It's time Kraft got his own thread here, as he is the font from which springs the misery of New England soccer fans. I figured we can flood this with Kraft-related content. Yet I want to kick it off with a theory: maybe Bob Kraft won't own the Revolution in a few years. I know, it sounds crazy. As we all know, Kraft runs the Revs as a subsidiary of his Patriots operation. Soccer brings people to his stadium when there aren't football games. Yet I'm not suggesting Kraft will divest himself of the Revs. What I'm proposing is way more insane: maybe Bob Kraft won't own the Patriots in a few years. Yes, that's madness. Why would Bob Kraft sell the most successful franchise in the NFL, one with an estimated value of $3.7B? Well, I can think of 3.7 billion reasons to do it. The Krafts have gotten the full ride on the NFL express. They've dominated the 21st century. They hired maybe the best coach ever and they found the greatest quarterback ever hiding under a rock. Their team has won some of the most legendary games ever. They got to sit at the head of the table when the game's chieftains assembled. They rode in all the limos. They went to all the galas. Locally they saved the franchise and gave fans a run unlike anything they will see in the future. Seriously, this comet will not pass again in our lifetimes. And that's the rub. Tom Brady will retire in the next few years. Bill Belichick will not coach forever. This run will end and then it's the dreary existence of trying to recapture past glory. Also, the NFL has got a host of problems. Aaron Hernandez's autopsy is yet more evidence that football is the brain damage game. Most people I know, their sons don't play football and they don't want them to play football. In the town I live in (same one as the Krafts), the HS football team sucks and no one cares. One of the big stories in the NFL at this moment is all the empty seats at some of the games. That's on top of players constantly getting arrested for domestic assault (which could be CTE-related), the league's disastrous handling of the Kaepernick protests and it's general No Fun League disposition. The NFL's best days may be in the rear view. Doesn't mean it collapses, but it's a league that looks like it's headed into a transitional era. Remember, the Patriots use to be the 4th place horse in the Boston sports derby. Don't think it can't go back there. If the team starts struggling in a league beset with problems, paying through the nose and hoofing it out to Foxboro might move way down people's list of things to do. If the Krafts sell now, they're heroes forever. They can wallow in their billions while some poor sucker deals with the inevitable decline and decay. Maybe Jonathan wants his turn as an NFL poobah, but, again, billions of dollars. If he's learned anything from this Revs stadium fiasco, it's that trying to build a new facility in urban Boston is a fool's errand. Trying to replace Gillette eventually would fall into his lap. Who needs that kind of misery? Go be rich. Develop housing and office buildings, invest in tech startups, buy your own personal tropical island, hoard gold. As for the Revs component, you sell that separate from the Patriots, which puts you in the $4B neighborhood combined with a Patriots sale. You established the franchise, kept the league afloat and handed it off to a new owner at a time when soccer seemed to be on the upswing. You're welcome Revs fans. We are getting close to the time where the Krafts would be wise to cash in before various bubbles start bursting. That's the best, and maybe only, mechanism for getting the Revs uncoupled from the Pats. All Bob Kraft has to do is take that Scrooge McDuck dive into the giant pile of money. Will he do it? I don't know the man. I just know it's there for the doing if being absurdly rich and anxiety-free appeals to him.
I love the idea, and hope it comes to fruition, but to play devil's advocate (and simultaneously channel Soccer Doc), if Krafty is a smart businessman, I don't think this will come to pass. The NFL is a great money maker today, but does anyone believe that it will continue to be for the next 10 or 20 years? 2017 feels like we've just passed the inflection point from steady growth toward decline in football. The concussion issue, diminished quality of play, and general public discontent with the league have every likelihood of continuing. Now for the channeling Doc part. If I were to read a stock prospectus for MLS (non-existant, of course), I would be reading about a company I'd truly want to invest in -- growing revenue, growing fan base, positive demographics for advertisers. Why would the Bob sell the Revs, right now (unless they were a package with the Pats, which probably puts us back in the little brother quandary)?
I think MM66 did a brilliant job laying out a positive - for Rev fans - scenario. However, I think Revs in 2010 will be correct, and we end up with Jonathan as Owner. I don't think anybody can predict what will happen at that point. I know Jonathan is listed as currently running the team, but Ebeneezer..er Robert is still around to "guide" him. So I'm going to try and take a positive attitude for the remainder of the season and hope they hire a coach that works out.
I don't exactly follow your logic even when I give in to the Bob Kraft selling the Patriots universe. Say Kraft sells the Pats because he wants to quit while ahead, how does that in turn result in selling the Revs? The Revs are for the most part, the 1994 Patriots. Kraft knows that soccer is on the rise and that this pet project of his is going to become a huge return on investment. It's nonsense to sell a soccer team right now when everyone else is buying, that's like selling your Google stock you bought in 2004 in 2010 (when everyone was buying tech). And to run with that story even farther, the Krafts could sell the Pats because he want to quit while ahead, but now is left with a soccer team in which he can recreate that winning feeling all over again. It's rare to have the opportunity to bring two struggling sports franchises to the promise land. He did it once, and the addiction to that winning feeling could bleed into the Revs. The biggest problem is that Kraft bought the Pats out of passion. He was just a big fan with a 175 million dollars sitting around. He bought them and his passion for them drove him to create a winning franchise. He has no passion for soccer or the Revs, but hopefully he invests money into the Revs not through passion, but rather addiction to winning. Or maybe he gets into a pissing contest with Arthur Blank, that would be fun.
I still don't understand Bob Kraft's reasoning for being an MLS financial savior 15 years ago, then: 1. Starving his own MLS club of the resources necessary to compete in an ever-improving league. 2. Not selling and making a huge profit off of his investment. In other words, what the hell was all that sacrifice of the early years worth if you're neither an ambitious owner, nor willing to cash out in style?
My only guesses: 1. Big Kraft and/or Jonathan are just not being told the truth or being pushed HARD that they have to make changes/investments by the coaches and/or front office internally. Too many Yes men that say they can jam square pegs into round holes. The ONLY time they did was when the public pressure was all over the place. 2. They are trying to "squeeze" by and have told the coaches and front office to KEEP IT CHEAP at all costs because they believe all the soccer moms will still drive to Foxboro. The reason for this is the are just waiting till they get the stadium downtown.....to rebrand, to reinvest, to splash the cash, to look like the best owners. Why spend all that money if they are planning to "eventually" change locations. Not saying it makes sense to me.
If I owned an NFL team right now, I would definitely sell. I agree with the reasons @MM66 listed as to why NFL is likely at it's peak. Many people tune in to watch violence, and that violence leads to CTE, which will lead (already has) to changes in the rules to lessen the amount of violence, likely after massive lawsuits and damages to pay out. I wouldn't be surprised if the NFL turned into the MLB - still relevant with hardcore fans, but no longer dominant nationwide. So the value of the average NFL franchise will decrease, and the value of the Pats relative to other NFL franchises will also decrease after Brady & Belichick leave. Thus, sell now. The only question is, will anybody be able to afford to buy. In contrast, MLS is pre-peak. Selling now would be a mistake. So, business-wise, the Kraft family should sell the Pats, and take a few hundred million of that to privately build an urban soccer stadium with as much retail as you can pack around it (maybe eSports stuff too, another pre-peak investment). It'd be a 30 year gamble that IMO would likely pay off. The other variable to consider here is that Robert Kraft is old. At some point he will die and Jonathan will likely run things. If Jonathan's loyalties are not as lopsided in favor the Pats as Robert Kraft's are, that makes this scenario even more likely.
Kraft would be crazy to leave until after the expansion fee gold rush dries up. He is getting his reward now for investing early and helping to prop up the league during its early years. But without that expansion fee revenue, some economists wonder about the financial future of MLS, so a smart owner will hang on for a few more years then bail.
I've already seen articles linking CTE to soccer and other, non NFL, sports. It will be interesting to see how the research plays out. If it is just frequent bumps/collisions, rather than concussions, that bring on CTE then several sports may be at risk (Rugby, Hockey, Football, Soccer, ...)
Yes, it's definitely an issue for all contact sports, but the evidence is pretty clear that a high percentage of football players (and boxers) have had issues in retirement. I haven't seen the numbers, but I would assume that the football percentage of retirees with major/life shortening effects from concussions is much higher than soccer. It's contact sport versus collision sport (football, rugby, hockey, boxing, MMA).
I know there were serious problems back when the game was played with a leather ball. It would soak up water and have a tremendous amount of force when it hit someone. There was a lot of press when England's '66 team members developed Alzheimers. I believe the switchover to plastic was made in the 1980s. The soccer players who were in the news with CTE were in their late 50s and 60s. So any study on the effect of synthetic balls on CTE will probably have to wait until players who played with synthetic balls reach their 60s and start dying of CTE/dementia, if that happens. Regardless, sports like soccer and basketball, where head impacts are ancillary to the game, are going to be much safer than NFL, where head impacts are the point of the game (for many fans).
Former New England Tea Men defender, Chris Turner, died in his early 60s of frontal lobe dementia attributed to years of heading soccer balls. In the last five years of his life, Turner was reportedly unable to walk, talk or eat solid foods. He was a great guy who befriended me as a young fan of the Tea Men. Not saying soccer is as bad as NFL football but it has its share of head injury victims too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Turner_(footballer,_born_1951)
Playing in the 70s and 80s, that would have been with a leather ball. I remember reading that, while dry they'd weight a pound, they could absorb several pounds of water. I imagine it must have been like heading a rock.
Getting back to the original post, the problem with Kraft selling the Revs is two-fold: 1. Who's going to buy them? 2. More importantly, where would they play?
Connecticut? What are we the Hartford Whalers? Seriously, that is the crux of the matter. No one in their right mind would buy the team from Kraft, even in the best of circumstances. Let's walk though a hypothetical scenario: Some Rich Guy decides to buy the team. It won't be cheap, since Kraft is, in fact, a savvy businessman, and he knows what the market is for MLS, no matterhow negligent he's been. Let's say this Rich Guy has the connections, political savvy, willpower and access to a large parcel of land to build a new stadium. A tall order, but we're talking best-case scenario. That is going to take years to set up, but meanwhile, where will the Revs play? They can continue in Foxboro and pay Kraft a "reasonable" rent, that is, along the lines of the leases the MetroStars had in Giants Stadium and DC United in RFK, like $300,000 per game, no parking, concession, or merch sales, extra charges for scrubbing football logos, the whole 10 yards. That might be OK for a year, while the new place is being built, but not while we're looking. OJ Simpson had better luck and spent less time "looking for the real killers" than Brian Bilello has in finding a plot of land for the Revs. OK, so let's play somewhere else, maybe one of the college stadiums. What are the options? BC, BU and Harvard all use field Turf, and at BC and Harvard have the FB lines and colored end zones built in to the turf, so that would look worse than the Dallas Burn playing at Southlake High School. BU might be the best option, but that's not so great either. It's on the Green Line, sure, but for car people, parking is pretty bad. Yes, there is a garage at the Agganis Arena, but not much else. The main stand was part of Braves Field, built more than 100 years ago as right field bleachers. The rake is so gradual and the sight lines are not good. There would also be issues with the dorms being the equivalent of upper-deck end zone seats. And to be sure, the Revs long season overlaps at both ends of the school year, and night games would prevent all those college kids from studying if there's a Saturday night home game. Not to mention the rent. Any stadium owner knows the Revs will be over a barrel in this situation, and will charge accordingly. So the only real option is for Rich Guy to be working behind the scenes to secure a stadium deal, and then buy the Revs from Kraft. But that would be nearly impossible. What if he gets the stadium deal done and Kraft says, nah, I don't want to sell. How is he going to get the stadium deal without a guarantee of the team? The only way I can see this happening is a "rent to own" situation, where it if Rich Guy closes the deal, he gets the team. If he can't, then it's the sataus quo. Forever.
Of course this is pure fantasy, but the deal would be a complex three way deal involving the city in which Kraft would sell the team over time while a stadium was being built. Krafty receives payments for 5 years for doing nothing but due diligence, the new stadium and the brand become the property of the new owner after the five years. Save me John Henry!
IMHO, the most likely scenario regarding the sale of the Revs takes place after MLS expansion stops. MLS reaches expansion limit of 32 (or some such number) teams as franchise prices exceed $750M (more?). A wealthy businessman/group from another city misses out on one of the last expansion bids and then a few years later that group buys the Revs from Kraft for over $1B and moves the Revs to a new city. That could translate into an initial investment of $5M producing a return of over $1B for Robert Kraft and his family. This scenario comes to pass many years from now (20-25). Don Garber, coin flips, allocation money, DPs, and other things that came with an immature league will be almost forgotten and entirely unknown by a new generation. Within a three year period the Krafts sell the Patriots (and the stadium/land), Revs, video game team, etc. for over $10B combined. This all takes place when Jonathan Kraft is about the age that Robert Kraft is today. Boston will be without a top flight pro soccer team for a significant period of time after that. I guess what I mean is that I cannot imagine a scenario where the Revs are sold as a Boston team that remains in Boston. MLS might come back, but all of the issues that the Krafts are facing regarding a stadium will exist for any potential buyer interested in keeping the Revs in Boston. If the new buyer could get a deal done, why wouldn't the Krafts do the same before selling? Cost/benefits outweigh the headaches along the way?
One of the things that made the sale of the MetroStars to Red Bull possible and more appealing to them, is the fact that the Mutts had already started construction on their new stadium. If they were still in the same place that we're in now (i.e. Red Bull would have had to pick up the legwork of finding a site, financing, building, etc.) it would have been a lot harder to get the deal done. Since the Krafts have no interest whatsoever to do that, no one is going to buy them at a price they will accept.
Haven't had time to read this yet, but I will soon: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/sports/soccer/robert-kraft-revolution.html