Colin Sheridan: Billionaires own the teams we love but it doesn't buy them moral authority

Dancing with the devil becomes easier once the devil sponsors the league.

PATRIOT GAMES: New England Patriots team owner Robert Kraft. pIC: AP Photo/Steven Senne

Mon, 21 Sep, 2026 - 06:48

Colin Sheridan is a writer and columnist. A former officer in the Irish Defence Forces he has extensive deployment experience as a peacekeeper with the United Nations, having lived and worked in the former Yugoslavia, West Africa, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine.

Robert Kraft’s intervention in Ed Sheeran’s American tour caused consternation, largely because people remain strangely surprised when a billionaire team owner behaves like a billionaire team owner. Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, objected to Macklemore appearing there after the rapper condemned Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza during earlier performances. The venue and promoter removed him from the tour.

Kraft did not take politics out of Gillette Stadium. He established that only the owner’s politics were guaranteed admission. Those politics are hardly obscure. Kraft is a longstanding supporter of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu personally presented him with the Genesis Prize in Jerusalem in 2019. Accepting it, Kraft said that, after his family, nothing inspired greater passion in him than Israel and his Jewish identity.