On August 31, 2006, Patterson and five other individuals purchased Sporting Kansas City (then known as the Kansas City Wizards), a Major League Soccer team, from Lamar Hunt. The other members of the ownership group at the time of purchase were Cliff Illig, Rock Island Capital’s Robb Heineman, Greg Maday, David French, and Pat Curran, founder of C3 Holdings. The group stated its intention to keep Sporting Kansas City in the Kansas City area.
In April 2010, Forbes magazine named Patterson fourth on their annual list of "America's Best-Performing Bosses" based on a formula for calculating which executives delivered the best shareholder value relative to their total compensation. Factors included stock performance relative to industry peers over the past six years, annualized stock performance during the leader's total tenure and performance relative to the S&P 500 over that time, and total compensation over the past six years.
Patterson died on July 9, 2017 from complications from soft-tissue cancer, which was diagnosed in January 2016 and he was previously treated for.
