Kraft Group Kicks off Sports Industry Challenge at Harvard: MBA News

At the launch event, Robert Kraft told of how the wisdom of the Kraft Group’s purchase of the (American) football team, the New England Patriots for US$172 million in 1994 – a record for a sports franchise at that time – was even questioned by his wife.

His son Jonathan Kraft, mindful of the HBS students in attendance, then proceeded to add:  “It had negative EBITDA [Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization]. This is Harvard Business School, you might want to mention that too.”

But, profitability was soon to follow and the Patriots are this year valued at US$2.6 billion, according to Forbes, and posted US$428 in revenue last year alone.

One of the topics put forward by HBS’s Elberse, who has written case studies on (football) soccer’s Sir Alex Ferguson as well as on Beyoncé and Jay-Z, was the type of sports industry innovations the Kraft Group would like to see.

Simple apps explaining a game to newcomers and easing post-game traffic concerns were two issues mentioned but greater discussion fell on the subject of analytics.

Robert Kraft made a plea for sports industry analytics to become more wide-ranging than ever, to stop teams from missing out on unearthing talent of the likes of Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback – who, the Kraft Group CEO pointed out, was by no means an obvious choice when he was first drafted back in 2000:

“He [Brady] was the fourth quarterback on our chart, and he was 199th pick…Here you have one of the greatest players of all time, and all 32 teams let him go five rounds, and missed him. So I would like someone to get the analytics of how we find people like that,” Kraft said.