How Robert built the fortune
Robert Kraft's wealth was first built in an unglamorous industry: paper and packaging. In the 1960s he joined Rand-Whitney, a Worcester, Massachusetts, packaging company controlled by his father in law, Jacob Hiatt, and in 1968 he took control of it through a leveraged purchase. In 1972 he founded International Forest Products, which traded paper and pulp commodities internationally. Together these businesses form the industrial core of what is now the Kraft Group, his family's holding company based in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
Sport became the second pillar. Kraft, a lifelong Patriots season ticket holder, bought land next to the team's stadium in 1985 and then the stadium itself out of bankruptcy in 1988. The stadium lease made it very difficult for the team's owner at the time to move the franchise, and in 1994 Kraft bought the New England Patriots outright. He later paid for most of the construction of Gillette Stadium himself, with public money going mainly to roads and infrastructure; the venue opened in 2002.
Under his ownership the Patriots became one of the most successful teams in the history of the National Football League, winning six Super Bowls between the 2001 and 2018 seasons with coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. That success, combined with the strong growth in NFL media rights, has made the franchise among the most valuable sports teams in the world, and it is now the largest part of his fortune.
Companies and holdings
The Kraft Group's main businesses include:
- The New England Patriots of the NFL
- The New England Revolution of Major League Soccer, a founding club of the league in 1996
- Gillette Stadium and Patriot Place, a shopping, dining and entertainment complex beside it
- Rand-Whitney, a maker of corrugated boxes and recycled paperboard
- International Forest Products, a global trader of paper and forest products
- Kraft Sports and Entertainment, which runs events and venues
The group has also owned or invested in other teams, including the San Jose Earthquakes in the early years of MLS and the Boston Lobsters of World TeamTennis, and has holdings in private equity and real estate. His sons, especially Jonathan Kraft, hold senior roles in the group.
Early life and career
Kraft was born in 1941 in Brookline, Massachusetts, and grew up in a Jewish family in which his father ran a dress manufacturing business in Boston. He attended Columbia University on a partial scholarship and graduated in 1963, then earned an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1965.
He married Myra Hiatt, the daughter of Worcester businessman and philanthropist Jacob Hiatt, while still a student, and soon went to work in her family's packaging business. He showed an early appetite for deals and risk, taking control of Rand-Whitney rather than staying in a managerial role and then building a trading company from scratch. In the 1970s he also bought a stake in the Boston Lobsters tennis team, an early sign of his interest in sports ownership. Myra Kraft died in 2011, and Kraft later married Dana Blumberg in 2022.
Those early ventures gave him a base of cash flow and business relationships in Massachusetts that later helped him finance the purchase of the stadium and the team, at a time when the Patriots were losing money and their future in New England was uncertain.
Philanthropy and public life
Kraft and his late wife Myra gave to many causes in Massachusetts and Israel, including hospitals, universities and Jewish organisations. The Kraft family has supported Columbia University, where a campus centre for Jewish student life is named after them, and has funded health and community programmes in New England through the Kraft Family Foundation and the Patriots Foundation.
In 2019 he founded the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism and later funded a national campaign, known by its blue square symbol, to raise awareness of hatred against Jews. He received the Genesis Prize in 2019 and donated the award to related causes. Kraft has also been involved in NFL governance, serving on committees that negotiated media and labour agreements, and has made a point of building relationships with political leaders across party lines.