Robert Kraft: From Paper Mills to Patriots Billions

August 30, 2025

Welcome to Gridiron Wallet — where NFL players don’t just chase rings, they chase bags. From million-dollar grills to side hustles that slap, we’re decoding how football’s finest make it, spend it, and sometimes… fumble it. 🏈🔥

The latest edition of our newsletter covers Robert Kraft:

  • The Paper Fortune

  • Krafty Play at Foxboro

  • Beyond Football — Diversification & Legacy

✍️Paper Play

The Paper Fortune

In the 30-plus years of the New England Patriots before Robert Kraft’s hostile takeover in 1994, they ranked 21st out of 28 teams in regular-season wins. They made just one Super Bowl and went 4-10 in the playoffs overall. 

When Kraft took over ahead of the 1994 season, they didn’t just have their first full sellout in Foxborough… They also ushered in a new era as a respected yearly contender.

Since Kraft’s purchase (we’re not crediting him with all the success, but the difference in the Pats’ fortunes before and after him is notable), the Patriots have won 324 regular-season games (most in the NFL) and 33 playoff wins (most in the NFL, 10 more than the next best). 

Kraft made a couple of surprisingly shrewd moves to start with. He hired Bill Belichick and drafted Tom Brady, neither of whom was widely celebrated at the time. But the moves resulted in the greatest dynasty in NFL history. 

So, how did Kraft manage to build up enough capital to fund this six-Super Bowl goliath?

When Kraft was just a wee lad in the early 1960s in Massachusetts, he was lucky enough to get a job with a packaging company called Rand-Whitney Group, which was run by none other than his own father-in-law. By 1968, he owned the outfit, having done so by way of a leveraged buyout, meaning he purchased the company with borrowed money.

A few years later, Kraft founded a kind of sister company: International Forest Products, which specialized in physical paper products. In tandem, Kraft’s two companies grew to become the largest privately held paper and packaging companies in the country. Eat your heart out, Dunder Mifflin.

IFP, in particular, found a lot of success. By 1997, three years after he purchased the Patriots, the company ranked among the top 100 importers/exporters in America. In the 1990s, Kraft’s companies were producing corrugated and folding cartons for countless businesses that sold everything from missiles to cameras, to mints and makeup.

Kraft’s ability to maintain and grow his two businesses allowed him to eventually pursue and achieve his dream of owning a professional sports team in Boston. 

He had previously been rebuffed by the MLB’s Red Sox and the NBA’s Celtics. But by 1993, Kraft had laid the groundwork to ensure that the NFL’s Patriots would soon be under his watchful eye.

💸Patriot Way

Krafty Play at Foxboro

Robert Kraft was actually a massive fan of the Patriots and had had season tickets since 1971. But the ownership group was not interested in selling him the club. So, in 1985, he bought Foxboro Raceway, a horse racing track next to the Patriots’ stadium.

Kraft’s ownership of the raceway prevented the New England ownership group at the time from holding non-Patriots events at the stadium when horse races were scheduled. Essentially, he blocked his favorite team from generating more money than they could’ve by buying up the surrounding land. And it worked.

In 1988, the Pats' owners at the time sold their controlling interest in the team. Kraft swooped in and outbid competitors for the stadium at $22 million. With control of the stadium, he then tried to place a bid on the franchise itself, but was outbid. 

The new owners tried to relocate the Patriots to Jacksonville and St. Louis, but Kraft refused, since the team would have had to break its lease with the stadium he owned. One group offered him $75 million outright to break the lease, but he vehemently refused, which led to the hostile takeover.

In that same year, Kraft used his stadium leverage to eventually buy the Patriots for $172 million, a record at the time. Another owner, Stan Kroenke, had offered more. But the Pats’ owner at the time would’ve been stuck with more expenses, as Kroenke wanted to move the team, which would’ve broken the lease on the stadium. So, they caved and sold the team to Kraft.

To this day, Kraft still says he overpaid for the Patriots. Yet his passion for the team led to great financial success. The franchise is now worth over $7 billion, according to Forbes. All thanks to those six Super Bowls with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.

All in all, it’s a great lesson for future business leaders. Kraft controlled the infrastructure of the Patriots before leveraging his position to buy the franchise. It was a genius move that ultimately netted him ownership of his favorite childhood team and a massive profit. Isn’t that the dream? 

💡 Gridiron Wallet Trivia

Did you know?
🌿 Robert Kraft turned a $25,000 investment in a packaging company into a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate—The Kraft Group. That success funded his purchase of the Patriots and helped him become one of the most influential owners in sports, playing key roles in NFL labor peace, media deals, and even international growth efforts.

🏈✨Dream Team

Beyond Football — Diversification & Legacy

By now, it should be clear that Kraft’s valuation, pegged at $11.8 billion, is the result of a host of smart bets and the courage to invest beyond the field. Through The Kraft Group alone, he has pieced together a wide-ranging portfolio across real estate, venture capital, and private equity. 

Kraft’s most valuable assets, of course, are the Gillette Stadium and the Patriot Place complex. But his holdings also include commercial buildings in Boston, industrial facilities in New York, and luxury residences in Florida and California.

Kraft was also among the few to bet big on eSports before it became as big as it is today. Back in 2017, via his esports division, Oxygen Esports, he launched the Boston Uprising as one of the founding franchises in the Overwatch League. 

Despite disbanding in 2024, the experiment showed the Patriots' owner’s appetite for testing high-growth frontiers. 

Add in media investments like New England Cable News and Randall-Reilly, Kraft’s reach also extends from regional journalism to trade publications serving trucking and construction.

As impressive as Kraft’s investments have been, it’s perhaps his philanthropic nature that will remain the most defining part of his legacy. 

Over the decades, the Kraft family has reportedly donated more than $500 million to causes spanning education, healthcare, cultural diversity, and Jewish initiatives. As a result, in 2019, Kraft won the Genesis Prize, often dubbed the “Jewish Nobel.” 

And unsurprisingly, he declined the $1 million prize money, directing it toward organizations fighting anti-Semitism. 

“It is important that we continue to support organizations that focus on combating prejudices by building bridges and uniting people of different backgrounds,” Kraft said at the time.

There remains the question of succession, which many billionaires struggle with. But luckily for Kraft, he seems to be already seeing his plans in motion. 

His eldest son, Jonathan Kraft, today serves as president of both the Patriots and the Kraft Group, while his second son, Daniel, leads international operations. Josh, Kraft’s third son, meanwhile, oversees the family’s philanthropic arm. 

As the billionaire recently admitted, “Right now, I see three of my sons every day… I’m pretty lucky.”

All told, the biggest takeaway from Kraft’s riches is that owning a sports team can create the spotlight, but the real wealth and influence come from how it is used. For Robert Kraft, the Patriots and New England Revolution were just the gateway. It was his diversification and legacy planning that built him his empire.

📆 NFL Money Stat of 1990

The NFL implemented its first salary cap in 1994, set at $34.6 million per team. It was a game-changer—limiting how much teams could spend on players and leveling the financial playing field. Today’s cap is over $255 million, showing just how dramatically the league’s revenues—and payrolls—have skyrocketed since the '90s.