In late January, just days before Josh Kraft announced his run for mayor of Boston, city officials were readying for a meeting on a topic of great relevance to his family: whether taxpayers would shoulder some of the costs related to the World Cup matches being held next summer at Gillette Stadium, which the Krafts own.
The Jan. 27 meeting was with members of the FIFA World Cup Boston 2026 host committee, which has deep ties to the Krafts: Two of its three board members are executives at family businesses. The committee said it needed $170 million for such expenses as busing fans to Foxborough, improving the nearby commuter rail station, and replacing the stadium’s turf field with grass, according to draft documents obtained by the Globe.
If organizers cannot raise enough money, whether from government funds or private donors, FIFA could take its games elsewhere, the committee warned in documents presented to city and state officials.
“If this were to occur, there would be significantly negative reputational impacts” for the city, state, and stadium, the document said.
The ongoing discussions about World Cup costs are just one fresh, glaring example of the conflicts of interest that could routinely confront Josh Kraft should he be elected mayor of Boston. When he launched his campaign, Kraft, a longtime nonprofit executive, asked the city to “set aside any ideas they might have about me based on my last name.” But, should he win the city’s highest office, the novice politician’s ties to his family and its businesses will be hard to ignore.
The Kraft operation includes the New England Patriots and Revolution, real estate, a paper goods empire, and an extensive charitable arm that is deeply entrenched in the city. Robert Kraft and his sons sit on boards and donate to organizations in Boston and beyond, a landscape that legal and ethics experts say would make it difficult for a Mayor Kraft to avoid conflicts of interest, or at least the appearance of them.
These conflicts aren’t just theoretical. The Kraft family previously has engaged in tough negotiations with Boston dating to the 1990s, when Robert Kraft said he would move the Patriots to Connecticut after he could not strike a deal for a new football stadium in Boston with then-Mayor Thomas Menino.
And the family is also currently negotiating with Mayor Michelle Wu over its plan for a soccer stadium for the Revolution just across the city line in Everett.
Josh Kraft has never held an operational role in the family business; he has instead focused on nonprofit work, including leading the family’s philanthropy efforts as head of the Patriots Foundation. And he pledged to the Globe in a recent interview that as mayor, he would recuse himself from “anything that my family’s business had in front of the city of Boston.”
A spokesperson for the Kraft Group said all of Josh Kraft’s business interests are held in blind trusts and the family does not operate any businesses within Boston itself.
Further, state conflict of interest laws prohibit elected officials in Massachusetts from engaging in any matters that involve the financial interest of an immediate family member. But as the FIFA discussions illustrate, it might not be easy for Josh Kraft to wall himself off entirely from the family business.
Many politicians take measures to avoid conflicts by divesting stocks, or moving their money into mutual funds or a blind trust, said Archon Fung, who directs the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. But in the case of very wealthy people with public-facing businesses like pro sports teams, he said, those kinds of measures don’t really apply.
“You can’t put the New England Patriots into a blind trust,” Fung said. “It’s not possible.”
In one case, Kraft changed his position on how his political career will intersect with his family’s business and philanthropy efforts. In late January, before Kraft formally announced his mayoral bid, a spokesperson said he intended to remain head of the Patriots Foundation for the duration of the campaign. Last week, shortly after his announcement, the spokesperson said he will step down.
Spokespeople for the Kraft Group and for the host committee insisted the organizations are entirely separate and that any negotiations are being handled by the host committee. But Robert Kraft was instrumental in bringing the World Cup to North America, serving as honorary chair of the bid committee. The Boston host committee’s president, Mike Loynd, previously spent years as an executive at the Kraft Group. The host committee is housed at Gillette Stadium, and documents and emails obtained by the Globe show that representatives of the Kraft Group and Gillette Stadium have been included in emails and meetings where public funding is on the docket.
Still, the documents show, the “stadium,” which is owned and run by the Kraft Group, has ”been clear that they are not willing or able to fund” some of the necessary adaptations to the facility, characterizing those changes as “temporary” and offering “no legacy value.” To meet FIFA requirements, the stadium must cover or remove all advertising, and convert space for media, among other tasks.
A city spokesperson said Boston officials “strongly disagree with the Kraft family that Boston taxpayers should pay for stadium upgrades at Gillette.”
“We are dismayed that the Krafts would threaten cancellation of Boston’s World Cup matches unless their demands for payment are met,” the spokesperson added.
Boston 2026 spokesperson Julie Duffy also said the host committee “is not requesting any funding from the City of Boston.” Documents obtained by the Globe, however, state, “Boston Soccer 2026 is pursuing multiple revenue sources to address its funding requirements,” including “City of Boston government funding.” Boston 2026 said those documents are merely drafts not formal funding requests. The host committee is also seeking private donors, but Duffy declined to specify how much money would come from each source.
Then there’s the negotiations for the Everett soccer stadium.
The Krafts and the Wu administration are at loggerheads over state-mandated community mitigation funds required as part of the long-dreamed-of stadium the Krafts plan to build there for the Revolution. The stadium would be located just across the Mystic River from Charlestown, near notoriously congested Sullivan Square.
The Krafts’ initial offer of $750,000 for improvements to athletic fields in Charlestown fell far short of the city’s expectations. In emails obtained by the Globe, Wu’s planning chief, Kairos Shen, deemed the offer “unacceptable as a starting point” when compared with the $68 million mitigation agreement that Encore Boston Harbor casino — situated just across the street — made with the city in 2016.
The Krafts hold that mitigation measures required for a casino go far beyond a typical development project, in part to account for concerns about problem gambling. The Wu administration counters the stadium will have a direct impact on Boston traffic and the surrounding communities, which should not be dismissed as an afterthought.
In an interview with the Globe, Josh Kraft said he would recuse himself from negotiations on the Everett stadium and “anything that has to do with my family.”
“Meetings, business, we’re talking hard numbers — I’d recuse,” he said.
Representatives from the Revolution are likely hoping it won’t come to that, and that negotiations can be tied up before a state-mandated deadline of May 1 that would require a mediator to get involved. Of course, the issue could also prove a fruitful political talking point for Wu, who has already discussed the stadium as she seeks reelection.
During a radio interview this week, Wu called the Everett stadium negotiations “a gigantic conflict of interest that I think is on [Kraft] to sort out, and honestly, to be more forthright on.”
“You can’t recuse yourself from being mayor,” she said. “And this is a mega development project that is going to have tremendous impacts on the city of Boston.”
Everett is not the only stadium entanglement Kraft would have to navigate as mayor. Another major issue in the mayor’s race is the ongoing plan to renovate White Stadium into a venue for a new women’s professional soccer team. On that, Kraft told the Globe he would not recuse himself, given the importance of the issue to the city and the public investment under discussion.
Separate endeavors, the Revs stadium and women’s soccer home in Boston have not directly intersected. But the Revs president, Brian Bilello, told the Globe last year “we would certainly be open to collaborating” with the women’s team, BOS Nation, “should they ever wish to use our facilities.” The women’s team, meanwhile, wants its own home to avoid being seen as “the baby sister” to the Revolution.
Wu is charging ahead with the White Stadium renovation, despite sharp criticism from many neighbors and some members of the City Council. Kraft says he would pause it as mayor because of “consistent and unequivocal neighborhood and community concern about the project.”
“I’m agnostic [about] where the women’s team plays. I want them to play in the best place for them,” Kraft told the Globe in a recent interview. “Spending $100 million of public money for a project that primarily benefits a private entity really needs to be thought about for a city.”
But, ethics experts raised red flags about the prospect of a Mayor Kraft being involved in discussions about either soccer stadium.
“It would be really important for a mayor, if Kraft was to become mayor, to recuse himself from any actions related to [the Revolution] soccer stadium while serving in office, and that might mean that he would need to designate a deputy,” said John Pelissero, who oversees government ethics research at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. The same rules apply to the White Stadium or any other sports complex that could involve his family’s business, Pelissero added.
“The best course of action would be to put someone else in the administration in charge of taking decisions and wall himself off from any day-to-day actions,” he said.
Even recusal is not a perfect solution to perceived and actual conflicts of interest, though. Experts say following best ethical practices could keep Kraft out of the room during many crucial city decisions.
And there are no easy alternatives. If Kraft delegated key issues to one of his deputies, for example, the public could still have doubts about whether that aide was acting on behalf of the city or just trying to please the boss.
“There may be sympathies because you want your boss to be happy,” said Delaney Marsco, director of ethics for the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group. “You just have to hope that those systems hold and that people aren’t going to be acting in the best interest of people who they politically want to be on their good side.”
When the billionaire Mike Bloomberg was mayor of New York, recalled Carolyn Miller, director of that city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, he stepped away from the day-to-day management of his financial data company. Bloomberg itself had no city business dealings, she said, so in some ways it was an easier case.
With a sports team or an arena, “the amount of entanglements with city funding and regulation, I’m sure, is extensive,” Miller said. “Probably bottomless.”
And stadiums are only one aspect of the Kraft family’s influence in Boston. They have donated millions to the city’s hospitals, which are major employers and routinely have development projects under review by key city agencies. Josh Kraft’s brother Jonathan is the chair of the board of Mass. General Hospital and serves on the board of Mass General Brigham. Another brother, Daniel Kraft, serves on the board of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Robert Kraft is on the board of Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, a group of chief executives of major employers that routinely lobbies on state economic policy.
It’s hard to know the extent of Josh Kraft’s financial entanglements with the family business. He told the Globe he would release his tax returns, but has not laid out a timeline for doing so. Kraft also said he would not recuse himself from discussions about Mass. General, given its enormous role in the city’s economy.
There is at least one obvious tie, though, that emerged even before Kraft announced his bid for mayor. When Kraft moved from Chestnut Hill to a condo on the North End waterfront, it was not his name on the deed for the $2.3 million property, but rather that of a limited liability corporation.
Its address? Gillette Stadium.
Emma Platoff can be reached at emma.platoff@globe.com. Follow her @emmaplatoff. Janelle Nanos can be reached at janelle.nanos@globe.com. Follow her @janellenanos.