Robert Kraft

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0:32Over the past quarter century, the most successful sports owner in the world has been Robert Kraft. He's taken his team, the New England Patriots, to six Super Bowl championships with the help of Tom Brady, his star quarterback. Had a chance to sit down with Robert Kraft at his Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, to talk about how he's been so successful as a sports team owner, but also his newfound and very deeply felt interest in fighting anti-Semitism. Bob, in your wildest dreams, when you bought this team in 1994, did you ever imagine you'd win six Super Bowls and be the most famous owner in professional sports?

1:09Well, I sat in the stands of the old Foxborough Stadium, and then when they came here, I sat in the stands here and dreamt about one day trying to buy this team and own it and run it the way I wanted. I said, if I could ever get this team, I just dream of having home playoff games and going to the Super Bowl and winning it. Now, when you bought the team, I think you paid roughly $175 million, something like that. 172. 172 million dollars. Okay,$172 million, which was a lot of money in those days, the highest price ever paid for a football team at the time. For any sports franchise anywhere in the world.

1:52Okay, so I'm sure your friend said, Bob, are you crazy? My friends, my wife. It's the one time in our marriage that she was ready to really wring my neck. But now the commanders, they were sold recently for a purchase price of$6 billion, and they haven't won six Super Bowls. So if you put your team up for sale, presumably it's worth$8 billion,$10 billion or more, would you ever consider selling or you're never going to sell? Never in my lifetime will we sell this team, and I hope my children keep it going as well. It also builds community. It's a way to build bridges. You bring people of all background together.

2:38I think back to when we were privileged to win our first Super Bowl three, four months after 9-11, and Boston, a city of 600 ,000 people, a million and a half people came out on the streets, very cold day, you know, black, white, Asian, gay, every background, all putting community and team first. And that's a privilege and an honor. So I look at this team as like a community asset, and I'm never going to sell it. So let me ask you about the NFL, General. The NFL prices for the value of the teams has gone up, as I mentioned earlier, and that's because TV contracts have gone up. How much higher do you think TV contracts can really go?

3:26Is there any limit to how much you can get paid by the broadcasters? Well, I've been privileged to be chair of the media committee for the last couple of decades. And three years ago, three seasons ago, we were able to do seven to ten-year contracts that exceeded$130 billion. And that was tremendous because it gave us great stability in the league where we could do a ten-year labor deal. And we basically share 50-50 with the players, the revenue. So, you know, they have been able to grow and succeed with us. It's, you know, we know linear TV is really challenged now. And we've been doing things that we brought in two tech partners now, who Amazon and Google or YouTube.

4:30and I think we are developing our own NFL Plus where we go direct to consumer and I think we'll have some serious decisions to make down the road when we see what happens in the whole media environment. Now, the NFL is the most popular, I guess, spectator sport in the United States, you could argue. It gets better TV ratings than virtually any other sport. But around the world, the most popular sport seems to be, for this purpose, what is called soccer in this country and football outside. Can you make American football as popular outside the United States as European football is around the world, or is that not realistic?

5:17I don't think it's realistic, partly because to play the sport of soccer, all you need is a ball, really. You don't need equipment, you don't need anything but a net and a ball. Two-thirds of the world's population can actually play the game. Unfortunately, except for Europe, we haven't really had the game played. Like we're going to Germany this year and the stadium we're playing has 55 or 60 ,000 seats and demand for tickets was 3 million within the first 24 hours. So the demand is there and the appreciation of the game. And I think we're going to work to have the game appreciated more globally.

6:07And I think with gaming coming on, that people throughout the world, our sport has a 40-second delay between plays that prop betting and other kinds of gaming as we educate more internationally that's where the marketplace really is open for us but I don't think unfortunately they'll be playing the game all over the world one of the issues that the NFL has had to deal with is the concussion issue when you were playing football it wasn't probably as big a deal when I played football when I was 10 or 12 you know I wasn't getting hit in the head that much by people were weighing two or three hundred pounds today with you have a lot of players that weigh 300 pounds they hit you you can really get hurt you've settled the litigation I think on concussions and you think the concussion issue has largely been addressed and do you think better helmets will help the problem in the future a bit I think the advancement that has come with the medical support.

7:12I go back to where we were. This is our 30th season. I pinch myself. But the medical advancement and looking to keep the game as healthy as possible with the helmets. We even have an independent doctor who sits above who can take any player out of the game or have him be tested because you know guys sometimes wouldn't want to go out because they don't want to lose their job I really believe the medical and safety is better than it's ever been so let me ask you about one of the most faithful decisions I guess your team ever made somebody decided to draft a guy named Tom Brady who had played football at University of Michigan initially I think it was in Michigan he wasn't the number one draft pick and you know somebody must have seen something in him who was the person who said hey let's take Tom Brady a gamble on him well that gentleman was a man by the name of Dick Rabine in that draft there were seven quarterbacks taken I think by the third or fourth round and this man Dick Rabon I remember in the draft room him saying to Belichick you know Tom Brady's still there he's tremendous value but we had three quarterbacks and then the fourth round came the fifth round came the sixth round came and the last pick of the sixth round which is known as a compensatory pick draft pick number 199 we wound up taking Tom Brady so how did it feel when he decided to leave the team you obviously could have kept him I guess but he decided to leave or and he decided to go to the Tampa Bay team and they won the Super Bowl his first year so did you say I should have kept him or you say look I made a long-term decision and I'm okay with it I always would talk to him, and he would take less money to play for the Patriots.

9:26And, you know, we have a salary cap. So I always assured him that whatever money I didn't pay him wasn't going into my pocket. It was going to other players who would be around him. And if we won those kind of trophies, he would be the biggest beneficiary for the rest of his life, which in fact has happened. And, you know, if the Patriots can't win a Super Bowl, I'm always rooting. If we're out of it, I'm rooting for Tom Brady. And after being with us for 20 years, we could have franchised him or done other things. I said to him when he did his last contract two years before that at year 20 he would decide whether he stayed with us or not.

10:20I think he had earned that right, and for his own personal reasons, he felt it was best to move on. You also have the most successful coach practically in football history, Bill Belichick, who you brought back to this team, I guess, about 20-some years ago. He had been coaching at the New York Giants for a while, been here, and then you brought him back as the head coach. He'd been with us 24 years. He's the longest serving. Coach in NFL history, nobody's, I think, well, somebody may have coached 24 years of one team, maybe George Hallis because he was the owner of the team. But, you know, six Super Bowls.

10:56He's now been with you 24 years. Is he going to stay for another X number of years or he can stay forever? I'll let you ask him. He has to decide what's right. Join Bloomberg in Houston or via live stream on November 4th for the future investor, finding the opportunities. This 2025 event series will examine how companies are investing in their businesses to create efficiencies, innovating their products and services, and improving the customer experience. This series is presented by Invesco QQQ. Register at bloomberglive.com slash futureinvestorhouston. That's bloomberglive.com slash futureinvestorhouston.

11:38Let's talk about your background. Where were you born? I guess from your accent you were probably born or raised in Massachusetts. Probably. I still park my car here. But I grew up in Brookline, Mass. Went to public schools. Were you an athlete? Well, I like to think I was an athlete. My favorite sport was football, but we observed the Sabbath. and unfortunately in high school I couldn't play football because of that and but I was able to get a full academic scholarship to Columbia College and I went there and played football there and just loved the game and realized how football in life is the greatest training ground for people in business or life or anything.

12:33What did you do after you graduated from Columbia? I was privileged to go to Harvard Business School. So after you graduated from Harvard Business School, what did you do? My father-in-law had a couple box plants and he wanted me to join them and I didn't want to be I want to go into business for myself my father advised me since my wife at the time was the equivalent of an only child that I should do that and out of respect which I did I did it two years and I was going to leave and I I was asked what I could do to stay, and I said, you know, I'd want to buy into the company. I didn't want to be working for other people, even if they were relatives.

13:28And so I was able to do a leverage buyout. So you were in the private equity world? I started on my own, yeah. Interest rates were favorable, and I bought half the company, and then there was an opportunity to take over a paper mill up in Canada, and I decided I wanted to do it. I offered my father-in-law half the company. He passed on it. And so I did it. And 51 years later, we've developed that into an international company. We're in over 120 countries in the world. And we're number six in paper and packaging. Number six. But it's a privately owned company. you're not going to take it public or sell it or anything?

14:25Not in my lifetime. Okay. So you're not selling the Patriots. You're not selling the packaging company. I guess you don't like to sell things, right? I really don't. Well, that's why you wouldn't be good in the private equity business, because we like to sell things. I get emotional attached, too, and to the people working there. We try to create a family environment in everything we're involved in. And I've learned that people want to be part of something that's bigger than themselves. So let's talk about the team. I see today that someone writes a check and they bought the team. Unfortunately for me, it was a much more complicated process.

15:07There were three steps. I had a, there were 200 acres of parking that was owned by one group. and I got that land under option in 85 that went to 95 and coincidentally I bought the team in 94 so I was able to exercise the option. But that option on the land was for parking. In 88, 89, the stadium went into bankruptcy because of the Michael Jackson tour. At that time, Victor Kayyem owned the team. He bid$17 million for the stadium. I bid$25. The judge awarded it to us. When I bought the stadium in 88, it had a lease that went until 01 with an operating covenant, which means the team could never move without our permission.

16:04and finally in 94

16:10which was the getting close to near the end of the lease they wanted to move the team to St. Louis I wouldn't let James Orthwine who owned the team, he was part of the Bud family Budweiser family and they had a publicly financed stadium in St. Louis they wanted to move it and I wouldn't let them do that. Worked out okay for you? Your late wife was a little nervous, I guess? Before I went out to buy the team from Orthwine in St. Louis, she said, what are you going to pay? And I said, well, the right number is 115. I might go to 120, 122. And when I came back and told her that I went to 172, She went nuts.

17:03And Orthwine's lawyer from St. Louis called me and said, we will offer you$75 million to let the lease expire and let us move. And he called me at home and my wife heard that. She said, wait a minute, you paid$25 million for this. He's paying you$75 million. You'll still own the stadium. You'll get another team. And I said, no. I remember when I was a kid, my team, my baseball team was the Boston Braves. They played at BU Field. They moved, and they never came back. And I was heart sick. And that's why. It wasn't about the money. It was about the passion. One of the other things you're passionate about is the need to fight anti-Semitism.

17:57You've created a foundation against anti-Semitism to fight against anti-Semitism. Why are you so passionate about that cause, and is anti-Semitism on the rise? I think anti-Semitism is on the rise, and it's very disturbing to me because it's symbolic of, really, it starts with anti-Semitism. then that hatred goes against every other minority community, whether it's the black community, the LGBTQT +, or the Asian community. And, you know, the Jewish people in this country represent a little over 2 % of the population, but receive over 50 % of the religious hate crimes. and there are many things going on in America today that remind me what went on in Nazi Germany in the 30s you know they had book burning in Nazi Germany where they couldn't read Albert Einstein or Helen Keller or other kinds of books this is America the greatest country in the world and those kinds of things shouldn't be going on let me ask you have a pin on you that pin I guess is a pin for your foundation.

19:19What does it represent? It's a blue square that we wanted to find something that symbolized pushing back against hatred. And that is a symbol of unity and solidarity against all kinds of hate. And I'm technologically incompetent. But even I could get this blue, This little emoji is on everybody's cell phone and iPad, and you can put it on. Every message, every email I send has this little blue square. So you made a very large contribution to this foundation to help enhance its reputation and people knowing about it. And I assume other people are contributing as well. We've had amazing support.

20:07Our family now has committed over$75 million to it. Bank of America has committed$10 million.

20:26There are many families who have made seven-figure gifts. I shouldn't say their names unless they give us permission. But we've touched a nerve. There's something going on in this country where people want to push back and are looking for a vehicle. And I think this little blue square, I hope it goes viral and pushes back against all hatred and bigotry. And let us preserve the American dream that I think both you and I have experienced. So let's talk about Israel for a moment. You were awarded what is called the Jewish Nobel Prize, it's called the Genesis Prize, for contributions you've made to Israel and the Jewish people over many, many years.

21:19So did you ever visit Israel as a young person? Was that very important to you? Or were you just not that connected to Israel? When I got married, someone gave us a honeymoon gift of a trip to the Holy Land. I went there in 1963 when the country was 15 years old. And so I've watched the advancement. You know, that was 60 years ago. Wow. and the country is amazing. And I think what Israel has done technology-wise and the contributions it's made have been tremendous. So the secret to your success is prayer then, obviously. You say you've been praying a lot over the years. Prayer is very, spirituality prayer and giving thanks to the Almighty God and understanding how privileged we are and if we have our health and can pay our bills.

22:29Now, how many grandchildren do you have? I have eight grandchildren. And do they come to the games? You know, that's the one thing and why I would never sell this or do anything. As your family gets dispersed and everyone goes different places, it's the one thing. You know, I used to take my sons to the games. I used to get them out of religious school on Sundays without their mother's knowledge. And we'd come in and we'd tailgate here and spend the day here and get to know all our neighbors who sat in the seats around us. And it's lasting memories. Thanks for listening. To hear more of my interviews, you can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.