Whaler, Patriot Owners Approaching Their Sports as Business

Connecticut has two rich dreamers owning pro football and hockey teams. Richard H. Gordon, principal owner of the Hartford Whalers, and Victor K. Kiam II, principal owner of the New England Patriots, both took over their clubs within the past nine months.

The Kiams and Gordons are the types of owners sport may see in the 1990s, because both have that blend of personal drive and financial resources necessary to run a team.

They love, even thrive on, the personal challenge. They are highly successful entrepreneurs with a strong interest in their local communities. Both are well-armored against potential financial trouble, and both are eager to apply to their teams many of the principles that made their businesses so successful.

“Business is fun. Life is fun, if you approach life as a game. I make things fun. In my own way, I play life as a game,” says Kiam.

He is chief executive officer of Remington Products, Inc., the Bridgeport-based company that makes, among other things, electric shavers. He is one of the country’s best-known entrepreneurs; he became an advertising legend by telling viewers how he liked the shavers so much that he bought the company.

He wrote a book, “Going for It!,” describing how anyone could use his rules to be a success. A follow-up, “Live to Win,” is scheduled for October publication.

He likes the challenge of owning a club.

“How much longer can you go on pumping the iron at Remington? This is another adventure,” says Kiam of his team. He is sitting in his Park Avenue penthouse in Manhattan, surrounded by the trappings of his success. Original artworks stare at him; he leans against a marble table.

“Maybe the need here,” Kiam said, “is that the team is just an outlet for my competitive ability.”

In Hartford, Gordon has similar thoughts. The developer of many of the area’s best known buildings -- the Emhart headquarters in Farmington, State House Square, and others -- is restless as he sits in his Trumbull Street office, across from the Civic Center.

Six years ago, he told Northeast Magazine: “I’ve got everything I could possibly want, so why worry about piling up more?”

Today, he says he bought the Whalers partly because, “It was an opportunity to really test yourself against other people. The opportunity came at a time when I was bored.”

Gordon, 47, grew up in Rochester, N.Y. His father was in the furniture business. Gordon came to Hartford 22 years ago, to practice law. At his first job, arranged through friends, he earned $100 a week.

Eventually, he got involved in real estate, becoming a top area developer, and today he heads Richard Gordon Interests, a development company. His is a big success story, but owning a sports team raises the very real prospect of failure. Gordon said he is ready for all possibilities.

“No matter who you are and what you are, you’re going to be up and down,” Gordon says. “You have to have family. You have to have friends. It’s a very lonely world.

Kiam also worked his way up. He likes to trace his drive to his days as an 8-year-old in New Orleans, when he sold Cokes to the sweaty passengers coming off the streetcar named Desire. He went on to graduate from Harvard Business School and hold top executive positions with International Latex Corp. (Playtex) and Benrus Corporation.

Their success in business gave Kiam and Gordon a sense of financial independence that analysts believe is imperative for a sports owner today.

“The pool of available owners shrinks when you get up to $100 million,” says Glenn Wong of the sport management program at the University of Massachusetts. “But some people are at the point where they don’t need to make money.”

Still, Gordon and Kiam say they are not driven by their balance sheets. It is the challenge that sparks them, and part of that challenge is applying their business principles to running a club.

To both men, that means building a top-notch organization where employees not only excel, but feel a company spirit.

A key Gordon principle is “letting everybody know I care. I’m there. I’m dedicated to building a quality organization.” If the team needs a better practice facility, “they will have it.” The Whalers are building one in Avon, Conn.

Another Gordon rule is to be associated with winning. He likes his son to play tennis with Ivan Lendl because, “He’ll never play with a better player. He will know what perfection is, and he’ll use that as a base.”

Gordon believes in surrounding himself with “someone who’s achieved the ultimate,” he says, which is why he put Lendl, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach and hockey great Bobby Orr on the Whalers’ board of directors.

Kiam’s principles are the subject of his books, and he reviews how he would apply some of them to the Patriots.

For instance, he wrote, “I could no more make an electric shaver than I could swim the English Channel ... but I am confident that I can pick the best people to build those shavers.”

Kiam says he will apply that thinking to his team. “I can’t be everywhere,” he says, “so at the beginning of the year you give management its goals and say, ‘Go to it.’ Then the individual staffs the team, and if there’s a problem, they call me up.”

The ultimate goal is to win the Super Bowl; then, it’s to be known as the “team of the decade.”

But once they win the Stanley Cup and the Super Bowl, then what? Will the challenge be over, the mission fulfilled? Maybe not, because many of this new breed like the idea that they are kings of their cities.

Part of the reason they bought teams was to shine in their communities.

“The public is most interested in sports,” says Gordon. “Ask 100 people who the chairman of Aetna is, they won’t know. But they know about sports. It has tremendous impact in America.”

Buying a team is also part of these new owners’ civic responsibility.

“Everything I have is from Hartford, and the more you get, the more you want to do,” said Gordon.

Kiam, too, was eager to buy the Patriots because of where they played. “I had heard Seattle was available, but I wasn’t really interested,” he says. “This was the only opportunity I’d have to get a team that was geographically desirable.”

Kiam and Gordon and owners like them don’t spend much time thinking of the down side. Owning teams is their next challenge. And when you start that climb, you don’t look down.