Mass General Brigham Is Not a Hospital. It’s a Corporation With a Patriots Sponsorship and a Tax Exemption.
The man who chairs the hospital board also runs the football team. The hospital sponsors the football team. The hospital’s community is owed $551 million it will never see.
The man who chairs the hospital board also runs the football team.
The hospital sponsors the football team.
The hospital pays rent to the football team’s real estate company.The hospital’s community is owed $551 million it will never see.
This is not a coincidence.
This is the board of directors.
IN TODAY’S ARTICLE:
Who sits on both sides of the Patriots sponsorship deal
The $551 million deficit at two hospitals, running alongside an NFL contract
The $8.4 million CEO, the $2 billion gain, and the 1,500 jobs cut months later
The $50 million tax-deductible donation that closes the circle
What the taxpayer subsidizes, and what the community gets back
Glossary at the bottom of today’s article.
BOTH SIDES OF THE TABLE
Start with the obvious question. Why would the New England Patriots take a marketing check from a charity? They do not need it.
A September 2025 stake sale valued the Patriots at $9 billion. Robert Kraft, who owns them, is worth nearly $14 billion. The Kraft Group owns the team, the Revolution, Gillette Stadium, and the Patriot Place complex. A nonprofit hospital’s sponsorship dollars do not move that needle.
So why do the deal?
Because the man who runs the Patriots also runs the hospital’s board.
Jonathan Kraft is president of the Kraft Group and the New England Patriots. He also chairs the board of trustees of Massachusetts General and sits on the board of directors of the parent company, Mass General Brigham. His brother Josh sits on the Brigham and Women’s leadership board.
The Patriots did not court a charity.
The charity’s chairman owns the Patriots.
THE DEAL
December 2021. Mass General Brigham signs on as the official sports medicine sponsor of the New England Patriots, the New England Revolution, and Gillette Stadium.
The marketing firm Boathouse Group built the campaign. The system stamped its name on a Center for Sports Performance and Research at Patriot Place. Branding. Game-day medical coverage. The full package, at the marquee franchise of the most valuable league in sports.
MGB framed it as a way to reach the community.
Hold onto that word.
The community is about to come up again.
THE DEFICIT
Here is the word the press release left out. Deficit.
Every nonprofit hospital makes the same trade.
The government waives its taxes. In return, the hospital pours that money back into the community. Charity care. Financial assistance. Subsidized services. That trade is the entire justification for the 501(c)(3) exemption.
The Lown Institute measured whether Massachusetts hospitals held up their end. They call the gap a fair share deficit. It is the amount a hospital receives in tax breaks above what it puts back into the community.
Massachusetts General Hospital ran a fair share deficit of $325 million a year.
Brigham and Women’s ran $226 million.Combined, MGB’s two flagships shorted their communities by $551 million every year.
Fifty-eight percent of the state’s private nonprofit hospitals ran a deficit. Statewide, the gap reached roughly $1 billion a year. The Lown Institute noted that one number could wipe out every dollar of medical debt in Massachusetts.
That is the money.
That is what funded the Patriots deal.
It belongs to the community.
