The New England Patriots’ playbook for business success evidently includes
terms like vision, winning, teamwork, innovation, risk-taking and revenue generating.
A healthy marketing blitz helps too.
Ironically, the ballclub’s well-known success on the field echoes its more discreet, yet equally successful, off-the-field business triumphs. And with a professional football team just 26 miles north of Providence, this city certainly sees economic benefits.
When Patriots Owner Robert Kraft bought the team 10 years ago, he and his son, Jonathan, put forth a two-part business philosophy of winning games and generating revenue, said Lou Imbriano, vice president and chief marketing officer for the Patriots and Gillette Stadium, the team’s home in Foxboro, Mass.
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“The Kraft family has such a vision,” he said.
The vision emerged when Kraft bought the team, which, at the time, was last in the NFL in revenue and attendance. Now, just a decade later, the Patriots boast one of the top revenues in the league and have a 10-year consecutive sellout streak that should reach 114 games by season’s end, according to the team’s Web site.
And revenue and attendance are often fueled by winning. The Patriots have won two of the last three Super Bowls and set an NFL record last month for most consecutive wins.
Imbriano said not all winning teams necessarily generate revenue and some losing teams do in fact produce profit, but with the Patriots: “Everything’s come together. We have a nice recipe going right now.”
The team’s winning ways seemingly start with the front-office brass making innovative business moves and unearthing untapped financial resources.
One simple example is the Patriots were the first pro sports team to launch a Web site, in March 1995, paving the way for an e-commerce division where fans can buy merchandise. The ballclub was also the first sports team to publish a full-color weekly newspaper.
More recently, the team had the production of two DVDs recapping the Super Bowl seasons. The second DVD, “3 Games to Glory II,” offers a more in-depth look at the team and is considered the only one of its kind produced and sold by a team. The second DVD is selling three times as many as the first one, Imbriano said.
As proof of the team’s corporate relations, he said, the Patriots had an exclusive deal with Woonsocket-based CVS, where, when the DVD first came out, the retail pharmacy chain would be the only one selling the DVD – a helpful way for people to visit CVS stores.
But perhaps the Patriots’ biggest beacon of innovation stands along Route 1 in Foxboro: Gillette Stadium – a 68,756-seat behemoth that opened in 2002. The $325 million project is deemed the highest-priced privately financed sports venue of its kind, the Web site said.
An integral stadium-financing facet was the inclusion of the Fidelity Investments Clubhouse, which essentially serves as year-round convention and function space. The two clubhouses, on either side of the field, are each three stories high and total more than 120,000 square feet combined.
Imbriano said 30 to 60 functions are held at the stadium each month.
More locally, the Providence-Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau may use the stadium as an option for groups staying in Providence, said the bureau’s Marketing and Communications Director Lauren Kedski Nicholson. The bureau recently booked Drum Corps International at Gillette for August 2005, she said; the corps will be based in Providence with more than 7,200 hotel room nights.
“Although we don’t proactively target groups to use Gillette, we do use it as an option if it fits a group’s needs who want to stay in Providence,” Nicholson said in an e-mail. “We are also planning to increase the (bureau’s) selling presence in the sports market, which should amount to more selling of local stadiums and sports facilities in Rhode Island to national and international groups, with hotel rooms to boot.”
Imbriano said the Patriots’ economic impact on Providence mainly results in hotel rooms and restaurants with visiting teams often staying and dining here. As for stadium and Patriots marketing, Imbriano sees his department as a marketing company helping other firms market themselves rather than just marketing a team or venue.
“Our job is to create revenue-generating extensions,” he said. “Marketing is many things. We’re in the business to help others do business. It goes beyond traditional marketing.”
Imbriano, 39, who’s been with the team for seven years, said when he started, there were six people in marketing – now there are 36, one of the largest marketing units for any team sport, he said. Imbriano said his department’s teamwork and management success is fostered by hiring people who fit a team concept – much like what’s evident on the field.
Echoing the on-the-field, off-the-field leadership parallels is Michael Holley, former Boston Globe columnist and author of the recently released “Patriot Reign,” which takes an inside look at the team. Holley said the Krafts’ and Head Coach Bill Belichick’s management styles are similar in that they delegate authority, step out of the way and step back in if needed.
“Belichick is the CEO and the other coaches act as middle managers. They run it like businessmen. Belichick is a businessman who happens to be a great coach,” Holley said in an interview, adding that Belichick in fact has an economics degree.
He said the coach often looks at his job as an economist with good salary cap management and not “overextending too much on one player.” He said much of the team’s success is due to a good working relationship between coach and owner.
“The Patriots run a fantastic business,” he said. “They have a vision.”
The Krafts also run the Kraft Group, the holding company of paper and packaging companies Rand-Whitney Containerboard, Rand-Whitney Group and International Forest Products and the New England Revolution and a portfolio of more than 30 private equity investments.
