The Kroenke Family – $8.5B
It is difficult to talk about sports in America without mentioning the Kroenke group. Altogether, the Kroenke’s possess a myriad of top sports teams throughout the entirety of sports in general, including lacrosse, football, basketball and ice hockey. Such shares are added to various projects within media creation, radio and real estate, dropping beneath the leading overseeing family corporation, called Kroenke Sports & Entertainment. When the Walmart heiress Ann married Stan Kroenke, they went on to purchase a plethora of sports teams, including the Colorado Avalanche, the Los Angeles Rams, the Los Angeles Gladiators and even British soccer team Arsenal.
The Milken Family – $3.7B
Michael Milken put his family on this list of wealthiest Americans for all of the wrong reasons. Beginning with his pivotal role in a trading con which shattered Wall Street sensibility for decades. Milken is recognized as the inventor of “junk bonds”, which are high-yield yet negatively labeled bonds which investors consolidated to trick financiers and lenders into purchasing. Towards the end of the 80s, the spread of junk bonds led to a calamitous default domino effect, eventually landing Milken in prison with a two-year sentence. Amazingly, Michael has recently returned to the public sphere, attempting to rectify his reputation through the funding of cancer research, having beaten prostate cancer himself.