Robert Kraft

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Robert Kraft

For other uses, see Robert Kraft (disambiguation).

Robert K. Kraft, (born June 5, 1941 in Brookline, Massachusetts) is the owner of National Football League's New England Patriots and Major League Soccer's New England Revolution, as well as the stadium where they play, Gillette Stadium.

Kraft is a 1963 graduate of Columbia University and received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1965. While at Columbia, Kraft played on the school's Lightweight Football team. He is married to Myra Kraft, a 1964 graduate of Brandeis University and the daughter of Boston philanthropist Jacob Hiatt, who owned and founded the company that he went to work for out of Business School.

He began his career with the Rand-Whitney Group, a packaging company he later acquired; he still serves as chairman. In 1972, he founded International Forest Products, a paper commodity trader. The two combined companies make up the largest privately held paper and packaging companies in the United States. He grew his father in-laws wealth to a sum big enough to eventually be able to buy the Patriots.

A Patriots fan since their American Football League days, he has been a season ticket holder since 1972. He bought an option on the parcel which contained Sullivan Stadium, then the home of the Patriots, in 1985. In 1988, he outbid several competitors to buy the stadium out of bankruptcy court for $25 million. It was renamed Foxboro Stadium in 1990.

In 1992, the Patriots themselves were bought by James Orthwein, a St. Louis native. For the next two years, constant rumors swirled that the Patriots were due to move to St. Louis because Orthwein wanted to return the NFL to a city that had lost the Cardinals in 1988. Finally, in 1994, Orthwein offered Kraft $75 million to buy out the remainder of the team's lease at the stadium, which would then allow Orthwein to move the Patriots to St. Louis. Kraft turned him down, instead making a $175 million bid to buy the team and save the Patriots from relocation that Orthwein had little choice but to accept. It was the highest price ever paid at the time for a professional team, especially remarkable since the Patriots were at that time one of the least-valued teams in the NFL. He consolidated his business interests into the Kraft Group in 1998.

The day after the NFL approved the sale, Patriots fans bought almost 6,000 season tickets en route to selling out every game for the first time in the team's 34-year history. Every home game has been sold out since then. The Patriots responded by putting together a 7-game winning streak to end the season, making the playoffs for the first time since 1986.

While the Patriots had appeared in Super Bowl XX while the original owners, the Sullivans, still owned them, this was one of only six playoff appearances in 33 years. However, since Kraft bought the team, they have made the playoffs eight times in 12 years. Under Kraft's ownership, the Patriots have made appeared in more playoff games (19) than in the team's first 34 seasons combined (10). The team won AFC East titles in 1996, 1997, 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005 and represented the AFC in the Super Bowl in 1996 (lost), 2001 (won) 2003 (won) and 2004 (won). The Patriots dominated the NFL in 2003 and 2004 with identical 14-2 regular-season records--a franchise record for a team that hadn't won more than 11 games in a season before Kraft bought the team.

The Patriots almost moved to Hartford, Connecticut in 1999. They reached an agreement with then Connecticut Governor John Rowland to move to a new stadium intended to be the cornerstone of downtown redevelopment. After lobbying the Connecticut legislature to approve state funds for the stadium the Patriots resumed negotiations with Massachusetts legislators who had balked on paying for site improvements for a new stadium in Foxboro. At the last minute the Massachusetts legislature approved the subsidies and hurdles were cleared for what became Gillette Stadium in their longtime home of Foxboro, which opened in 2002.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal pursued legal action against the Patriots for reneging on the Hartford deal. They later reimbursed the state for out-of-pocket expenses. Many in Connecticut still call Kraft "Crafty Kraft" ^{[citation needed]} for using Rowland and Hartford as leverage to get Gillette Stadium built.

He recently addressed the 2005 class of Columbia College upon their graduation regarding the driving forces in his life: "Family, Faith, Philanthropy, and FOOTBALL". In a break with commonly accepted spelling, Mr. Kraft termed this heady combination the "Four 'F's."

Later in 2005, a minor international incident was caused when it was reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had inadvertently taken one of Kraft's three Super Bowl rings. Kraft quickly cleared up the misunderstanding, stating that he had given Putin the ring out of "respect and admiration" he had for Putin and the Russian people.

In November 2005, met with Rick Parry, the Chief Executive of English Football team Liverpool. Kraft is rumoured to be interested in investing money into the 2004-05 European Champions.

Kraft told BBC Radio Five Live: "Liverpool is a great brand and it's something our family respects a lot. We're always interested in opportunities and growing, so you never know what can happen."

Robert and his wife Myra have donated millions of dollars to all sorts of Israeli, Jewish and non-Jewish charities. He has visited Israel many times and built a football stadium which is called Kraft Stadium in Jerusalem there is a league it has 33 teams and 500+ players. There is a rumor that he said Shehechiyanu when the Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2002. Robert’s wife Myra is also Jewish and is involved in charity to the Jews that are needy and is very involved in Hadassah Hospital. Robert is the primary shareholder of Carmel Container Systems, Israel's largest packaging plant. In 1997, he invested $40 million in a factory in Caesarea in order to provide his company, which employs 700 people, with the most advanced technology available. Kraft has an Israeli passport and so does his wife. Robert and Myra have been working to make a sister city relationship strong between Haifa and Boston. Robert and Myra helped renovate an afterschool program for Ethiopian immigrants. The Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life located at Columbia University is a study hall primarily for Jews who attend the school.