The Colorado Mammoth has had three changes of ownership since the team was founded in 1987.
It’s also gone through four different names and locations. The current owners moved the NLL franchise from Washington to Denver.
Timeline Of Ownership Of Colorado Mammoth
Here is the history of ownership and how the name has changed. I didn’t put in a column for the locations – because you can tell from the name!
| 1987 | Baltimore Thunder | Founded by Chris Fritz and Russ Cline |
| 1997 | Baltimore Thunder | Bought by Dennis Townsend |
| 1999 | Pittsburgh CrosseFire | Relocated by Dennis Townsend |
| 2000 | Washington Power | Bought and relocated by Steve Comiskey |
| 2002 | Colorado Mammoth | Bought and relocated by Stan Kroenke |
With the summary out of the way, this article runs through the backgrounds of the owners. We’ll start with the most recent and work backward.
Stan Kroenke, Current Owner Of Colorado Mammoth
Colorado Mammoth is owned by Stan Kroenke through his company Kroenke Sports & Entertainment.
He bought the National Lacrosse League franchise in 2002 and moved it from Washington to Denver.
Stan Kroenke also owns the Ball Arena where Colorado Mammoth play their home games.
When lacrosse fans want to know who owns a team, they are usually wondering if the owner has deep enough pockets to sustain a sports franchise in the long term.
This was a particular problem for some former owners of the franchise (discussed in later sections).
Mammoth fans shouldn’t worry about Kroenke, whose net worth is in the billions. His wife Ann has billions in her own right. They should have no problem sustaining the current level of player salaries at Colorado Mammoth.
Let’s take a closer look.
Business background
Stan Kroenke was born in 1947 and grew up in Missouri. His father owned a lumber company and Stan worked there during his teens.
He married Ann Walton in 1974. Ann is a daughter of the late Bud Walton, who co-founded Walmart with his brother Sam.
Stan started a real estate company in 1983. The firm built shopping centers and apartment buildings. It also built the Ball Arena in Denver, the Mammoth’s home stadium.
His wife Ann inherited half her father’s stake in Walmart when he died in 1995. Forbes put her current net worth as over five billion dollars.
Stan joined the board of Walmart for a few years after his father-in-law passed.
Sports ownership
Between them, Stan and Ann Kroenke own five other major sports franchises.
- Los Angeles Rams, NFL
- Denver Nuggets, NBA
- Colorado Avalanche, NHL
- Colorado Rapids, MLS
- Arsenal, English soccer
The NFL has rules that block owners from having a majority stake in an NBA or NHL franchise. So, the Nuggets and Avalanche are legally owned by Ann Kroenke.
There’s an amusing story behind how the Kroenkes bought their first teams.
Another wealthy business couple called Bill and Nancy Laurie announced they had purchased the Avalanche and the Nuggets in 1999. They had paid $400 million.
But the existing shareholders complained that the price was too low and insisted that the bidding be reopened. The Kroenke’s swooped in with a winning bid of $450 million.
You may be asking, so what? Well, Ann Kroenke is the older sister of Nancy Laurie. They are sometimes referred to as the Walton Heiresses.
Two years later, the Kroenkes bought the Colorado Mammoth from a Virginia lawyer amidst some secrecy. We’ll look at Steve Comiskey next.
Steve Comiskey, Former Owner
When Steve Comiskey got interested in the franchise, the team was playing in Pittsburgh.
Comiskey was a wrestler at the U.S. Naval Academy but played lacrosse in the offseason. The Virginian went into law and spent a period as a trial lawyer in Washington D.C.
When he moved into private practice, he specialized in representing tech billionaires. He learned more about sports involvement through looking after the legal side of their charities.
However, it’s fair to say that he didn’t have the deep pockets of some of the other owners in the NLL. That would become a problem.
Sports ownership
Steve Comiskey knew Gary Gait, the star player of the team in Pittsburgh. Gait knew that his team’s owner wanted to sell and put the two men in touch.
Steve Comiskey purchased the team in 2000 and moved it to Washington. The team was now renamed the Washington Power.
Steve Govett was the general manager of the team. He took a minority stake in ownership.
Unfortunately, the team didn’t pull in the crowds in the Washington area. The previous owner had sold the team due to disappointing attendances in Pittsburgh.
The numbers in Washington were worse. In the second season, they were averaging two thousand paying customers.
Comiskey held an emergency meeting with the NLL in December 2001. There was discussion of moving the team to either Denver, Connecticut, or Winnipeg.
The club and the NLL wanted to keep negotiations secret and the fans were increasingly frustrated by being kept in the dark. I gleaned what happened next from browsing through old messages on fan forums.
How the team was sold
This is how the story goes.
In February 2022, the club put a gag order (don’t talk) on the entire organization as they continued talks with an interested party from Denver.
In April, a fan who seems to be an insider reports that Sam Kroenke is the interested party. He also says that the team had come close to folding completely under financial pressure.
In May, another fan forlornly writes that he had tried to phone the team’s office to inquire about a season ticket. But the phone was disconnected.
That same month, a fan cites “league sources” saying that Kroenke and Comiskey had come to an agreement with a sale price of $1.5 million. The official announcement was the following month.
After the deal concluded, Kroenke moved the team to Denver and renamed it the Colorado Mammoth.
This time, they relocated to Colorado and were renamed the Colorado Mammoth.
Dennis Townsend, Former Owner
The team was originally formed to play in a league with common ownership of every franchise. The team was called the Baltimore Thunder.
The ownership model of the league changed in 1997 to switch to separate owners.
Dennis Townsend took majority stakes in the Baltimore Thunder. Townsend was a local real estate developer in Baltimore.
He became increasingly unhappy with attendances in Baltimore. The club was averaging about seven thousand at their home games.
So, he relocated his team to Pittsburgh in 1999. The team was renamed as the Pittsburgh CrosseFire.
Unfortunately, the move backfired. The average attendances in Pittsburgh didn’t reach five thousand during the season.
They only lasted one season in the Steel City. Townsend decided to sell the franchise.
I mentioned earlier that star player Gary Gait knew Steve Comiskey, the Washington-based lawyer. Townsend sold to Comiskey, which resulted in the team moving again.
Chris Fritz And Russ Cline, Original Owners
We’ve arrived right at the beginning of the ownership history of the team that is now the Colorado Mammoth.
The Baltimore Thunder was founded in 1987 to play in a new professional box league.
The league was started by two marketers from Kansas who promoted everything from heavy metal concerts to tractor pulling.
The duo wanted to build a new league around an exciting sport. They were about to get into some form of roller derby.
Thankfully for them (and us NLL fans), they were introduced to box lacrosse during a visit to Canada. Like many people seeing the sport for the first time, they were hooked.
The league operated under the same ownership model as the new Premier Lacrosse League. In other words, all the teams had the same group of owners.
Fritz and Cline held the majority stakes of every franchise. Each team had another one or two minority owners.
The league was initially called the Eagle Pro Box Lacrosse League. It soon changed its name to the Major Indoor Lacrosse League (or MILL).
It ended up being the National Lacrosse League that we know and love.
The Colorado Mammoth isn’t the only modern NLL team that was a founding member (under a different name). Check out our article on the ownership history of the Philadelphia Wings.
