teledyne founder Henry Singleton (1916–1999).

Kroenke is followed by Red Emmerson and his family, who rank second with 2,440,000 acres in California, Oregon, and Washington through their timber-products company, Sierra Pacific Industries. The Emmersons vaulted into the top tier of American landownership in 2021 after purchasing 175,000 acres in Oregon from Seneca Timber Company, a move that pushed them past Liberty Media chairman John Malone, now the nation’s third-largest landowner with 2,200,000 acres.

Rounding out the upper ranks is CNN founder Ted Turner, who stands fourth with 2 million acres spanning the Southeast, the Great Plains, and the American West.

Advertisement

The Land Report 100 Research Team analyzes transactions and scours records to determine America’s leading landowners. That’s how we broke the news in 2020 that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was America’s largest farmland owner with more than 260,000 acres. That’s how we identified Shanda Investment Group founder Tianqiao Chen as the owner of almost 200,000 acres of Oregon timberland in 2024. It’s one of the many reasons why news organizations worldwide rely on the Magazine of the American Landowner to understand this asset class.