How Michael Jackson Saved the Patriots?

Yes sir, Michael Jackson, the "king of pop" and all around odd duck, saved your New England Patriots. Before I get to that, let me set the scene.

In 1959, Billy Sullivan and 10 other investors antied up $25,000 for the right to participate in the American Football League. The next 40 years didn't go too well. Billy was an oil executive at the time and was well off, but definately not what you would call rich, so the Patriots always struggled financially. By the mid 1980s, Sullivan was approaching bankruptcy.

Thankfully, Billy had kids. One of them, Chuck, a team executive at the time, came up with a plan to save the team. Chuck started having meetings with Don King about financing and promoting Michael Jackson's reunion with the family, called the Victory Tour. The 55-stop event was the biggest of all time and should have made money. But...Chuck was dealing with Don King. Guess who got the better of those negotiations? The Sullivans ended up losing $18 million on the deal and were forced to put Schaeffer/Sullivan/Foxboro Stadium into bankruptcy. The NFL saved the team from the same fate, but forced the Sullivan's to sell. There were a few suitors, but most were put off when they realized the stadium wouldn't be part of the deal.

Shaving magnate Victor Kiam had no such reservations and bought the team. On the stadium front, Robert Kraft found he did not have enough money for the team, but he could buy the stadium. Kraft also knew something that Kiam did not. Chuck and Billy leased the stadium to the team right after the bankruptcy. It was a ten-year lease where the team got all parking and concession revenues, the team also had to pay $1.2 million a year and another $125,000 for the owners box. The lease also had a prohibitive penalty clause if broken.

After Kraft refused to sell the stadium to Kiam on repeated occasions and after Kiam led the team to the worst record in football by the end of the decade (with a little sexual scandal thrown in for fun, but that's another story), the Remington boss wanted out. Here, Kiam found out what Sullivan already knew. No one wanted the team without the stadium, and Kraft continuously refused to sell it or refused to let anyone break the lease so they could move the team.

St. Louis businessman James Orthwein finally bought the team and ran into the same problems. After one final attempt to sell the team to some St. Louis backers fell though, Orthwein did the only thing he could, sell the team to Robert Kraft. The stadium being put into bankruptcy bought him time to get the funds together to buy what is now only one of four professional sports franchises in the world worth over $1 billion.

All thanks to Michael Jackson.