Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is chairman and CEO of the oak
Speaker 1: View Group, the one and only Tim LIGHTWICKI Tim, good
Speaker 1: to have you on the podcast.
Speaker 2: Bob. It's good to be here. It's good. Every day
Speaker 2: is good to be alive. So let's start with that,
Speaker 2: but in particular, it's a good day to be with you,
Speaker 2: my friend.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the basics. What exactly is the Oakview Group?
Speaker 2: So the Oakview Group was created about seven years ago
Speaker 2: between myself and my partner, Irving Asoff, and we wanted
Speaker 2: to think outside the box and be a positive disruption
Speaker 2: to the live industry, the facility industry, and in particular
Speaker 2: our focus is on the music side of the business,
Speaker 2: although we obviously are strongly connected and now deeply and
Speaker 2: heavily involved in sports as well. But it was taking
Speaker 2: my background, in my experience with twenty years at AG
Speaker 2: and before that of building the Denver Nuggets and the
Speaker 2: Pepsi Center and the Minnesota timber Wilson the Target Center,
Speaker 2: and essentially trying to redefine a way to build the
Speaker 2: business around building new facilities, renovating new facilities, representing current facilities,
Speaker 2: getting into the service business, the sales business, the food
Speaker 2: and beverage business. So it really is centered around the
Speaker 2: live entertainment experience with a heavy emphasis of the facilities.
Speaker 2: And although I have in the past created and been
Speaker 2: heavily involved in the promotional side of it, this one's
Speaker 2: much more specific, and we strike partnerships with the promoters,
Speaker 2: but we ourselves do not promote sell them to we promote.
Speaker 2: So it's a core competency. It's highly focused. It's about facilities,
Speaker 2: it's about live entertainment, it's about the guest experience, and
Speaker 2: it's about trying to ultimately also build the next great
Speaker 2: generation of those live venues that people could go and
Speaker 2: enjoy their favorite artists.
Speaker 1: At what is the status of arenas around the world today.
Speaker 2: Well, arenas have been through the peaks in the valleys.
Speaker 2: Probably the greatest lows and the highest highs have been
Speaker 2: these last four or five years. So if you look
Speaker 2: at what happened to our industry in particular during COVID,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure there was any Every industry was affected,
Speaker 2: and some were terribly affected, but the live industry was
Speaker 2: essentially wiped out. We disappeared, And so if you looked
Speaker 2: at arenas. It was an amazing survival for arenas to
Speaker 2: try to figure out how we were going to weather
Speaker 2: that storm, and we had to figure out what we
Speaker 2: were going to look like when we came out of
Speaker 2: the storm. We had just a whole new set of
Speaker 2: assumptions and risks and operating challenges that we had to
Speaker 2: inherit coming out of COVID from air circulation. And look,
Speaker 2: who would have ever thought, I know, in our case,
Speaker 2: with many of the arenas that we just recently built
Speaker 2: and open, we were in the middle of building seven
Speaker 2: of these seven during COVID, and I had to go
Speaker 2: back and every one of our projects ultimately had to
Speaker 2: be rebuilt with new experiences, with new challenges, and with
Speaker 2: a new way of dealing with germs and COVID and
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how we were going to now
Speaker 2: take something that so dramatically stopped all of our industry
Speaker 2: and its tracks and be able to convince people to
Speaker 2: come back and feel safe in a live environment in
Speaker 2: arenas and stadiums in theaters. And so we had to
Speaker 2: go back and rebuild and re engineer and rethink our
Speaker 2: HVAC systems, and we installed a filtering system and all
Speaker 2: of our buildings that essentially traps and kills the bugs.
Speaker 2: And I never thought ten years ago that this would
Speaker 2: become one of the highest priorities and the largest expenditure
Speaker 2: we would make when we're developing new arenas. But if
Speaker 2: you look at our Mer thirteen filterization systems we built
Speaker 2: a UBS arena and a climate Pledge arena. They are massive,
Speaker 2: gigantic filter systems that essentially hump fresh air in and
Speaker 2: take air out. And as we're taking the air out,
Speaker 2: we now, I'll send that air through a bunch of
Speaker 2: filterization systems, trap the bad stuff, and then literally burn
Speaker 2: those germs on site. And so again we had to
Speaker 2: learn we had to alter the way we think about safety,
Speaker 2: about customer convenience. We had to regain the confidence and
Speaker 2: the trust and the consumer that they could walk back
Speaker 2: into these buildings and be safe and not get sick.
Speaker 2: And in particular, one thing that was unique about COVID
Speaker 2: is the scientists and all of the experts that we
Speaker 2: brought in to help us think through it. The ice
Speaker 2: facilities in particular were a bit challenging because of the
Speaker 2: way air floats and airs trapped and hot air and
Speaker 2: cold air and the unique aspect of COVID and how
Speaker 2: that bug could hang in the air. It was suddenly
Speaker 2: a whole new set of rules and a whole new
Speaker 2: set of thinking on engineering and airflow that we had
Speaker 2: to adjust and quickly react to. So we came out
Speaker 2: of that. I think our industry did a phenomenal job
Speaker 2: of surviving. We were not an industry that got bailed out.
Speaker 2: So the interesting thing is I didn't get one dollar
Speaker 2: of subsidies, or we didn't. We didn't get any of
Speaker 2: the COVID funds that the government ultimately parceled out. I
Speaker 2: think there was a perception, why help billionaires, even though
Speaker 2: we're not billionaires. I think sports owners and facility owners
Speaker 2: in particular, they weren't going to They weren't going to
Speaker 2: get any of the PPP money, and we didn't, and
Speaker 2: so we had to go do this on our own.
Speaker 2: We had to survive on our own, and in the
Speaker 2: case of our company, we didn't lay anybody off. I
Speaker 2: didn't let anybody go, we didn't furlough anybody. I didn't
Speaker 2: ask anyone to take a pay cut. We we had
Speaker 2: great faith that this society that we live in today
Speaker 2: and the smart brilliant people that were working on this
Speaker 2: on a daily basis. They were going to find a solution,
Speaker 2: and we had to be prepared to come out of
Speaker 2: this and hit the ground running, so we weren't going
Speaker 2: to shut everything down. We very much valued everybody that
Speaker 2: worked for us. We had literally tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: people that were employed by this company because of all
Speaker 2: the people working on the construction sites. And so instead
Speaker 2: of sitting here trying to figure out how to save
Speaker 2: money or how to go get subsidies or PPP funds,
Speaker 2: we did exactly the opposite, which is, how do we
Speaker 2: go take care of our people, how do we create
Speaker 2: safe work sites today, how do we continue constructing our
Speaker 2: seven new arenas, How do we ultimately survive this? But
Speaker 2: then how do we come out of this at the
Speaker 2: right time and be better for what we're going to
Speaker 2: learn in the next couple of years. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: At the time we thought it was a couple of years, Bob.
Speaker 2: We were hoping it was a year, but it wasn't
Speaker 2: a year. We're just now just now getting back to
Speaker 2: what I would say is business as usual and normal
Speaker 2: and so hugely challenging for us. Life lessons character in particular,
Speaker 2: a very very strong character building moment for our industry
Speaker 2: and for our company. And I will say, in the
Speaker 2: roughly forty plus years I've been doing it, I probably
Speaker 2: lost more sleep and had more nights where I'd wake
Speaker 2: up in the middle of the night thinking, my God,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to make it through this. Our company's
Speaker 2: not going to make this, make it through this. We're
Speaker 2: ultimately not going to be able to get these arenas open.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be able to ultimately get people
Speaker 2: to buy naming rights or sponsorships or suites. We're never
Speaker 2: going to see business as usual again. You have I
Speaker 2: call them the demons, and I never had the demons
Speaker 2: as much as we did during COVID, and yet God
Speaker 2: works in mysterious ways. We came out of that and
Speaker 2: now we've had the best year in the history of
Speaker 2: live entertainment. And if you see the pent up demand,
Speaker 2: and you see what Elton John just did, what Taylor
Speaker 2: Swift is doing, what Ed Sheard's doing, what Cold Play's doing,
Speaker 2: if you see the success of arena shows now and
Speaker 2: Harry Styles just shocking what Harry Styles has pulled off here.
Speaker 2: And by the way that young man is my hero
Speaker 2: because he stayed through that tour during COVID and dealt
Speaker 2: with all the issues he had with the bubble, with
Speaker 2: his crew, with his band, with safety, with people getting sick,
Speaker 2: and he fought through it in the middle of COVID
Speaker 2: kept this tour going, and the poor guy is still
Speaker 2: out touring. And so huge admiration for the industry and
Speaker 2: in particular the year that we've had and the passion
Speaker 2: that the fans have to get out and live life.
Speaker 2: We're seeing that and we're all benefiting from that, but
Speaker 2: also the artist and how resolute the industry was at
Speaker 2: giving people reason to come back together and to celebrate,
Speaker 2: giving people an opportunity to be happy, to go back
Speaker 2: to these public places and be able to forget about
Speaker 2: all of the things and all of the demons and
Speaker 2: all of the problems that we were dealing with. I
Speaker 2: think it was our finest moment in the music industry
Speaker 2: and the live entertainment industry, and I am absolutely proud
Speaker 2: to be a part of it, but also hugely grateful
Speaker 2: back to the fans that they came back and supported
Speaker 2: the industry, our facilities, and the artists the way they have,
Speaker 2: and in particular we understand now people everyone appreciates life.
Speaker 2: Now when you go through something like that, you're going
Speaker 2: to go live the rest of your life and you're
Speaker 2: going to live it every day and you're not going
Speaker 2: to take it for granted. And music and sports, but
Speaker 2: especially music a huge part of that. And I think
Speaker 2: that's why our best years are directly ahead of us
Speaker 2: and we're going to continue to enjoy this surge in
Speaker 2: our business that we've seen this past year.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the HVAC and the arenas. One
Speaker 1: of the components of ovg's business is managing and having
Speaker 1: relationships with other businesses. You said you have seven new
Speaker 1: arenas that you re configured for HVAC. How about the
Speaker 1: arenas that you consult? What did they do?
Speaker 2: So I'll tell you you know what I love about
Speaker 2: this and the format that you've created and the times
Speaker 2: I've listened in to all of your guests is the
Speaker 2: ability to have time to tell stories, because after all,
Speaker 2: that's actually what we all do, right, Musicians write songs
Speaker 2: and tell stories, and you give us an opportunity to
Speaker 2: tell stories about our industry and how it affects people.
Speaker 2: In our particular case, how we survived the greatest challenge
Speaker 2: in the history of our industry. I was the very
Speaker 2: early stages of COVID. So ironically, just by chance, if
Speaker 2: you look at when COVID broke out, there were three
Speaker 2: or four hotspots where it first hit where we're all going,
Speaker 2: what is this thing? So one of them was Seattle
Speaker 2: and the nursing homes. Unfortunately, just terrible what happened there.
Speaker 2: But that was the first place in the United States
Speaker 2: where suddenly you're like, wait a minute, something's wrong, hair,
Speaker 2: this is serious. Second place was the town in New York,
Speaker 2: just outside of New York City, where it was a
Speaker 2: temple and a congregation and an actual event became a
Speaker 2: super spreader event first, one of those things that we've seen.
Speaker 2: No one quite understood super spread until that. And in
Speaker 2: the third place that just got absolutely hammered and was
Speaker 2: ground zero. I think for what it was how quickly
Speaker 2: it was spreading and how many people it was killing,
Speaker 2: was Milan. I happened to be in all three of
Speaker 2: those places in that one to two week period of
Speaker 2: time when all of this started popping. So I was
Speaker 2: in Seattle and suddenly you began to hear stories about
Speaker 2: people in retirement homes that were getting sick and dying,
Speaker 2: and then people not wanting to go into the retirement
Speaker 2: homes and trying to figure out how to get the
Speaker 2: people out of the retirement homes. And you were scratching
Speaker 2: your head, going, man, this is bad. What happens if
Speaker 2: this spreads? And it did. And then I went to
Speaker 2: New York. I'm sure enough just that one event and
Speaker 2: that one particular temple, and then how that reached out instantly,
Speaker 2: and You're like, oh my god, this thing is highly contagious.
Speaker 2: This is a problem. And then literally the day I
Speaker 2: went into Blan, we had a meeting with the mayor
Speaker 2: and the Olympic Committee and the meetings get canceled. We're
Speaker 2: sitting there in the square outside the Great Cathedral in
Speaker 2: the center of Balan, and they closed the cathedral down.
Speaker 2: Now I'm a Catholic boy and grew up in a
Speaker 2: church and went to Catholic school, and I know when
Speaker 2: they start closing the churches down, there's trouble. And so
Speaker 2: I'm like, this is not good. And so as we
Speaker 2: immediately changed plans and went to the airport to try
Speaker 2: to get back home. The airport started shutting down and
Speaker 2: they were taking everyone's temperature, and by the way, it
Speaker 2: was not a real exact science on how they were
Speaker 2: testing people and taking temperature, and so you looked at
Speaker 2: it and said, this is a shit show. They don't
Speaker 2: have this figured out. This this isn't working whatever they're
Speaker 2: trying to do. And by the way, they don't really
Speaker 2: have a method of trying to figure out who might
Speaker 2: be sick and who might not be sick. And they're
Speaker 2: putting all these people on airplanes. This is a disaster.
Speaker 2: And that's when I knew. I came back home and
Speaker 2: told my wife, this is the most serious problem we
Speaker 2: will ever experience in our lifetime. So I was on
Speaker 2: the front line, and I'm like, I'm really really worried
Speaker 2: about this. So I called up a friend of mine
Speaker 2: who happens to be one of our best partners at
Speaker 2: ubs Irene in New York with us in the Islanders,
Speaker 2: and I talked to the president of the hospital and said, Michael,
Speaker 2: what is this. Can you help me understand this? And
Speaker 2: he said, he said, this will be the most contagious,
Speaker 2: deadly outbreak you will ever see in your lifetime. I
Speaker 2: said serious, and he said, this is really bad. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, explain to me how does this transmit itself?
Speaker 2: I mean, what's going on here? And we in particular,
Speaker 2: he told me, we got a massive problem because we
Speaker 2: people don't understand it. The government thinks it's touching. It's
Speaker 2: not touching. It's in the air and it's circulating in
Speaker 2: the air. And I'm like, well, if it's circulating in
Speaker 2: the air, tell me, how are you doing that with
Speaker 2: your emergency rooms. And by the way, how's it getting
Speaker 2: out of the emergency rooms. If it's circulating in the air,
Speaker 2: don't you shut those systems down in your emergency rooms.
Speaker 2: And he said, it's getting into the ventilating system. And
Speaker 2: he said, Tim, it's circulating through the whole hospital. And
Speaker 2: he said, we're getting people sick and other wings of
Speaker 2: the hospital where there are no COVID patients, none of
Speaker 2: the COVID personnel that are working on those patients because
Speaker 2: we think it's in the air system and it's traveling
Speaker 2: by air. Now, Bob, when I heard that, that was
Speaker 2: probably I got to say, the most dreadful, shocking bit
Speaker 2: of news I've ever had, with the exception of the
Speaker 2: death of some of my family members. I was stunned
Speaker 2: when he told me that and I said, Michael, if
Speaker 2: that's the case, we're screwed. I mean, how do I
Speaker 2: build arenas? And he was the one that said, you
Speaker 2: got to give some serious consideration to the way you're
Speaker 2: treating your handling systems and arenas. I'm like, Michael, we
Speaker 2: got twenty thousand people in our arenas. Do you understand
Speaker 2: the magnitude of me trying to figure out how to
Speaker 2: clean my air up? And he said I do, and
Speaker 2: you're going to have to figure it out. And that's
Speaker 2: when everything changed, Bob. That's when suddenly I had We
Speaker 2: went back to our engineers and literally after I got
Speaker 2: off that call, I went back from the advice that
Speaker 2: Michael and Northwell gave me, and I called my engineers
Speaker 2: in Dallas that we're doing the air handling system for
Speaker 2: all of our buildings, but in particular our New York building,
Speaker 2: are Austin Building and our Seattle building that we're all
Speaker 2: under construction. And I said, look, I just had a
Speaker 2: really smart guy that I trust tell me this thing's
Speaker 2: in the air and it's circulating and infecting people within
Speaker 2: the air, which means air circulation. And he got shocked
Speaker 2: and said, are you serious? And I said, yeah, I
Speaker 2: think that's what this thing is. Tell me what that
Speaker 2: means and he said, well, you're not building a system
Speaker 2: that ultimately deals with that in any of your buildings.
Speaker 2: That's not what we're putting in your system. We're bringing
Speaker 2: fresh air in and we're taking her out, but we're
Speaker 2: not doing anything ultimately to test the quality of that
Speaker 2: air or kill anything that's in the air that may
Speaker 2: be coming or going. You don't have filterization systems like that,
Speaker 2: and I said, well, he mentioned this scene called MERV thirteen.
Speaker 2: He said, yeah, routine is what we put into like
Speaker 2: emergency rooms and operating rooms in hospital tim It's the
Speaker 2: highest filterization system you could possibly have to not only
Speaker 2: monitor your air, but clean it and kill the germs
Speaker 2: on the spot. I said, well, how complicated is it?
Speaker 2: And could we put it in an arena? And he said,
Speaker 2: you can't put it in an arena. I said, well,
Speaker 2: I think we're going to have to figure out how
Speaker 2: to put it in an arena. And to their credit,
Speaker 2: Ed and his team worked for about two weeks straight
Speaker 2: round the clock and came back to me two weeks
Speaker 2: later and said, I think we figured out how to
Speaker 2: do it, but you're going to have to start fresh
Speaker 2: with all of your ventilation systems, and you're going to
Speaker 2: have to build giant, giant plants with this filterization system
Speaker 2: and suck everything into this filterization system. And then Tim,
Speaker 2: You're going to have to figure out how to burn
Speaker 2: it and kill the germs at a high heat rate.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, all right, let's figure it out now.
Speaker 2: The complication, Bob, that came out of that problem for
Speaker 2: Steve Collins, who's my president, develops all of our arenas,
Speaker 2: was profiled to try to figure out space and we
Speaker 2: had to start fresh, and we had to change our plans,
Speaker 2: and we were in the middle of constructing our arenas
Speaker 2: and had to change on the fly. What was even
Speaker 2: more interesting is the MERV thirteen filterization system they were
Speaker 2: proposing to add to our HVAC system was driven by
Speaker 2: ultimately gas that would come in and burn and kill
Speaker 2: the bad guys to the grums. But the problem with
Speaker 2: that is I happen to have a carbon neutral arena
Speaker 2: in Seattle. We don't use gas. We use solar power
Speaker 2: and electricity. And went back to the engineers and said,
Speaker 2: I can't put gas in there, and he said, there's
Speaker 2: not enough electrical power in order to generate the kindy
Speaker 2: heat you're going to have to generate to kill the bug,
Speaker 2: and only gas works. And I'm like, ed, You're going
Speaker 2: to have to go back to the drawing board and
Speaker 2: figure out how to make it work through electrical power,
Speaker 2: because that's all we're pulling into our arena. We pulled
Speaker 2: our gas lines out already, so Bob, halfway through building
Speaker 2: what became Climate Pledge Arena, we made the pledge to
Speaker 2: be carbon neutral, and I pulled all my gas lines
Speaker 2: out and we went one hundred percent of the energy
Speaker 2: that we utilized at Climate Pledge Arena the solar powered energy.
Speaker 2: So we had to refigure not only do we have
Speaker 2: to rebuild our systems, we had to go back to
Speaker 2: the engineers and refigure out how to get enough heat
Speaker 2: in order to build a bad the germs without using gas.
Speaker 2: So it was just that, I mean, honestly, I'm so
Speaker 2: proud of our team that we were able to turn
Speaker 2: on a dime like that and come up with new
Speaker 2: ideas and new ways to keep our people at our
Speaker 2: arenas safe. And then we had to go do what
Speaker 2: everyone else had to do, which is how do I
Speaker 2: create bubbles, how do I ultimately, And it was funny
Speaker 2: when I talked to Michael and Northwell, he said, you
Speaker 2: know those guys, those Ghostbuster guys you have going in
Speaker 2: and spring your seats. He said, it's Olbs. Said it
Speaker 2: doesn't work, said go send them all in. He said
Speaker 2: that that doesn't it's Timiate's not touch it's here, And
Speaker 2: we had to rethink everything we were doing. So then
Speaker 2: we pull calls together, Bob, back to your question, and
Speaker 2: we'd have our arena Alliance and the twenty nine arenas
Speaker 2: on there, and we brought these experts on and said
Speaker 2: you need to hear this, you need to understand what
Speaker 2: we're learning and what we're dealing with. And they were
Speaker 2: all shocked, but to their credit, a lot of them,
Speaker 2: for example the State Farm Arena and Steve and his
Speaker 2: team down there, unbelievably diligent at how they jumped in
Speaker 2: and dove into this to try to learn what it
Speaker 2: is we're dealing with and how do we correct it.
Speaker 2: And so shocking moment, but an absolutely brilliant moment because,
Speaker 2: as is typical for our industry in particular, we shared,
Speaker 2: we communicated, we explored, there was no territory whatever we learned,
Speaker 2: we shared with everybody else, and then we went out
Speaker 2: and we tried to deal with the politicians and warned
Speaker 2: them what we were dealing with and asked them for help.
Speaker 2: And the only request we ever made to Washington was
Speaker 2: can you give us subsidies to help us pay for
Speaker 2: the systems that we're going to have to now re
Speaker 2: engineer and redeploy and all of our arenas. So this
Speaker 2: is millions, tens of millions of dollars in some cases
Speaker 2: that we're all going to have to spend. Can you
Speaker 2: help us? They didn't. So proud of the industry that
Speaker 2: we rolled up our sleeves and again not only found
Speaker 2: creative solutions, but we paid for ourselves.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pull the lens all the way back, not
Speaker 1: solely about the OVG group. How many arenas are there
Speaker 1: in the world, to what degree is their room for
Speaker 1: more arenas? And what is the state of the infrastructure
Speaker 1: out there?
Speaker 2: Great question? So there are thousands of arenas in the world. Funny,
Speaker 2: as you look at this industry and you look at
Speaker 2: thousands of arenas, and you look at the life cycle
Speaker 2: of an arena, which is not you know, I just
Speaker 2: came back from Europe, and I had the great privilege
Speaker 2: and great opportunity to go explore the Colosseum again. And
Speaker 2: I've been to the Colosseum a couple of times, but
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by the genus of the architectural marvel that
Speaker 2: is the Colosseum, And to this day it's still in Spa.
Speaker 2: Hires me because that's where our industry started, and to
Speaker 2: this day we still use many of the architectural designs
Speaker 2: and the genius of that particular building and everything that
Speaker 2: we do on every design and every building we go develop.
Speaker 2: And so I spent time there, and then we also
Speaker 2: went to the Vatican and saw the genius of the
Speaker 2: architects and the artists that that took the the great
Speaker 2: parts of the Vatican and including the Grand Cathedral and
Speaker 2: the Systeine Chapel, and just looking at Michaelangelo and some
Speaker 2: of the people that ultimately were responsible for thinking through
Speaker 2: the way that they designed that chapel and the way
Speaker 2: they they they thought about architect and they thought about paintings,
Speaker 2: and they thought about finishes, and they thought about the
Speaker 2: experience that people have when they go through those places
Speaker 2: like the Colosseum. It really is shocking, and every time
Speaker 2: I go there it changes my view of arenas. But
Speaker 2: what you begin to understand is from there, from those
Speaker 2: two buildings, ironically came huge inspiration, huge knowledge, and a
Speaker 2: huge amount of what affects our industry today was really
Speaker 2: started with the Colosseum in particular. So there's thousands of
Speaker 2: arenas around the world, but if you really talk about
Speaker 2: our e industry, there's probably two hundred and fifty of
Speaker 2: these things, right, So it's kind of crazy. It's a
Speaker 2: very big world out there, and there's billions and billions
Speaker 2: of people on the planet, but there's only probably two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty arenas that I would consider to be
Speaker 2: an A class arena, and even fewer stadiums. And when
Speaker 2: you think about, in particular in our country, the demand
Speaker 2: that is created in stadiums with the NFL are Major
Speaker 2: League Baseball, and then the rest of the world this
Speaker 2: little sport called football soccer, and the impact that's had.
Speaker 2: What we forget, especially in North America, is we have
Speaker 2: lots of new arenas and new stadiums, brilliant stadiums like
Speaker 2: Sofar and Allegian. But then as you get into Europe
Speaker 2: and even more in particular when you get into Africa
Speaker 2: or South America or Asia, there are very very few
Speaker 2: new arenas right now. And so in the last couple
Speaker 2: of years when we've opened up seven, we've opened up
Speaker 2: the only seven that have been built in those two years.
Speaker 2: So it was OVG with seven arenas and no other
Speaker 2: arenas were getting built, partially because of COVID. So what
Speaker 2: you realize is thousands of arenas. Most of them aren't
Speaker 2: very good, most of them are very old. There are
Speaker 2: hundreds of arenas that are kind of driving our industry
Speaker 2: as we know it today, but there are not very
Speaker 2: many arenas like we have in North America and the
Speaker 2: rest of the world. It is pretty shocking. But therein
Speaker 2: lie is the opportunity, which is we're going to see
Speaker 2: a huge explosion and a huge opportunity to build these
Speaker 2: world class arenas and take what we've learned here on
Speaker 2: how to build them and the technology and the acoustics
Speaker 2: and the experience in the premium and now transfer that
Speaker 2: and be able to take that with us everywhere we
Speaker 2: go in the world. And if you don't think the
Speaker 2: industry is changing, then go look at what Jim Donald's
Speaker 2: building with the sphere, because it's revolutionary, it's masterful. I
Speaker 2: don't know how the hecky came up with all of this,
Speaker 2: not sure how the hell you pay for it, but
Speaker 2: what I know is he's going to change our industry forever,
Speaker 2: and the minute that opens up in September, we will
Speaker 2: never be the same. And so thousands of arenas, most
Speaker 2: of them highly outdated, most of them in effective compared
Speaker 2: to where the customer expectations and conveniences, the artists expectations
Speaker 2: and conveniences, the technology, the acoustics, the engineering, the demand
Speaker 2: is going to be immense for new arenas going forward,
Speaker 2: and we keep on reinventing the experience. So we spent
Speaker 2: one point one billion on Climate Pledge, Jim spending billions
Speaker 2: of dollars on the sphere, Steve Baumer spending billions of
Speaker 2: dollars on the indto an arena. And if you look
Speaker 2: at how quickly it's changing because of technology, and you
Speaker 2: look at how quickly it's changing because of the customer experience,
Speaker 2: just things like engineering and acoustics and led, we're in.
Speaker 2: We're in a revolutionary moment in time. So even though
Speaker 2: there's thousands of arenas, there's very few new arenas outside
Speaker 2: of North America, and yet the demand has never been greater.
Speaker 2: And I think you're going to see the greatest amount
Speaker 2: of development of arenas in the history of the industry
Speaker 2: in these next twenty years.
Speaker 1: Okay, in Los Angeles, Irving took the Forum and turned
Speaker 1: it into a music only building. There are no sports there.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: My understanding is you're doing something similar from Scratch and Manchester, England.
Speaker 1: There reports that on the Island with the Islanders in
Speaker 1: the new building there, you had specific things you added
Speaker 1: to make the sound although it's a hockey arena, make
Speaker 1: the sound better for music. So as opposed to the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies when they were multi use buildings, do
Speaker 1: you need a multi use building to make the economics work?
Speaker 1: And if you do have a multi yet use building,
Speaker 1: how do you make it a good experience for concerts?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, you have summarized in one question,
Speaker 2: what's taken me seven years to figure out as a company,
Speaker 2: So the Forum. When Irving and Jim did the Forum,
Speaker 2: so I was at AG at the time, we had
Speaker 2: Staple Center downtown. We owned the Forum for some period
Speaker 2: of time, but quite frankly, I didn't have the vision
Speaker 2: or the foresight they did to understand the demand in
Speaker 2: the marketplace and how we needed another music venue in particular,
Speaker 2: and we should have paid more attention to it at
Speaker 2: AG and I'll put that's my fault. And so we
Speaker 2: ended up selling the forms of the Church. The church
Speaker 2: then sold it to Jim, and Jim was very intelligent
Speaker 2: about coming in and realizing, how do I go create
Speaker 2: the same experience that we created at the Garden for
Speaker 2: music with a low ceiling, great acoustics, get rid of
Speaker 2: the signage, get rid of the scoreboard. I don't care
Speaker 2: about sports. We're not going to do sports. I don't care.
Speaker 2: We're not going to have an ice plant. We're not
Speaker 2: going to do hockey, We're not going to do basketball.
Speaker 2: I don't care about any of that. We're just going
Speaker 2: to be phenomenal at music. And he spent a couple
Speaker 2: of hundred million dollars and from that, by the way,
Speaker 2: came the Sphere. So if you ask Jim Dolan, what
Speaker 2: he'll tell you is what they created at the Forum
Speaker 2: spurred him on to the thinking that eventually is the Sphere.
Speaker 2: And if when the Spear opens, I encourage everyone to
Speaker 2: go see it. It is a absolute you want to
Speaker 2: talk about, an entrepreneurial spirit and an entrepreneurial moment. God
Speaker 2: blessed Jim for what he's done there. It is going
Speaker 2: to change our industry forever. And so the great debate
Speaker 2: that came out of that. So and by the way,
Speaker 2: it's a debate I have with Jim. So Jim tells
Speaker 2: me you you never build another arena, you should only
Speaker 2: build spheres, and I'm like, well, I get it, but
Speaker 2: you know I can't afford to bill spheres. I got
Speaker 2: to figure out a way to pay for it. Because,
Speaker 2: by the way of the seven arenas we built, we
Speaker 2: didn't take one penny from the public sector on any
Speaker 2: of those seven arenas, and most of the arenas we
Speaker 2: built and then gave back to the city. So we
Speaker 2: privatized everything, which means we had to pencil this out
Speaker 2: and figure out how naming and right sponsorship, premium ticket sales,
Speaker 2: food and beverage, parking can pay for the privatization of
Speaker 2: these particular buildings. In some cases, Seattle is an example,
Speaker 2: You're going to build one arena, and you got to
Speaker 2: make it work for hockey, and you got to make
Speaker 2: it work for basketball. When we get the NBA back,
Speaker 2: but you got to make it perfect for music. And
Speaker 2: that was the problem up there. So not only did
Speaker 2: the Old Key Arena kind of have that huge roof
Speaker 2: that was kind of a pyramid at the top of it,
Speaker 2: so the sound of a concert would go up into
Speaker 2: the roof and bounce around a few times and then
Speaker 2: bounce back down. It was I always use to tell
Speaker 2: people Earl's Court is my favorite place to go for
Speaker 2: a concert because I get to hear the band three
Speaker 2: times because the first time and then the second time
Speaker 2: with the echo. On the third time the echo from
Speaker 2: the echo. And so we had to go recreate the
Speaker 2: music experience in Seattle. And what we did is we
Speaker 2: learned from the forum as well, and from an engineering standpoint,
Speaker 2: we figured out how to build clouds in our ceiling
Speaker 2: with acoustical treatment and drop them and have panels. So
Speaker 2: in Seattle, our panels open and close based on where
Speaker 2: we know music is coming from and the sound and
Speaker 2: the reverb and the base compared to where sports noise
Speaker 2: comes from. And so in a very can they both
Speaker 2: work together and be aligned. They can't. And here's how
Speaker 2: you do it. So if you think about creating the
Speaker 2: graized environment humanly possible for sports. And you think about
Speaker 2: the crowd noise, which is what you want to amplify
Speaker 2: and keep in the building so that you create that
Speaker 2: wonderful environment and so many great sports facilities. You understand
Speaker 2: that that crowd noise comes from the bowl, not the ice,
Speaker 2: from not the cord, It comes from the bull. So
Speaker 2: as that crowd noise goes up, you want it not
Speaker 2: to be trapped and killed in the roof. You want
Speaker 2: it to bounce in the roof and come back down.
Speaker 2: That's what creates that intimidating experience in many arenas today.
Speaker 2: But for concerts, you do want to kill it. You
Speaker 2: want to trap it and take make sure there's no echo,
Speaker 2: no reverb. And that means you've got to build acoustical
Speaker 2: systems and your roof and your walls and anything that's
Speaker 2: a surface that stares at the speakers. And so our
Speaker 2: engineers came in and figured out a system in the
Speaker 2: roof where it allows sports noise to bounce. But they
Speaker 2: knew where the speakers were going to be positioned with music,
Speaker 2: and we knew how to take the baffling system and
Speaker 2: actually kill the noise, the echo and the reverb as
Speaker 2: that noise is coming out of the speakers. We add
Speaker 2: the ability to take our acoustical panels and hang them
Speaker 2: and curve them in a way where they're directed at
Speaker 2: where the speakers are going to be hung for concerts.
Speaker 2: So you can make it work together. You can build
Speaker 2: a great venue for sports Iubs or by the way,
Speaker 2: Moody Center or what we did at Climate Pledge and
Speaker 2: have an intimidating environment for sports, but a perfect environment
Speaker 2: for acoustics. And for me, the greatest critic in the
Speaker 2: world on acoustics are the artists, because they got to
Speaker 2: live with it and they're the ones that hear it.
Speaker 2: By the way, they're the ones that to deal with
Speaker 2: bad acoustics more than anybody. And if you talk about
Speaker 2: an artist that really does care about the experience for
Speaker 2: their fans, Don Henley is top of the list in
Speaker 2: my opinion of an artist that really will critique you
Speaker 2: and give you feedback on good experiences and bad experiences.
Speaker 2: And the great thing for Don is he noticed in
Speaker 2: all of our buildings, including the renovation in Baltimore. He
Speaker 2: knew the work that we put in there on acoustics
Speaker 2: because he felt it and heard it on the stage,
Speaker 2: and he knew the difference in our buildings with the
Speaker 2: acoustical treatment that Irving and I had committed to compared
Speaker 2: to other buildings, and so same with Springsteen. He really
Speaker 2: loved the acoustic He so to one of the great
Speaker 2: stories in my life. And as I fooled, Sir Bruce,
Speaker 2: He's been running around in my head for about twenty
Speaker 2: five years and I can't get rid of him. So
Speaker 2: when we open up Staples Center, Bruce agreed to open
Speaker 2: the building for us, and we were truly honored, because
Speaker 2: you know, when you're in the business for forty five years,
Speaker 2: Bruce Springsteen is God. So I'm like, Bruce Springsteen is
Speaker 2: going to open our building. Coolest thing ever. And we
Speaker 2: had him for a couple of nights, and Rob White
Speaker 2: from CAA did a favor and intervened and convinced Bruce
Speaker 2: to do it for us, and so Bruce came the
Speaker 2: first night. Never forget it, and you know, huge success
Speaker 2: for us. Really cool to have Bruce open the building.
Speaker 2: And he gets on stage and after one song or
Speaker 2: two songs, he said, Hey, all you people up there
Speaker 2: in all those boxes, why don't you come on out
Speaker 2: and join the rest of us, and I'm like, did
Speaker 2: he just say that? And then the person I was listening, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he just said that. I'm like, oh shit, and I
Speaker 2: was embarrassed. I'm like, oh my god. And then you
Speaker 2: can tell he was a little myfthed that there were
Speaker 2: a lot of people in those suites having parties that
Speaker 2: weren't part of the concert, and you can't do that
Speaker 2: to an artist. That's a mistake. And I instantly realized
Speaker 2: three levels this week. That was the moment I realized
Speaker 2: I made a terrible mistake with three levels of suites here.
Speaker 2: I did not think about the artist like I should have.
Speaker 2: And so I went to see him afterwards after the
Speaker 2: concert and thanked him for opening the building, and then
Speaker 2: he said something to me that has run in my
Speaker 2: head for twenty five years, which is, you know, Tim,
Speaker 2: I know you put a lot of love into the building,
Speaker 2: but I like hot, sweaty holes. And I walked away
Speaker 2: going jeez. I just got like I'm dressed by the boss.
Speaker 2: This is not good, and it stuck with me. So
Speaker 2: when we started OVG, ironically, the very question you asked
Speaker 2: has been running around my head all these years, which is,
Speaker 2: can we build an arena that is phenomenal for music,
Speaker 2: acoustically perfect for the artists and their fans so that
Speaker 2: they feel like they're right there next to each other.
Speaker 2: And can we make it so it's a dominal advantage
Speaker 2: for the home team for basketball and hockey when you're
Speaker 2: going to share the building. Sometimes like Manchester, We're going
Speaker 2: to build the perfect building for music because I'm going
Speaker 2: to do one hundred and fifteen nights of music every year,
Speaker 2: so I don't need to worry about an ice hockey
Speaker 2: team or a basketball team. But other times, like Seattle,
Speaker 2: to cover a billion dollar bat, we got to happen
Speaker 2: an NHL team and we won an NBA team, so
Speaker 2: it all has to work. There are very smart people
Speaker 2: that have perfected this if you are willing to spend
Speaker 2: the money necessary to build the acoustical treatment in order
Speaker 2: to make it perfect. And that's what we've done in
Speaker 2: the buildings. And so when Bruce played, he was very
Speaker 2: kind and did two nights for us at ubs this
Speaker 2: last tour. It was the only two nights he did.
Speaker 2: He did one night every place else, so really cool
Speaker 2: because he had kind of committed to help us open
Speaker 2: the building. But then Covid hit, and he didn't forget us.
Speaker 2: So remarkable him, John and the whole team at Bruce's
Speaker 2: came phenomenal. How loyal they are to their fans and
Speaker 2: to our business. I have huge respect for them for
Speaker 2: the way they treat people. It's just so refreshing to
Speaker 2: be with people that are that down to earth and
Speaker 2: that loyal to the music, the experience, the fans, and
Speaker 2: the building. And so they came back into two at
Speaker 2: ubs and they told me the acoustics were perfect. They said,
Speaker 2: you did a great job here. Good on you. And
Speaker 2: they talked about Moody Center and how what a cool
Speaker 2: experience that was in Austin. And they talked about Climate
Speaker 2: Pledge and how great that was and how unbelievable that
Speaker 2: we were able to build a carbon neutral arena. They cared,
Speaker 2: they actually knew the whole stick. I'm like, God, you
Speaker 2: guys sound like a walking brochure for OVG. So by
Speaker 2: the time they got to Baltimore, he was going to
Speaker 2: play the baseball stadium and instead did us a favor
Speaker 2: and they helped us open the arena. They were one
Speaker 2: of the first nights in the renovated arena. Because he
Speaker 2: cared about Baltimore. He cared about us spending a quarter
Speaker 2: of a billion dollars of a city that some in
Speaker 2: the media, not you, but some in the media Fox trashed,
Speaker 2: absolutely destroyed the city, absolutely buried it, absolutely treated the
Speaker 2: people that are a part of that community with huge
Speaker 2: disdain for their own political purposes. And most of it
Speaker 2: is absolutely untrue. The city is not burning up in flames.
Speaker 2: People are not being shot when they come out of
Speaker 2: their homes. Bruce knew that, and he knew that that
Speaker 2: city had been treated unfairly, and they need people to
Speaker 2: come lift them up. Our partner in Baltimore, Sparrell and Farrell,
Speaker 2: talks about steps, giving people that first step on the
Speaker 2: ladder and helping them get up, and then they're going
Speaker 2: to go the rest of the way up on their
Speaker 2: own if you can help them on that first step.
Speaker 2: But you got to build the ladder. You got to
Speaker 2: build the first step. Bruce got it great news as
Speaker 2: he came in and said, the building's phenomeno and it's
Speaker 2: amazing what you did here. Good on you because most
Speaker 2: people wouldn't have taken this chance. Those they prove two things, Bob. First,
Speaker 2: you can build arenas that ultimately are advanced enough to
Speaker 2: be acoustically perfect for concerts and work for sports. And
Speaker 2: second of all, what a phenomenal industry we all get
Speaker 2: the chance to work in when you get had those moments,
Speaker 2: and one, I have stopped Bruce from running in my
Speaker 2: head for twenty five years finally, and number two, I
Speaker 2: guess what I learned from them and understood the mistakes
Speaker 2: I had made, and I vowed to myself I'd never
Speaker 2: make those mistakes again, and I'd be smarter and better
Speaker 2: because I listened to what the artists ultimately want. And
Speaker 2: so when Don Henley tells me where we're good and
Speaker 2: where we're bad, I listen because Don Henley, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: is one of the great artists of our generation. And
Speaker 2: I care about how he cares about his fans and
Speaker 2: the experience he wants people to have in an Eagle show.
Speaker 2: Same with Bruce. I think that's the great thing about
Speaker 2: our building or our industry, And it's what you ask
Speaker 2: at the very beginning, which is the industry shares. The
Speaker 2: industry will learn from one another, the industry will try
Speaker 2: to get better from one another. And it's the passion
Speaker 2: that an artist has that we have that the fans have.
Speaker 2: If you could kind of combine that and align that together,
Speaker 2: then great things are going to come out of that,
Speaker 2: great musical experiences, great venues and stadiums and arenas and festivals.
Speaker 2: But that's part of what I think is encouraging about
Speaker 2: our industry right now, is we are building better arenas
Speaker 2: and theaters and stadiums. The experiences are ten times better
Speaker 2: than they used to be, and people are having a
Speaker 2: lot more fun at our concerts when they come into
Speaker 2: this environment because we ultimately have figured out how to
Speaker 2: make it a better experience for them.
Speaker 1: Okay, a couple of things. I remember when Bruce opened
Speaker 1: the building, we talked about the acoustics negatively. But you
Speaker 1: bring up the luxury boxes, the suites of which there
Speaker 1: are three tiers and seats above in what is now
Speaker 1: called crypto. So what'd you learn about how many luxury
Speaker 1: boxes you can build in how to build them to
Speaker 1: see ciate the artists.
Speaker 2: Well, again, I made a mistake at Stable Center. We
Speaker 2: built too many. We built two hundred and twenty of
Speaker 2: them on three levels, and it acoustically wasn't a great experience,
Speaker 2: and I'm sorry it isn't today. I know though, they'll
Speaker 2: say that's because I compete with them. It has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with that. That's just a fact. And so
Speaker 2: when you look at the Forum, it takes you two
Speaker 2: minutes to figure out, well, why is almost every artist
Speaker 2: going into Forum and not going to Crypto. Guess what?
Speaker 2: The forums of phenomenal experience. We're an artist in their fans.
Speaker 2: There are no suites, none, right, so everybody's right in
Speaker 2: that bowl, tight to the artists, tight to the stage,
Speaker 2: tight to the experience. The acoustics are perfect, there's no
Speaker 2: bounce back, there's no reverb. That's what I learned is
Speaker 2: guess what it does matter? And so, okay, you.
Speaker 1: Build something from scratch that also has sports, I think
Speaker 1: you have to have luxury boxes. How do you decide
Speaker 1: how to build them and how many?
Speaker 2: So I think the Garden to me is still the
Speaker 2: greatest building in the world. It's still to me is
Speaker 2: the cathedral for arenas and sports and live entertainment. And
Speaker 2: I still learn from the Garden every time I go there.
Speaker 2: I learned from the Calcium every time I go there.
Speaker 2: So what we figured is make the bowl pure, but
Speaker 2: still build premium experiences that will not take away from
Speaker 2: that experience or the acoustics within the bowl. So what
Speaker 2: you see now in all my buildings, we still have suites.
Speaker 2: We have fifty six weeks total at Climate Pledge Arena,
Speaker 2: but it's one level and the seats are all out.
Speaker 2: So we have taken the seats and extended them over
Speaker 2: the lower bowls, so they actually go into the bowl
Speaker 2: and the people are sitting out in that experience. And
Speaker 2: then we tuck the sweeps and the common area, the
Speaker 2: kitchen area, and the food area. We tuck them back
Speaker 2: further and kind of hide them. And we only have
Speaker 2: roughly forty of those on that one level at Climb
Speaker 2: to Pledge Arena, so we minimized it. And then we
Speaker 2: build bunker suites down low. But the bunker suites are
Speaker 2: completely hidden. You don't see them in the back hallway.
Speaker 2: And so you come down a tunnel of vomitory by
Speaker 2: the way from the coloseum, and you walk down that
Speaker 2: vomitory and you come into the seats down low from
Speaker 2: your sweet but they're disconnected. And so what we're beginning
Speaker 2: to learn is with our clubs, with our suites, with
Speaker 2: our premium areas, put them on the outside of the
Speaker 2: skin of the building, put them so they don't disrupt
Speaker 2: the bowl. Put them so that there's not the hous
Speaker 2: and the have nots. Still have premium experiences, bring them
Speaker 2: out to the seats, but designing it away where the
Speaker 2: flow of the bull is perfect and you don't have
Speaker 2: three levels of suites and three levels of glass and
Speaker 2: three levels of people make a noise where everything's bouncing
Speaker 2: off of those suites in that glass. So we still
Speaker 2: have suites, we still have premium. We have four or
Speaker 2: five thousand premium seats and most of the buildings we're
Speaker 2: building today. But what we've done is we've taken the
Speaker 2: clubs and integrated them into the concourse, not the bowl,
Speaker 2: and then we use the seating in the bowl as
Speaker 2: the opportunity to fulfill those commitments for the premium seat
Speaker 2: holders in great locations. But we don't disrupt the flow
Speaker 2: of the bowl, the acoustics of the bowl, the experience
Speaker 2: of the fans by ultimately building three levels of suites.
Speaker 1: Okay, you mentioned the experience in the old days, you
Speaker 1: go to the arena, there'll be hot dogs and cold pizza. Okay,
Speaker 1: And but what we know is if the act is
Speaker 1: hot enough, does it matter what is going on, people
Speaker 1: will pay the price. So this investment in the experience,
Speaker 1: does it pay dividends? Find the insinely.
Speaker 2: So great question. So again I'll tell you another story
Speaker 2: that probably answers it well. And So despite what people
Speaker 2: think as to the competition between OVG and ABG, yes
Speaker 2: we compete. But I still have great respect for Philanes
Speaker 2: because he wrote the checks and he took a huge
Speaker 2: risk on investment on Staples Center and La Live, and
Speaker 2: in particular the two. So at the time, building an
Speaker 2: arena in London privately, crazy idea, building an arena privately
Speaker 2: in London underneath a tent. Crazier building it up underneath
Speaker 2: a tent and not having the ability to go down
Speaker 2: because there's a thing called the Thames River are up
Speaker 2: because the tent is a National Historic landmark, and so
Speaker 2: it's like, how the hell are you going to go
Speaker 2: do that? But it was a daring, bold bat by
Speaker 2: Phil to provide the money and to the team that
Speaker 2: we put together to design it and build it stunningly
Speaker 2: brilliant as to here's an idea, let's build the arena
Speaker 2: under the tent and create the greatest arena outside of
Speaker 2: the United States, and we'll pay for it privately and
Speaker 2: all work. And again there's an old saying Bob I have,
Speaker 2: which is there are people that want to participate in
Speaker 2: the parade. There are some people that want to lead
Speaker 2: the parade, and then there's a segment of people that
Speaker 2: just want to pee on the parade. And there were
Speaker 2: a lot of people that wanted to pee on the
Speaker 2: O two idea. And everyone was telling us what a
Speaker 2: mistake this was, and partially why are you building an
Speaker 2: arena in London? Why are you building an arena in London?
Speaker 2: It's music specific. There's a Euro's Court, there's the Wembley Arena.
Speaker 2: We don't need another arena. We're fine. So one night
Speaker 2: Irving brings the Eagles over. This is, you know, and
Speaker 2: a story of my partner, Irving and Tim. There's parts
Speaker 2: of our life where we were getting along quite well
Speaker 2: and none were parts of our life where we wouldn't
Speaker 2: talk to each other and we didn't like each other
Speaker 2: very much. So we've seen it all. This was good
Speaker 2: Tim and Irving right. So Irving brought the Eagles over
Speaker 2: to the old Wembley Arena and I went out to
Speaker 2: say out of Irving and the band and I'm working
Speaker 2: on getting the O two started and built. This is
Speaker 2: at the very early stages of us making the deal
Speaker 2: for the Millennium Dome. And I, you know, during the concert,
Speaker 2: I go walk the concourse to go see, Okay, how
Speaker 2: are they doing here? How do they do food? How
Speaker 2: do they And I go up to the one of
Speaker 2: the stands and I say to the woman, I'll take
Speaker 2: a beer, and she goes okay. So she goes back
Speaker 2: to this like crazy ass antique machine and presses the
Speaker 2: button and she's pouring twenty four beers at one time
Speaker 2: onto this machine, and she presses the button and it
Speaker 2: begins to fill up the twenty four cops. But as
Speaker 2: she comes away from pressing the button, she hits one
Speaker 2: of the cups and knocks the half full cup of
Speaker 2: beer over and immediately panics and stops the points that
Speaker 2: puts the stop machine. And now she's sitting there with
Speaker 2: twenty three half empty cops and she's pondering, well, what
Speaker 2: the hell do I do now? And so she gets
Speaker 2: a fresh cup, puts it down where she knocked the
Speaker 2: old cup over, presses the button and then starts to
Speaker 2: fill the beer up. But then she realizes, well, wait
Speaker 2: a minute. The machine thinks I'm pouring a fresh cup
Speaker 2: of beer instead of a half a cup of beer.
Speaker 2: And now she's panicked because there's beer running everywhere from
Speaker 2: these cops. She doesn't know what the hell to do,
Speaker 2: and I'm looking at her like, this is the worst
Speaker 2: time I've ever see. So then she gives me the
Speaker 2: beer and I drink the beer and I'm like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this beer tastes awful. And I realized, first
Speaker 2: of all, it's warm, and second of all, and I
Speaker 2: asked her, I'm like, man, I'm trying not to be considered,
Speaker 2: because you know, after all, they think we're ugly, stupid
Speaker 2: Americans to begin with, and they were mostly correct. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, where where's this beer coming from? She says, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's you know, the tap room. Says, well, where's the
Speaker 2: tap room? She says, Oh, it's downstairs. I'm like, are
Speaker 2: you telling me you got a line that runs from
Speaker 2: that stupid ass twenty four person, twenty four cup machine
Speaker 2: all the way through the concrete downstairs to some back
Speaker 2: of room commissary where you got all the kegs of
Speaker 2: beer stacked. She said, yeah, and it's not refrigerated, and
Speaker 2: what I realized is two things. One it was an
Speaker 2: absolute stupid way to serve a customer. And two, what
Speaker 2: happens is those lines that have beer in them get polluted,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of bad stuff in those lines,
Speaker 2: including mildew, because remember there's long periods of time where
Speaker 2: there's no one in the building and it gets hot
Speaker 2: during the summertime, and they didn't add their conditioning back
Speaker 2: in the day at Wembley, and so I realized that
Speaker 2: this is the worst cup of beer I've ever had
Speaker 2: in a place where they absolutely love to drink beer.
Speaker 2: That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. We got to
Speaker 2: fix that. And so the idea of building in refrigerators
Speaker 2: at every concession stand and serving clean beer where we
Speaker 2: had a minimal line was revolutionary, revolutionary at the O
Speaker 2: two and everyone was happy because they were getting a
Speaker 2: really cold cup of beer, and by the way, they
Speaker 2: weren't having to worry about a polluted line that the
Speaker 2: bear was traveling from. And so we knew we were
Speaker 2: going to succeed because we knew that the threshold and
Speaker 2: the expectations were very low, and we were going to
Speaker 2: do something extraordinary. Ironically, now that we see the evelp
Speaker 2: back to one of your earlier questions. The evolution of
Speaker 2: the experience is dramatically different today than it was twenty
Speaker 2: years ago when we started building the two. So the
Speaker 2: two is old, by the way, and it's outdated in
Speaker 2: my opinion, because they haven't put money into it to
Speaker 2: update it. So Manchester, why do we go into Manchester
Speaker 2: where there's an existing arena? And by the way, Manchester
Speaker 2: used to be and you know this, Manchester was a
Speaker 2: top five market forever for live ticket sales and the
Speaker 2: old men Arena was a top two or three arena
Speaker 2: in the entire world for music. It sold more tickets
Speaker 2: and did more concerts than any other building in the world,
Speaker 2: with the exception of maybe the Garden, the Forum and
Speaker 2: occasionally one of the buildings is in London, but it
Speaker 2: was that successful. When we went to Manchester ovg we
Speaker 2: went through exactly what you were asking about, which is
Speaker 2: the evolution of the experience and how is it going
Speaker 2: to change? One have we learned that ultimately could build
Speaker 2: a better arena and a better experience for artists and
Speaker 2: fans that fans will pay for. And what we do
Speaker 2: is the AO Arena was built for fifty six million
Speaker 2: pounds for the Commonwealth Games. All public, by the ways,
Speaker 2: is a public building and it was built for sports.
Speaker 2: It was never built for music, and they've never put
Speaker 2: a penny into it since they're just now putting money
Speaker 2: into it because here we come, and so they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we better put some money into it so we could compete.
Speaker 2: Too late. Can't put a band aid on a gaping wound,
Speaker 2: not when we're spending three hundred and sixty five million pounds,
Speaker 2: so call it five hundred million US to build the
Speaker 2: greatest arena ever build anywhere outside of the US, and
Speaker 2: we didn't because the experience in AO is bad. It's
Speaker 2: not good for the customer, it's not good for the artist.
Speaker 2: We have multiple artists when we go over to them
Speaker 2: and say, what is it you'd like us to do
Speaker 2: back a house at co Op Live that you will
Speaker 2: love and that will be meaningful for you in the experience.
Speaker 2: And we happen to have Harry Else who's our partner.
Speaker 2: Harry has strong opinions on the experience for the artists
Speaker 2: and for his fans, and he has been actively involved
Speaker 2: in the design of the building. And what we know
Speaker 2: is that our building when we open it up in
Speaker 2: April is going to be shocking for the industry internationally
Speaker 2: because they've never seen anything like this, far better, far
Speaker 2: better than the AO experience. They'll never be able to
Speaker 2: catch us, no disrespect. It's too good and much better
Speaker 2: than the O two. Because we now have twenty years
Speaker 2: worth of Jim Dolan and the Forum and Jim Dolan
Speaker 2: and the Spear and Tim Lwiki and Irving Azof at
Speaker 2: Climate Pledge Arena with Todd Lwiki and David Bonderman and
Speaker 2: UBS Arena, and Scott Malkin as our partner, the thinking,
Speaker 2: the new ideas, the new air systems, the new acoustic
Speaker 2: gold treatment, the new system of creating premium without disrupting
Speaker 2: the bull. We have thirty two clubs and restaurants and
Speaker 2: private spaces at co Op Lives thirty two, but they're
Speaker 2: all buried on the outside of the building, not the
Speaker 2: inside of the building. That's why we get twenty four
Speaker 2: thousand people into that building. And it's a hot, sweaty hall.
Speaker 2: So when Bruce goes in there and plays it, he's
Speaker 2: going to look around and go, oh my god, they're all
Speaker 2: right on top of me. This is fantastic. I love
Speaker 2: this experience. We've had twenty thirty years worth of evolution
Speaker 2: on how to make the experience better, and this is
Speaker 2: the first arena that's going to be built outside of
Speaker 2: the United States. Is taking all of that thinking and
Speaker 2: all of that evolution and now putting it to work.
Speaker 2: And it's just being entrepreneurial, listening to what people want,
Speaker 2: trying to understand your competition, and then building a better
Speaker 2: mouse trap.
Speaker 1: Okay, moving on to naming rights. Certainly you go back
Speaker 1: to the sixties and prior it was Yankee Stadium Shay Stadium.
Speaker 1: There was no money involved that changed. Yankee Stadium is
Speaker 1: still Yankee Stadium, the Mets playing City Field. Question is,
Speaker 1: let me try to break this down a little bit.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, it got to the point where
Speaker 1: the audience was feeling, Okay, it's Jiffy lu Marina. They
Speaker 1: just paid a price. It's got nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the music. In addition, the name keeps changing. Is this
Speaker 1: just a giant middle finger to at the fans because
Speaker 1: not everybody goes regularly. They don't even know where the alls.
Speaker 1: I mean, even in this business we use, some of
Speaker 1: these names changed so much you can't remember what city.
Speaker 1: Just to add a little add on to that, a
Speaker 1: number of these buildings are sponsored by companies that have
Speaker 1: a short shelf life, they've gone bankrupt or they're crypto companies.
Speaker 1: In some cases, the arena got paid, there was an advance,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So what's really going on in the whole
Speaker 1: naming right sphere.
Speaker 2: Well, so, ironically, it's a necessary evil. When you privatize buildings.
Speaker 2: You need to figure out a way to create revenue
Speaker 2: streams and that are going to be able to help
Speaker 2: you pay down your debt and get a rate of
Speaker 2: return on the equity that you invest in these things.
Speaker 2: And so, but there's a way to do it well,
Speaker 2: and then there's a way to do it kind of sloppy.
Speaker 2: So a lot of people have done and again a
Speaker 2: lot of credit to MSG and Jim. It's still the Garden.
Speaker 2: It's presented by Chase, and he actually makes more money
Speaker 2: off the Chase deal than almost any other naming rights
Speaker 2: deal in the entire industry. But it's still called the Garden.
Speaker 2: Some names are they flow naturally. The O two worked
Speaker 2: out extremely well and it's still called the O two,
Speaker 2: So good on them for that. That has created a
Speaker 2: great brand and a great experience and a massively intelligent investment.
Speaker 2: Because I always used to tell Matthew, who we made
Speaker 2: to deal with for the two in London, Matthew, if
Speaker 2: they think you named your company after the arena, that
Speaker 2: is a really good bet. And they do. They think
Speaker 2: they named a telecomt company after the arena in London.
Speaker 2: That's how successful that partnership's been. That's a great partnership
Speaker 2: that works for the fans, works well for the city,
Speaker 2: works well for O two, and worked well for ag
Speaker 2: Climate Pledgerina got to give Amazon a whole lot of credit.
Speaker 2: It's one of the largest naming rights ever done in
Speaker 2: the business. And you don't hear the Amazon name anywhere.
Speaker 2: It's their commitment to sustainability and carbon neutral so they
Speaker 2: call it Climate Pledgerina, and by the way, was voted
Speaker 2: the best facility in the world last year, in the
Speaker 2: entire world. And that's with so Far and Allegiance Stadium
Speaker 2: and the others that were up for the award at
Speaker 2: the same time. Huge commitment and statement about not only
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos who drove that decision, but Amazon and Andy Jassey,
Speaker 2: the CEO, for their commitment towards sustainability. That name works
Speaker 2: extremely well. Ubs Arena works extremely well. It's a good name.
Speaker 2: It rose well. They're headquartered in New York. Made all
Speaker 2: the sense in the world. Moody Center again, we got lucky.
Speaker 2: It's a not for profit foundation based in Austin. Wanted
Speaker 2: to do something great for the city. Appreciated ourselves in
Speaker 2: Live Nation spending three hundred and fifty million privately with
Speaker 2: Matthew mcconaugheyt and wanted to do something to do to
Speaker 2: be a part of that, and so they wrote a
Speaker 2: massive check for twenty years, so it's a twenty year
Speaker 2: guaranteed deal. They paid upfront and they we never had
Speaker 2: to change that name for twenty years. And the Moody
Speaker 2: Center is not only a very well known name because
Speaker 2: the family's from Austin, and there are other things on
Speaker 2: the campus and into the city named after Moody, but
Speaker 2: the Moody Center has a great ring and a role
Speaker 2: to it, so it works out well. Sometimes it's it's
Speaker 2: not a natural kind of fit. Acrosuur Arena. Acrosture is
Speaker 2: based in Michigan, but the president owner very smart about
Speaker 2: trying to create a brand that he wants to get
Speaker 2: more momentum for as he grows, the company doubles and
Speaker 2: triples in size. So we saw a great buy in
Speaker 2: Palm Desert because it was Irving and OVG and Tim
Speaker 2: and he knew we'd do well. We'd go get Harry Styles,
Speaker 2: and we'd go get the Eagles, and we'd go we'd
Speaker 2: get Paramore and sell it out. And so he made
Speaker 2: a bet on us at a rate card that is
Speaker 2: a fraction of what these other people are paying for
Speaker 2: some of these name it rights. And it turned out
Speaker 2: to be great for acrature and great exposure, and they're ecstatic.
Speaker 2: So you got to be smart, you gotta be clever,
Speaker 2: You got to find good partners. You got to try
Speaker 2: to make it last. I don't find any joy and
Speaker 2: changing staples out to Crypto or FTX coming and going
Speaker 2: in a matter of a couple of years. That's tough
Speaker 2: for the brand, it's tough for the building, it's tough
Speaker 2: for the city. But they are a necessary evil on
Speaker 2: in particularly the privatization of these facilities now and so
Speaker 2: stan Kronki spent five point five billion dollars building Sofi Stadium.
Speaker 2: He deserves to be be able to put a naming
Speaker 2: rights on there and try to recoup some of his money.
Speaker 2: And I think the name worked well for San and
Speaker 2: for the Rams and for Los Angeles. It's a great
Speaker 2: name and people refer to the stadium in as Sofi Stadium.
Speaker 2: So it's a tricky business. You got to find the
Speaker 2: right companies, You've got to make sure it stands the
Speaker 2: test of time. We're just now beginning to go out
Speaker 2: and talk about our new arena we're going to build
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas and the naming rights partner there and
Speaker 2: we want to do the right thing. We want to
Speaker 2: make sure that it's the right partner that could last
Speaker 2: a long period of time and that the name rings
Speaker 2: well and rings long. But that one's tricky because we're
Speaker 2: not the first arena in the marketplace. And it's tricky
Speaker 2: because we don't have an anchor tenant. If the NBA
Speaker 2: wants to expand, we'll go after it, but we'll see
Speaker 2: what happens. I think it'll be years before they make
Speaker 2: that decision. So when you price it at who do
Speaker 2: you go get that has longevity? If you get a
Speaker 2: team after you open, then what do you do with
Speaker 2: the naming rights and the value and by the way,
Speaker 2: will they support the team and so tough business, complicated
Speaker 2: business now and it's not like there's a million companies
Speaker 2: out there that can afford to buy naming rights.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about OVG. Who owns OVG? And all
Speaker 1: of these are private buildings? Where does the money come from?
Speaker 2: So? OVG is a private company. I'm proud of that.
Speaker 2: We started it seven years ago. The majority of the
Speaker 2: company is owned by myself, Irving, and our executives, our employees.
Speaker 2: We have a partner, an investor in silver Lake, but
Speaker 2: they're an investor. They just simply have given us money
Speaker 2: to go grow this business, and in particular to provide
Speaker 2: the equity we need to invest in to build these arenas.
Speaker 2: They don't have to say so on how we run
Speaker 2: the company day to day, but we have an alignment
Speaker 2: with them, and by the way, love them. They're awesome partners.
Speaker 2: We don't go make a big bet without them, so
Speaker 2: we're aligned. We see everything the same way and if
Speaker 2: we don't do it, that's the deal. They've been They've
Speaker 2: never told us no, so they've been phenomenal. They've invested
Speaker 2: a lot of money in our company. Irving and I
Speaker 2: have put money into our company. They put more, they
Speaker 2: have more, and so we ultimately went for a long
Speaker 2: period of time with the company where we actually didn't
Speaker 2: have any debt on the company itself and just recently
Speaker 2: put some debt on the company because the company is
Speaker 2: growing and we're out acquiring things. So we bought Spectrum
Speaker 2: from Comcasts a couple of years ago. That got us
Speaker 2: into the facility management business and the food and beverage business.
Speaker 2: And we didn't think the food and beverage brand and
Speaker 2: the way we did food and beverage with Inspector our
Speaker 2: OVG was great. So we kept on buying additional food
Speaker 2: and beverage companies, including most recently a company called Rubarb
Speaker 2: that's the best food and beverage catering company I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: And so we are trying to figure out a way
Speaker 2: to continue to grow, trying to figure out a way
Speaker 2: to be the best service provider for all of the
Speaker 2: needs of an arena. So we're in the food and
Speaker 2: beverage business. We sell naming rights through OVGD Global Partnership.
Speaker 2: We sell our own sponsorships through Global Partnership. We have
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty people that sell in Global partnership.
Speaker 2: We have our own parking company, we have our own
Speaker 2: facility management company, we have a sustainability company, and so
Speaker 2: unlike the rest of the industry, we actually have a
Speaker 2: group of people that do nothing but figure out how
Speaker 2: to have a more sustainable operation for all of our
Speaker 2: buildings and created a company called Goal with a Fenway
Speaker 2: Sports and our friends at State Farm Arena in Atlanta
Speaker 2: that are our partners, and we track how you operate
Speaker 2: a building one quarter to the next and whether or
Speaker 2: not you're more sustainable the next quoter than the last quarter,
Speaker 2: and then we grade everybody and we publicize those grades
Speaker 2: so everyone knows if you truly have a commitment to sustainability,
Speaker 2: not on how you design it. That's leads, but that's
Speaker 2: not what's going to stay in the earth. It's how
Speaker 2: you operate it. So we have our own sustainability company,
Speaker 2: We have our own special event company. We have our
Speaker 2: own food and beverage and catering company. So we have
Speaker 2: fourteen different service companies now that we build and those
Speaker 2: service companies they provide all of the knowledge and all
Speaker 2: of the outside help that we need when we bring
Speaker 2: in outside people for the purpose of operating our buildings.
Speaker 2: That's all under OVG. Pardon me, you can hear I've
Speaker 2: been traveling too much. That's also part of the core business,
Speaker 2: which is our own and operated and the equity we
Speaker 2: put and the seven arenas we built today and the
Speaker 2: eight more arenas now we have under development somewhere in
Speaker 2: the world. And then we have probably four hundred accounts
Speaker 2: where we manage arenas, convention centers or food and beverage
Speaker 2: for facilities. And we're committed to growing, and so we'll
Speaker 2: double in size here in the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: Again, okay, silver Lake. That's private money putting in. They
Speaker 1: usually want a relatively short term return, which would BEG.
Speaker 1: The question is the ultimate goal of OVG to go
Speaker 1: public and when might that have?
Speaker 2: So I hope we never go public. I don't want
Speaker 2: to go public. I my intention is never to sell
Speaker 2: the company. So I learned after building AG that was
Speaker 2: Phil's company, and I respect that that was his checkbook,
Speaker 2: his money, his risk. He deserves to own that company
Speaker 2: and run that company the way he sees that I
Speaker 2: get it. OVGS our company, and so we have certain
Speaker 2: guiding principles and core values as a company. One of
Speaker 2: them is we don't want to be public and don't
Speaker 2: have any intention of ever being public. It's not a
Speaker 2: quick spin. My daughter is one of the key executives here.
Speaker 2: She's hopefully going to inherit this company and run it.
Speaker 2: She's good at it and I'm proud of her. She's
Speaker 2: earned it. My executives are committed long term, and so
Speaker 2: when you look at Chris Granger, where you look at
Speaker 2: Dan Griffiths, or you look at Christina Song who's our
Speaker 2: general counsel, or Steve Collins who's the president are Development,
Speaker 2: and you look at the group we put together, this
Speaker 2: group's going to operate this company for a long period
Speaker 2: of time. My executive committee average age is in their forties.
Speaker 2: By the way, the majority of my executive committee or females.
Speaker 2: We're diverse, and I'm proud of that. Our new CFO
Speaker 2: just came on and is minority, and he's fantastic, and
Speaker 2: he's young. He's in his forties. So we're built to
Speaker 2: be long term. We're built to be private, We're built
Speaker 2: to be generational, and that's what we intend on doing.
Speaker 2: And we took Spectra when we bought it. We've doubled
Speaker 2: in size in our first full year. We'll double again
Speaker 2: in the next two years, and that's what we're going
Speaker 2: to do. We're entrepreneurial, we see outside the box. We're
Speaker 2: not afraid to take risk. We're very driven. We love
Speaker 2: building this company, we love operating this company. We have
Speaker 2: no intention of selling it. We will always own it,
Speaker 2: at least as long as myself and Dudley, my dog,
Speaker 2: are alive.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, the big cahouna in this world is ASM,
Speaker 1: and there's been rumors that it's going to be purchased
Speaker 1: by Legends. I know that the contracts come up for
Speaker 1: these buildings. I know the people at ASM. How do
Speaker 1: you view OVG, VISA v ASM and a perfect world?
Speaker 1: Would you just like to continue to gain market share?
Speaker 2: So I always remind our folks, stay focus, stay focused
Speaker 2: on us. We're the greatest ass that we have and
Speaker 2: we're our own worst animates, So stay focused on us.
Speaker 2: We're going to be great, not because ASM is bad.
Speaker 2: We're going to be great because OVG is going to
Speaker 2: sell and so we we We've been on thirty three
Speaker 2: accounts here in the last roughly six months, thirty three
Speaker 2: we won thirty of the bids. We don't pay attention
Speaker 2: to the other guys. We stay focused on us. Our
Speaker 2: success is not because of their failure. We can both succeed,
Speaker 2: and we both will succeed. They they're they're owned by
Speaker 2: an investment firm in Toronto, a good investment firm. I
Speaker 2: knew them when I ran a police sports and entertainment.
Speaker 2: They're very good and we very much like Jerry Schwartz
Speaker 2: and the people that run that company. But Onyx is
Speaker 2: they're gonna they're they're gonna buy it, they're gonna build it,
Speaker 2: and then they're gonna sell it. That's what they do.
Speaker 2: That's the difference between having silver Late that invest in
Speaker 2: my An Irving's company compared to having an investor that
Speaker 2: owns your company. They're going to spin it at some
Speaker 2: point or another. So does it shock me that they're
Speaker 2: for sale. No, but that I don't know that for
Speaker 2: a fact. I don't tell them how to run their company.
Speaker 2: I used to have that privilege. I don't anymore. I
Speaker 2: kind of focus on our company. So we're going to
Speaker 2: stay focused on our company. We're going to win thirty
Speaker 2: of the next thirty three bits we go make. We're
Speaker 2: going to build eight new arenas. We're going to continue
Speaker 2: to buy food and beverage companies. We're going to continue
Speaker 2: to create new genius. I hope service companies like Goal
Speaker 2: and that all of this focused on us and what
Speaker 2: makes us unique and different than everybody else. I own
Speaker 2: seven arenas, Irving and I own seven arenas. We understand
Speaker 2: how to run arenas. We understand how to build arenas.
Speaker 2: We understand how to book arenas. We understand how to
Speaker 2: sell arenas. I'm not involved in all the other stuff.
Speaker 2: We stay focused on our core. But when I go
Speaker 2: out to somebody and say, let me run your building
Speaker 2: for you, I looked them in the eye and say,
Speaker 2: because I am you, I built the arena, I am
Speaker 2: in the business. I have accountability, I have risk, I
Speaker 2: have money that I put into this. I get the
Speaker 2: way you think about what you need out of me
Speaker 2: as a service company, and I will be much more
Speaker 2: unique at answering your needs because I have been where
Speaker 2: you ben and I walk in your shoes. That's the difference.
Speaker 1: And how are responsibilities divided between you and Irving?
Speaker 2: Actually there is no responsibilities divided by Irving and I
Speaker 2: as Shelley, and so at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: that is a misnomer. So Irving is one of the
Speaker 2: founders and a great partner. Irving's not involved day to day.
Speaker 2: He has his own company that he's running, and by
Speaker 2: the way, he's doing quite well. He is still the
Speaker 2: largest manager in the business. He amazes me on a
Speaker 2: daily basis based on his age, his passion for the
Speaker 2: business and the growth he's having in the business is amazing.
Speaker 2: He happens to be very fortunate to have a partner
Speaker 2: and a young man named Jeffreys Off, who I think
Speaker 2: is really one of the finest young men in the industry,
Speaker 2: one of the best people in the industry. I love
Speaker 2: Jeffrey's Off. He's a breath of fresh air and done
Speaker 2: an unbelievable job on Full Stop. And Jeffrey, at some
Speaker 2: point or another will probably inherit his portion of this company.
Speaker 2: And Jeffrey and my daughter Francesca went to school together
Speaker 2: and get along quite well, see the world the same way.
Speaker 2: So we are uniquely set up to make sure we
Speaker 2: pass us on to the next generation, who happens to
Speaker 2: get along extremely well. And they're both in the business
Speaker 2: and Jeffrey's doing a good job with full Stop, and
Speaker 2: Francesca is doing a good job of trying to run
Speaker 2: this company. Irving when I need him. He's an invaluable
Speaker 2: resource because no one understands the business more than Irving.
Speaker 2: And he's smart and he's good do Irving and I,
Speaker 2: you know, have we had forty years worth of heavenly bliss. No,
Speaker 2: but that's what makes us fairly unique. We've had good
Speaker 2: days and bad days together. But we're both very emotionally
Speaker 2: committed to this company and doing something spectacular, and we're
Speaker 2: both passionate about what it is we're doing, and we're
Speaker 2: both heavily involved and trying to make this a great company.
Speaker 2: The difference is I had to get up every day
Speaker 2: and operate it. That's my job, that's my part of
Speaker 2: this partnership. But there is no one to have that
Speaker 2: is a better partner than Irving when it comes to
Speaker 2: content and an understanding pipeline and music and how to
Speaker 2: book our buildings. And he is a huge resource. He
Speaker 2: is a he is the Encyclopedia Britannica. Anything I need
Speaker 2: to know about the business, I pick up the phone
Speaker 2: and call Irving, and he knows that particular issue because
Speaker 2: he's experienced that particular issue. He knows everybody in the
Speaker 2: business and you know there aren't many people that are
Speaker 2: going to book around Irving.
Speaker 1: Okay, So since you own and are a consultant and
Speaker 1: operator of other buildings, what are the advantages and what
Speaker 1: leverage you gain? Obviously you can help with routing, but
Speaker 1: by having I hate tesity to use the word control,
Speaker 1: but I will control of all these buildings. What advantages
Speaker 1: you gain in leverage?
Speaker 2: Well, for the biggest advantages, I'm stupid and I've made
Speaker 2: a lot of mistakes and I know it, and so
Speaker 2: I could go back and tell people, look, I know
Speaker 2: the right answer to this because I screwed it up.
Speaker 2: And if you don't believe it, go look at the Forum.
Speaker 2: And if you don't believe it, go look at three
Speaker 2: levels of suits at the Crypto. I'm really good at
Speaker 2: acknowledging that to be great in our business you need
Speaker 2: to do two things very well. Number one, be a
Speaker 2: good thief and steal other people's ideas and admit it
Speaker 2: and say, you know, I really like what Jim doo
Speaker 2: one did at the Forum. It's really clever. He built
Speaker 2: a acoustically perfect building. I love the technology Jim Dolan
Speaker 2: is putting in at the Spirit and it's going to
Speaker 2: change our industry, I admit it. And I spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time trying to learn from Jim what he's
Speaker 2: doing with new technology. You knew stakes at the sphere,
Speaker 2: so one just go learn from other people and still
Speaker 2: take those ideas. You don't have to recreate everything yourself.
Speaker 2: And the second thing is acknowledging that with time comes
Speaker 2: good decisions and bad decisions, and you could put that
Speaker 2: to work for you. And so I've been doing this
Speaker 2: a long time now, and I've made a lot of
Speaker 2: good decisions, and I've made a lot of bad decisions.
Speaker 2: And I remind our young executive team around here come
Speaker 2: back to me and at least involve me in the conversation,
Speaker 2: and chances are pretty good. I've been there already and
Speaker 2: I've done it, and I either did it well or
Speaker 2: I probably did it poorly, but I did it, and
Speaker 2: I can at least make that experience work. That's the
Speaker 2: advantage we have as a company. I am an arena geek.
Speaker 2: I've spent my whole life doing this. I've built more
Speaker 2: arenas than anybody in the world, some good, some bad,
Speaker 2: but I'm getting better at it. Just time goes on.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm getting smart in my old age. Finally, Bob,
Speaker 2: and so the advantage we have with our clients and
Speaker 2: our partners and our arena alliance. We have twenty nine
Speaker 2: in the top thirty three arenas in the business that
Speaker 2: are part of our alliance. And we learned, we are
Speaker 2: saying as we book together, we buy together, we think together,
Speaker 2: and we try to act together. We learn from each
Speaker 2: other and we communicate. Once a month we get on
Speaker 2: a phone and talk. Irving and I are still actively involved.
Speaker 2: We got another call next week and we try to
Speaker 2: learn with them about how do we operate buildings better,
Speaker 2: how do we become more profitable? What else can we
Speaker 2: do to be a better business. But we have a
Speaker 2: lot of experience and a lot of knowledge. We do
Speaker 2: a lot of communicating with our twenty nine partners in
Speaker 2: the alliance. I got seven arenas that I operate, so
Speaker 2: I can tell them what I'm doing well when I'm
Speaker 2: not doing so well. Of the seven, most of them
Speaker 2: are really good. A couple of them we're trying to
Speaker 2: get it where we want them to be in or
Speaker 2: out there yet, but they'll get there. Most of them
Speaker 2: are doing much better than we thought we're Seattle's one
Speaker 2: of the high grossing arenas in the world. It's top
Speaker 2: ten arena in the world. We're really proud of that
Speaker 2: fact that we build an arena privately and it's one
Speaker 2: of the top arenas in the world. Now the Moody
Speaker 2: Center is one of the top arenas in the world.
Speaker 2: We're really proud of that building. Very creative what we
Speaker 2: did there to build an arena on a campus at
Speaker 2: the University of Texas that the state owns, and we
Speaker 2: figured out a way to make it work. And so
Speaker 2: that's unique to have that kind of experience when you're
Speaker 2: talking to people about managing their building or we have
Speaker 2: twenty nine partners in the alliance. They respect us because
Speaker 2: we have put up four and a half billion dollars
Speaker 2: to build arenas and I'm about to spend another four
Speaker 2: and a half billion on eight more. And by the way,
Speaker 2: I'm going to put eight more in the pipeline as
Speaker 2: soon as those eight are under construction. So we're we
Speaker 2: want to have twenty five to three arenas that are
Speaker 2: the best arenas in the world that we own and operate,
Speaker 2: and that's we're allowed to do that, right. There's no
Speaker 2: competitive issues there. That's what I love about our industry
Speaker 2: is I could have twenty five of the best arenas
Speaker 2: in the world, I could sell them together. I could
Speaker 2: great naming rates, so I could sell somebody at naming
Speaker 2: rights in one city, but then take that brand and
Speaker 2: make them sponsors in ten other cities and give them
Speaker 2: a worldwide reach. They're not going to get any other place.
Speaker 2: It's impossible to do what we do because we have
Speaker 2: arenas and some of the biggest best markets in the world.
Speaker 2: Now I can learn from premium. I could go to
Speaker 2: companies and sell them premium in multiple arenas in multiple cities.
Speaker 2: I can go to artists and ultimately say, come play
Speaker 2: all my buildings and all of my different markets, and
Speaker 2: by the way, I'll give you an economic advantage for
Speaker 2: giving me bolk mass that is unique on what we're building,
Speaker 2: and we're the only ones that could do it. Now.
Speaker 2: There is no one that will hit our critical mass.
Speaker 2: If you think about it, twenty five of the top
Speaker 2: fifty arenas in this world five or seven years will
Speaker 2: be ours. No one else could claim that, and no
Speaker 2: one else could replicate that. That's the goal, that's the ambission,
Speaker 2: that's the job at hand. We got a lot of
Speaker 2: work to do to get there. But that's what we're
Speaker 2: trying to do. That makes us unique, doesn't make us smarter,
Speaker 2: doesn't make us better, just makes us unique.
Speaker 1: Let's just talk ticketing for a minute. All these buildings
Speaker 1: were not operated by someone with as much experience or
Speaker 1: smart as you, and they all had exclusive deals frequently
Speaker 1: with Ticketmaster and sports not necessarily. And if you talk
Speaker 1: to those like Fred Rosen in the business, the deals
Speaker 1: would end up being in perpetuity because it'd be like
Speaker 1: a five year deal. You would give an advance to
Speaker 1: the building, and the building would come back for more money,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately the ticketing enter rise would get more years.
Speaker 1: So what is your belief in feeling about exclusives and
Speaker 1: how much should the building get in fees? This is
Speaker 1: dark arts if the average person doesn't understand, but you know,
Speaker 1: like the back of your head.
Speaker 2: So all good questions, all important questions, right now and timely.
Speaker 2: So we look we sell as a company. We're selling
Speaker 2: tens of millions of tickets and all of our buildings
Speaker 2: now and we probably are, you know, with seven open
Speaker 2: and eight more coming. If you look at those fifteen
Speaker 2: buildings and then you look at the buildings we manage
Speaker 2: where we got one hundred million tickets, we probably sell
Speaker 2: as a company here. Once we get everything up, we
Speaker 2: could probably be our own ticketing company. But the decision
Speaker 2: we make of ticketing has a little bit less do
Speaker 2: with money and more to do with having a system
Speaker 2: and having a technology that actually works without having to
Speaker 2: go spend the time and the money to go create it.
Speaker 2: So at AG I started with Brian Perez on building
Speaker 2: Access Ticketing and they're still going strong. Into Brian's credit,
Speaker 2: he's done a good job of building that company from
Speaker 2: the ground floor. Hard to do, really hard to do.
Speaker 2: It's like a black hole. I mean it is. The
Speaker 2: amount of money you got to spend on technology in
Speaker 2: order to make a ticketing system efficient is just astronomical.
Speaker 2: What people don't get about Ticketmaster and the reason we're
Speaker 2: with Ticketmaster is a couple of things, and it's really simple.
Speaker 2: They are the best ticketing company in the world. Everyone
Speaker 2: can sit here and argue, but look, I sell more
Speaker 2: tickets I think than just about anybody else in the world.
Speaker 2: Ticket Master is the best ticketing system in the business,
Speaker 2: bar none, no disrespectbody else. No one sells as many
Speaker 2: tickets as Ticketmaster. No one does it as well as
Speaker 2: they do it, and yes they have their days, but
Speaker 2: guess what this whole thing with Taylor, that's Taylor. She's amazing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't care what system you use, she'd
Speaker 2: break it. She's that big. We've never had an artist
Speaker 2: like this before ever. There has never been someone this
Speaker 2: young lady is a force of nature that we've never
Speaker 2: seen in our industry. And again people will say, what
Speaker 2: about Elton John, what about this? We've never had a
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift. She's incredible. She'll break any system out there,
Speaker 2: guarantee you, because she's that good. With that much demand
Speaker 2: day to day, every show we put on sale and
Speaker 2: we put on you know, we've had hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 2: of shows in our buildings. Ticketmaster's system is highly reliable
Speaker 2: and they do a good job. So one, I don't
Speaker 2: want to have to go spend the time and the
Speaker 2: money to go create my own system. It's you don't
Speaker 2: fight a war on two fronts. That's stupid. So if
Speaker 2: we find a good partner that is best in class,
Speaker 2: that could do that for me while I spend my
Speaker 2: time trying to figure out a way to build a
Speaker 2: great arena, then why wouldn't I do that so I
Speaker 2: could stay focused on my core business. That's one. Number
Speaker 2: two is they've been great partners. Honestly, they're fantastic. When
Speaker 2: I got a problem, I pick up the phone and
Speaker 2: Marla and the team there, they are unbelievably responsible back
Speaker 2: to me. They help me, They help us think. They
Speaker 2: know how driven we are on technology and a customer experience,
Speaker 2: and they're very good at trying to make that experience better.
Speaker 2: When we had COVID issues and we had four checkpoints,
Speaker 2: four checkpoints people had to go through to get into
Speaker 2: our buildings, they came along and they were unbelievably good
Speaker 2: at trying to help me eliminate wait times because we
Speaker 2: had people waiting for twenty or thirty minutes weather in
Speaker 2: some of our buildings because they had to do the
Speaker 2: COVID test and they had to do security checking, and
Speaker 2: they had to do tickets waye and it was a problem.
Speaker 2: And so I love the fact that the smartest, most experienced,
Speaker 2: most knowledgeable people in the world happened to also be
Speaker 2: my best partners, and they're unbelievably good at helping me
Speaker 2: think through problems. And then finally, my relationship with Live
Speaker 2: Nation is one that started out of necessity. At first,
Speaker 2: Age didn't want to work with us, and I get
Speaker 2: it they I guess, I don't know what I m
Speaker 2: to them, but they didn't go to Polestar, they didn't
Speaker 2: participate in Pollstar. I begged them to ultimately participate, speak,
Speaker 2: be on a panel, do their own panel, do a
Speaker 2: keynote anything. They've prohibited their people from going to Polestar,
Speaker 2: So what was I supposed to do? Irving and I
Speaker 2: went with Live Nation because I didn't have an alternative,
Speaker 2: and they accepted us and put their arms around us
Speaker 2: and made a huge bet on us. Now they look
Speaker 2: pretty good. So Ticketmaster looks pretty good and Live Nation
Speaker 2: looks pretty good because we exploded. I'm never going to
Speaker 2: forget who helped me start this company. I'm never going
Speaker 2: to forget the fact they made a bet on us
Speaker 2: and believed in us to begin with. And now they're
Speaker 2: my partner on a bunch of buildings. So now they're
Speaker 2: writing checks with me. So I'll work with any promoter
Speaker 2: in the business because I'll work with any artist. This
Speaker 2: is about the artist period. Every artist should play our
Speaker 2: building because I'm trying to build the best buildings Irving
Speaker 2: and I are committed to building the best area has
Speaker 2: ever built. We want every artist to come experience that
Speaker 2: We're dedicated to that. That's why I think we'll win
Speaker 2: is because we have a unique thought process of what
Speaker 2: does the artist and their fans want out of this experience.
Speaker 2: But I'm not going to forget Ticketmaster because they gave
Speaker 2: me the best system and adopted me from day one,
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to forget Live Nation because at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, they were there when I
Speaker 2: started the company and they've been unbelievable ever since, and
Speaker 2: they put their money where their mouth is. I have
Speaker 2: a great relationship with Jamar Seattle. They book our buildings.
Speaker 2: They've had a pretty good run with us in Austin
Speaker 2: and Seattle in particular. I wish they booked the building more,
Speaker 2: but in time that'll come and so we get on
Speaker 2: with it. But I love Ticketmaster because it's a good system,
Speaker 2: and they're loyal people and they've been great friends, and
Speaker 2: it's the best system in the business. And I absolutely
Speaker 2: adore Live Nation. Doesn't mean we don't fight every day.
Speaker 2: We do, but when I have a problem, I pick
Speaker 2: up the phone and call Michael or Omar Bob or
Speaker 2: the team over there, and they call me right back,
Speaker 2: and we are unbelievably good at solving problems and creating opportunities.
Speaker 2: They think outside the box like we do. So look,
Speaker 2: I'm blessed, Honestly, I am so damn lucky to have
Speaker 2: partners like Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which made our decision
Speaker 2: much easier. Now doesn't mean, Bob, we don't go press.
Speaker 2: So I've had huge battles with the leagues about our
Speaker 2: security system. We happen to own a security company called
Speaker 2: Prevent Advisors. It's the best security company and the facility business.
Speaker 2: We do the Homeland certification checks for Homeland certification on
Speaker 2: all the facilities. We're the only one that is certified
Speaker 2: by Homeland Security, so we're certified. We have a system
Speaker 2: on security that we think is the best system in
Speaker 2: the industry, and we couldn't get the leagues to allow
Speaker 2: us to use it in our buildings because that system
Speaker 2: wasn't certified. But it takes three to five years to
Speaker 2: get certification from the US government. It's a bureaucracy, and
Speaker 2: so we're always pressing for new systems, new technology, new
Speaker 2: ways to make the experiences better. We'll always look outside
Speaker 2: the box. We're not wedded to somebody because of an
Speaker 2: old boys network. We will go explore new ticketing. We
Speaker 2: will go find new ways to do ticketing. But right
Speaker 2: now there is no one better than ticket Massart, and
Speaker 2: they're doing an extraordinary job for us. Last thing, I
Speaker 2: don't believe in the secondary tickets companies don't. I don't
Speaker 2: think they have skin in the game. I've spent Irwie
Speaker 2: and I have spent four and a half billion dollars
Speaker 2: trying to build these arenas. I've had the demons come
Speaker 2: visit me often at night, in the middle of COVID,
Speaker 2: in the middle of economic stress and inflation and interest
Speaker 2: rates going up. There's a lot we have to fight
Speaker 2: through to be successful. As an entrepreneur and as somebody
Speaker 2: who is privately financing these arenas. What right do they
Speaker 2: have to come in? No skin in the game. They
Speaker 2: don't give us a penny, They don't make the arena
Speaker 2: better for the fan ar the artists. They don't give
Speaker 2: the artists any money. So they're not sharing anything with
Speaker 2: Bruce or Down or Tailor. So they just simply come
Speaker 2: in and exploit as a middleman. Right, They're just a
Speaker 2: mentalman buying tickets and then reselling them for a lot
Speaker 2: more money, and in particular they're disrupting the system. So
Speaker 2: the bots the they unleash on early on sale are
Speaker 2: part of why we see some of the technical issues
Speaker 2: we see on Giant on sense is because the bots
Speaker 2: and the technology they deploy absolutely cost having and their middlement.
Speaker 2: They don't share the money with the artists and they're
Speaker 2: not sharing the money with the building. Now that's my
Speaker 2: own opinion. I'm you know, I check my car every
Speaker 2: day because i know I'm not their favorite person. But
Speaker 2: we don't believe that scalpers and the secondary ticket companies
Speaker 2: have the right to exploit the fans and the artists
Speaker 2: the way they do without sharing in the risk, sharing
Speaker 2: in the entrepreneurial spirit, and sharing where the money should go,
Speaker 2: which is we come to go see Don Henley in
Speaker 2: the Eagles. That's what I pay money to go see.
Speaker 2: Why is Don Henley in the Eagles not making a
Speaker 2: portion of that money like they should?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a much longer conversation we have to take,
Speaker 1: but this does beg the question. Before Irving got involved
Speaker 1: with Oakview, one of his main complaints was all the
Speaker 1: tickets that are not on the manifest whither you're a
Speaker 1: building owner, which how do you address that?
Speaker 2: Well, we actually, I believe in the artists look at
Speaker 2: I'm very fortunate that I've had forty years in the
Speaker 2: business and I see it the way they see it,
Speaker 2: because again, we're buying tickets to go see Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 2: By the way, he's spectacular. I just saw him in
Speaker 2: Hyde Park. My god, I'm blessed her. We to have
Speaker 2: this guy still spending three hours, three and a half
Speaker 2: hours every night entertaining us. What a great industry and
Speaker 2: what a great world to be able to participate. And
Speaker 2: as a fan, I went to Hide Park is by
Speaker 2: the way, guests of age thanked them, and what a
Speaker 2: great experience. They've done a phenomenal job with that counselor
Speaker 2: experience there, and it just it made me understand how
Speaker 2: much I love this industry. Is just someone that want
Speaker 2: that night to go experience Bruce Springsteen. After or I've
Speaker 2: seen them I don't know eight times this year already,
Speaker 2: and I walked away. My daughter went with me, and
Speaker 2: I said, how great was that? Bruce Springsteen should get
Speaker 2: the money? He just should, So I see it the
Speaker 2: way they see it, which means on the manifest when
Speaker 2: we build a new arena, we have to find in
Speaker 2: economic balance. Now I gotta go pay for the arena.
Speaker 2: I've created a better experience for them. And by the way,
Speaker 2: they're making a hell of a lot more money in
Speaker 2: my arena than they used to making the old arenas.
Speaker 2: So I'm giving them more seats. They could charge more
Speaker 2: for the seats because the experience is better for the
Speaker 2: seats and cut I do bonuses if you will, back
Speaker 2: to promoters and artists to reward them for the number
Speaker 2: of dates they'll do in my buildings. So what we
Speaker 2: do is actually very simple. On my premium seats, I
Speaker 2: will buy the ticket from the artists, and then the
Speaker 2: upside for the premium services, for the special food, the
Speaker 2: special club, the special parking, the special experiences, the right
Speaker 2: to buy the tickets before the rest of the people
Speaker 2: get a chance to buy them, so they got predictability.
Speaker 2: I'm going to keep the upside. I'll give them a
Speaker 2: little bit of the upside, that's that bonus. But I'm
Speaker 2: going to buy the ticket from them because they deserve
Speaker 2: to be paid for the ticket. We're going to do
Speaker 2: that now we have to go deal occasionally with an
Speaker 2: artist that comes on and says, well, I don't want
Speaker 2: anybody getting a first right to the tickets. I want
Speaker 2: the fans, everybody to have the first right to the ticket.
Speaker 2: So we work through that. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: bands out there that are passionate about that, Kurnel Jam
Speaker 2: for example. We figure it out. We take our premium
Speaker 2: seaholders and say, hey, occasionally, we're going to do the
Speaker 2: best we can that not every night are we going
Speaker 2: to be able to guarantee the first right to buy
Speaker 2: that seat. And so you got to be flexible. You
Speaker 2: got to understand the ne aedge of the artists. You
Speaker 2: got to be fair. You should buy the ticket from
Speaker 2: the artists. We don't buy the sweet tickets because we
Speaker 2: sell them annually. That's the one place where it goes
Speaker 2: to help pay for the building. Every promoter we deal with,
Speaker 2: and every manager we deal with, and every agent we
Speaker 2: deal with, they understand that. They get that I'm spending
Speaker 2: five hundred million on average to build an arena, and
Speaker 2: the arena's making them a lot more money than they
Speaker 2: used to make, and it's a much better experience, and
Speaker 2: the back house is better, the loading is better, the
Speaker 2: rigging is better. They spend less money coming and going.
Speaker 2: They make more money at the end of the night
Speaker 2: because they could charge more for my arenas because the
Speaker 2: seats are fantastic. We share, We figure out a way
Speaker 2: to be partners. We're aligned. We make sure we take
Speaker 2: care of them and respect them. That's what does get
Speaker 2: me wound up about. You know, those that are making
Speaker 2: money that don't participate in that alignment, don't take risks,
Speaker 2: don't make the experience better, and don't reward the artist.
Speaker 2: That's a problem. But I'm not the problem. I figure
Speaker 2: out a way to see it in their eyes. I
Speaker 2: try to treat them fairly, and I also ask them
Speaker 2: to remember, I'm spending five hundred million dollars to build
Speaker 2: this arena. I got to make my money back. Help
Speaker 2: me do that, and I'll help you and I'll pay
Speaker 2: you for the tickets.
Speaker 1: Okay, where are you from originally and what were your
Speaker 1: circumstances growing up?
Speaker 2: So I grew up in Saint Louis, six brothers and
Speaker 2: sisters six Wow. Yeah, My brother Todd is I think
Speaker 2: the most accomplished person I'd met in the industry. He's
Speaker 2: much better and smarter than I am, so I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what I think. They dropped me on my head
Speaker 2: a couple of times, and thoroughly enjoy working with him,
Speaker 2: which we do every day. He's running the Kraken and
Speaker 2: Climate Pledge for us up in Seattle. We're partners and
Speaker 2: by the way, he's a shareholder in this company for
Speaker 2: being a part of our partnership up there. So both
Speaker 2: of us have enjoyed growing our careers together. We enjoy
Speaker 2: spending time with each other. We just jointly been on
Speaker 2: Memorial Stadium and Seattle won that bid, So we owe
Speaker 2: a huge debt of gratitude to both my mom and
Speaker 2: dad who have passed. One of our brothers just died
Speaker 2: and it was sad because he died quickly, and it
Speaker 2: was an experience that shook both of us because we
Speaker 2: were with him. He's the healthiest of everybody in the family,
Speaker 2: so it was quite shocking. But it shows you how
Speaker 2: devastating cancer could be because he literally he disappeared in
Speaker 2: front of us in three weeks. So it was the
Speaker 2: just one of the worst things I've ever seen, and
Speaker 2: so we appreciate every day the five that remained. We
Speaker 2: were installed great work ethic. I didn't go to college
Speaker 2: because I couldn't go to college. We were doing the
Speaker 2: dog paddle. My brother didn't go to college. Todd and
Speaker 2: I are very unusual to be in the positions and
Speaker 2: to have the fortunate opportunities that we both had, and
Speaker 2: neither of us have a college education. But we were
Speaker 2: very fortunate that our mother and our father, and we
Speaker 2: lost her mother. I was I think seven or eight
Speaker 2: years old when she died. But they taught us work ethic,
Speaker 2: and they taught us how to get up every day
Speaker 2: and earn your keep, and so both of us are
Speaker 2: relentless at living our lives every day hard. We are
Speaker 2: relentless at trying to be successful. Were relentless on pushing
Speaker 2: ourselves and our people. But he, in particular builds some
Speaker 2: of the greatest culture I've ever seen for employees. He
Speaker 2: does a phenomenal job up there for not just the
Speaker 2: people that work for the Kracking and for Climate Pledge,
Speaker 2: but for the fans of the KRACK and the people
Speaker 2: that come to that building every day. And I think
Speaker 2: that's kind of Yes, we kind of had to fight
Speaker 2: when we were young and went through some really tough times,
Speaker 2: but I think that installed within us a character and
Speaker 2: a work ethic that hopefully still at our core value today.
Speaker 1: So what did your father do for a living and
Speaker 1: what kind of kid were you growing up? Were you
Speaker 1: the strawsters the drink?
Speaker 2: Were you a loader or what? So my dad was
Speaker 2: he did what he had to do to survive because,
Speaker 2: you know, suddenly he was trying to raise six kids,
Speaker 2: because we were all pretty young still my two older
Speaker 2: brothers were in college already, but still pretty shocking to
Speaker 2: lose your wife at that age, because he was they
Speaker 2: were in their forties and then having six kids you
Speaker 2: got to raise and then still go have a career.
Speaker 2: So he sold his whole life. So that's probably where
Speaker 2: Todd and I learned how to sell. But he bounced
Speaker 2: a lot, and you saw him deteriorate as a you know,
Speaker 2: that takes a huge toll on this. The next wife
Speaker 2: died of cancer, so he went back to back and
Speaker 2: we lost our mom and our step mom to cancer,
Speaker 2: and so that that changed him and he was never
Speaker 2: the same, and thank god he didn't. You know, quite frankly,
Speaker 2: that would have driven most people to abuse their life,
Speaker 2: and he didn't. He got up every day and worked hard.
Speaker 2: But it he lost confidence, and he lost hope, and
Speaker 2: he lost ambition, because you can't go through life and
Speaker 2: take two gut punches like that and not have it
Speaker 2: affect who you are as a human being. But he
Speaker 2: didn't let the demons get him, and I have a
Speaker 2: deep appreciation for the fact he lived till his nineties
Speaker 2: and he never let the demons get him. Meant the
Speaker 2: rest of us Again, the dog paddles in the middle
Speaker 2: of the lake. I was very committed and attached to
Speaker 2: my mother, And then I'd say I was a disciplined
Speaker 2: young man, and I worked two or three jobs at
Speaker 2: all times in my life. When I was growing up,
Speaker 2: I'd get up early in the morning and work at
Speaker 2: a bakery, and then I'd go from the bakery to
Speaker 2: a deli. And so I always worked hard and I
Speaker 2: didn't cause a lot of havoc and a lot of trouble.
Speaker 2: And I say that for my later years, and now
Speaker 2: I'm making up for being a good kid, I guess,
Speaker 2: so it all averages out. But lucky that those values
Speaker 2: also give me a wife of thirty plus years and
Speaker 2: a daughter I'm really proud of who has chosen to
Speaker 2: go into business and two grandsons, and the oldest grandson,
Speaker 2: who's eight, wants to go build arenas for a living.
Speaker 2: And so it's a full circle. And I've been blessed,
Speaker 2: and I'm very fortunate that I learned a lot of
Speaker 2: tough lessons early on that have come in and I
Speaker 2: hope given me other opportunities later in my life that
Speaker 2: have overcompensated me quite frankly for some of the early challenges.
Speaker 1: Okay, but growing up, were you good in school? Bad
Speaker 1: in school? Were you popular? And ultimately, how did you
Speaker 1: decide not to go to college?
Speaker 2: So I'd say I was good at the things I
Speaker 2: was interested in. I was really good. So I selled
Speaker 2: in things like debate, history, fascinated by history, politics, math.
Speaker 2: Everyone that's worked around me knows I sit there and
Speaker 2: add stuff up in my head as we're talking, and
Speaker 2: they're all fearful of my ability to make decisions quickly
Speaker 2: on stuff like that. But there was other stuff I
Speaker 2: just wasn't interested in. And so but I graduated a
Speaker 2: year early in high school and got all with it.
Speaker 2: I could have gone to college, but I was working,
Speaker 2: and I had to work. I wasn't living at home.
Speaker 2: I was living on my own and I had to
Speaker 2: go work, and I was working two jobs. And then
Speaker 2: I started with a company called New England Life, which
Speaker 2: is a very old, conservative, established life insurance pension investment
Speaker 2: firm out of Boston. And you had to be twenty
Speaker 2: one years old. Somebody had to recommend you into the company.
Speaker 2: You had to have a college education. I didn't have
Speaker 2: two of the three, but I had somebody that really
Speaker 2: believed in me, called Bill Whitney, and he spoke up
Speaker 2: and said, we got to bring this kid in and
Speaker 2: let him do the internship program. Stanley. He's only twenty
Speaker 2: years old, but there's something about the kid. They did.
Speaker 2: And then I was a Rookie of the Year. And
Speaker 2: my third year of doing that and beginning to have success,
Speaker 2: I went to work for an indoor soccer team. I
Speaker 2: was the number two employee. The number one employee got
Speaker 2: caught doing something he shouldn't have done, and I became
Speaker 2: the number one employee and became the president like twenty
Speaker 2: one or twenty years So wait, wait.
Speaker 1: You were selling you were selling insurance. What motivated you
Speaker 1: to jump to indoor soccer which was not lighting up
Speaker 1: the world at the time.
Speaker 2: To boot, So my brother ironically, so I think I
Speaker 2: was twenty three or twenty four actually at the time,
Speaker 2: and my brother was the announcer for the Houston Arrows,
Speaker 2: which was a World Hockey League team with the Gordy
Speaker 2: how and his sons, and the owner of the Houston
Speaker 2: team bought the expansion rights to Saint Louis and I
Speaker 2: was in Saint Louis and my brother said, you should
Speaker 2: go talk to him. I talked to him. My god,
Speaker 2: this is really interesting. And I grew up in a
Speaker 2: family that liked sports and enjoyed sports, and they offered
Speaker 2: me a job and I decided to take it. And
Speaker 2: so ironically, the Saint Louis Steamers averaged about eighteen seventeen
Speaker 2: thousand people, and I ate our first year shocking. So
Speaker 2: we sold out the Czecherdome. The Blues were there, and
Speaker 2: the guys that ran the Blues thought we were a circus,
Speaker 2: and I said, I know, and everybody loves the circus.
Speaker 2: You don't get it, do you. We were unbelievably successful,
Speaker 2: and then I got hired at the age at twenty
Speaker 2: five to be the president of Baltimore Blast, which is
Speaker 2: my passion for Baltimore. We sold out pretty much every
Speaker 2: game there and did well. And then went to Kansas
Speaker 2: City and we created the comments and did extremely well there.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, a little bit slower. These seats don't sell themselves.
Speaker 1: What was the special philosophy were employing to make these
Speaker 1: teams successful?
Speaker 2: We worked hard, honestly. So for example, in Baltimore, you know,
Speaker 2: I was a twenty six twenty seven year old kid,
Speaker 2: and I was the president of the whole organization, so
Speaker 2: everything reported into me. And so in the summer when
Speaker 2: we had our we hadn't started playing yet, so we
Speaker 2: were in breaking in the community. We created a concept
Speaker 2: called beat the Goalie. So we brought our players in early,
Speaker 2: paid them nothing. It was I think we paid one
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a month. That was kind of ridiculous at
Speaker 2: the time. Except Geentenheimer was our keeper. I remember him
Speaker 2: quite well. And then we had another kid named Alan Mayer,
Speaker 2: and we brought him in during the summer and said, look,
Speaker 2: we're going to we're going to work. You're going to
Speaker 2: help me go out and meet everybody in this community.
Speaker 2: And every weekend we'd go to every festival and every
Speaker 2: fair everywhere in Baltimore and Maryland, and we do beat
Speaker 2: the goalie. And by the way, I was the third goalie,
Speaker 2: so we'd rotate, so I'd give them a break and
Speaker 2: I wouldn't let the kids score on me. That was
Speaker 2: the difference. I'm like, no one's scoring on me today.
Speaker 2: We met thousands, tens of thousands of people and turned
Speaker 2: them into Blast fans because we got to know them
Speaker 2: and we got to build a relationship. And then we
Speaker 2: did a thing in Saint Louis, in Kansas City and
Speaker 2: in Baltimar called Introductions, which no one had ever tried before.
Speaker 2: So I was working with my brothers in Kansas City,
Speaker 2: but in Saint Louis and Baltimore, I did Introductions. So
Speaker 2: in Saint Louis we created a song. We stole a
Speaker 2: song called Ain't No Stopping Us Now, and I created
Speaker 2: a light show with mirror balls and I'd turn out
Speaker 2: the lights and I'd use small because we were the steamers,
Speaker 2: so we came out of steam and I made it
Speaker 2: a show. And then in Baltimore we did Diana Ross
Speaker 2: I'm Coming Out. I made it a bigger show. And
Speaker 2: by the time we got to Kansas City, we were absolute,
Speaker 2: like perfect at producing the circus and we were the
Speaker 2: circus and we created a ten minute show in an
Speaker 2: introduction where every night we do a different piece of
Speaker 2: music and I'd orchestrate a different special effect from fireworks
Speaker 2: to mirror balls, to smoke to lasers. And one day,
Speaker 2: true story, We're sitting at lunch in Kansas City, my
Speaker 2: brother and I and the bus boy comes up and
Speaker 2: I'm looking at this kid and he says a few
Speaker 2: words and I'm like, has anyone told you you look
Speaker 2: exactly like Michael Jackson And he says, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 2: do a Michael Jackson imitation. I said, well, can you
Speaker 2: show me? So right there in the middle of the
Speaker 2: hind it where we're having lunch, he is the middle.
Speaker 2: I want you to come see me after your shift today.
Speaker 2: He came down to the Kemper arena and I said,
Speaker 2: do you sing? And he sings a few songs he
Speaker 2: is Michael Jackson. Like, my god, I've never seen anything
Speaker 2: like it. We put him in the pregame show, so
Speaker 2: we do some Michael Jackson music. Introduced this young man.
Speaker 2: He's out there in the middle of it, and he's
Speaker 2: so good that everyone thinks it's Michael Jackson. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson is doing the opening of a Kansas City comments,
Speaker 2: believe what you will. He became a sensation. We actually
Speaker 2: everyone would show up ten minutes, had a tip off
Speaker 2: to see the pregame show. Sixteen thousand people every night,
Speaker 2: and we became a sensation. That was really the first
Speaker 2: time you saw introductions in sports, and it was the beginning.
Speaker 2: And then I think the bulls and Steve Shamwald came
Speaker 2: in and did an even better job. God bless him
Speaker 2: with Manford, man of the Earth being if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 2: and so we were perfectionists though, and I'd literally go
Speaker 2: create a new ten minute pregame show every night, and
Speaker 2: I'd hire people. I brought it in a kid's choir
Speaker 2: one night to do the course for Kenny Loggins. I'm
Speaker 2: free and we'd coreograph it and rehearse it. And I
Speaker 2: had these special effect guys that were stagehand guys for
Speaker 2: and Roll, and I said, I want to create a
Speaker 2: rock and roll show every night for ten minutes before
Speaker 2: we introduced the players. It was going along swimmingly until
Speaker 2: one night the mirror ball he forgot to turn the
Speaker 2: crane off and it hit the top of the ceiling
Speaker 2: busted and came down on the floor and almost took
Speaker 2: out my entire team, But we had a good time.
Speaker 2: It was a life lesson. I'd learned how important it
Speaker 2: was to put on a show. And also we kind
Speaker 2: of ran temper arenas, so we got to get into
Speaker 2: the rock and roll business and we were promoters. So
Speaker 2: that's what got me into arenas, and that's what got
Speaker 2: me into music, and that's what got me into eventually promotion.
Speaker 1: So where'd you go From Kansas City?
Speaker 2: I was hired as the youngest person ever for the
Speaker 2: Minnesota Timberwolves. That was their first employee, and I was
Speaker 2: in charge of all the business and we broke at
Speaker 2: tennants records our first year at the Metrodome, so to
Speaker 2: this day, I think they still stand. We sold over
Speaker 2: a million tickets our first year for the Timberwhiss that
Speaker 2: we averaged something like twenty seven thousand people a night.
Speaker 2: We were terrible, terrible, the worst form of basketball mankind
Speaker 2: had ever invented. Bill Musselman believed in running out the
Speaker 2: shot clock every possession and if a player tried to
Speaker 2: score too quickly, he'd bentioned. It was like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is god awful. But we sold twenty seven thousand tickets
Speaker 2: a night, and then we moved into the new Target
Speaker 2: Center and helped build that. Although that was not my
Speaker 2: favorite building, it's amazing it's still there today. They needed
Speaker 2: a new arena in Minnesota, the timber Will snow it
Speaker 2: and then spent four years there and then hired as
Speaker 2: the youngest president in the NBA for the Denver Nuggets
Speaker 2: and came in and resurrected that franchise from near bankruptcy,
Speaker 2: and then we had great success on the court. Bernie
Speaker 2: Bickersteph was the general manager and Danis was the head coach,
Speaker 2: and we had the mutumble mathon Zoellis and a group
Speaker 2: of kids that were fantastic, and we made it all
Speaker 2: the way to the Western Conference finals, I think in
Speaker 2: our third year, and that's where we created the Pepsi
Speaker 2: Center at the time, so I negotiated the deal to
Speaker 2: build a new arena and we decided to do it
Speaker 2: privately and it became the Pepsi Center. And then I
Speaker 2: went from there to a thing called the La Kings
Speaker 2: and it became ag.
Speaker 1: Okay. Now that's a megalopolis in downtown Los Angeles. Tell
Speaker 1: me how you ran the Kings and how you ultimately
Speaker 1: came up with the idea for LA Live, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So the Kings Phil Phil was smart. Phil is smart.
Speaker 2: He bought him out of bankruptcy, paid everybody off, God
Speaker 2: bless him. Convinced me to leave what I was doing
Speaker 2: and moved to LA which that was tough and a transition.
Speaker 2: Frankly and my family stayed back in Denver for a
Speaker 2: while while I was out in LA. So we were
Speaker 2: a terrible team that didn't have a philosophy. We had
Speaker 2: just traded away the greatest player in the history of
Speaker 2: the game and Wayne Gretzky, which was stupid, and we
Speaker 2: had to build it from there, and I ended up
Speaker 2: having to fire everybody and bring on a whole new staff.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know anything about hockey, so I had
Speaker 2: to teach myself the game, and I wasn't very good
Speaker 2: at it, by the way. At first we made a
Speaker 2: lot of mistakes, but then we Phil partnered with a
Speaker 2: guy named Ed Rosky, and I got to know ed Rosky,
Speaker 2: and ed Roski's the guy that created the genius behind
Speaker 2: LA Live. That was Ed's vision, not mine, not Phills,
Speaker 2: that was Eds. But we took it and ran with
Speaker 2: it as I said. We took a good idea and said, Okay,
Speaker 2: I get it. Let me go try to make this happen.
Speaker 2: Forged an unbelievable partnership with doctor Buss. He put me
Speaker 2: under his wing and I learned about naming rights and
Speaker 2: premium seats and showtime. I was the only non Bust
Speaker 2: member on the board there for a very long time
Speaker 2: and got to watch genius at work. We won. I
Speaker 2: still have I think five or six championships and rings
Speaker 2: from my time with the Lakers. Loved Genie Buss, loved
Speaker 2: the Bus family, loved doctor Buss. He taught me more
Speaker 2: than anybody I've ever been around in my life and
Speaker 2: was an unbelievably good partner. We were highly lucky with
Speaker 2: Staple Center that we had two kids named Shaquille O'Neil
Speaker 2: and Kobe Bryant, and we won championships, and then when
Speaker 2: they slowed down, the King started winning championships in twenty
Speaker 2: twelve and twenty fourteen and won Stanley Cups. So we
Speaker 2: were blessed by the Lakers in the run they had
Speaker 2: and Jerry West and Phil Jackson. Amazing to be around
Speaker 2: those gentlemen and learn that literally from doc Bus to
Speaker 2: Jerry West, to Phil Jackson and just watched them. They
Speaker 2: taught me a lot about how to win, and I
Speaker 2: use that in order to help the King win and
Speaker 2: helped the Galaxy win, and we grew as a company.
Speaker 2: We bought the only Galaxy. We built the Home Depot Center,
Speaker 2: and then we went out and I got a little
Speaker 2: English lad named David Beckham to come to the league
Speaker 2: and to help us change the league forever. And then
Speaker 2: we got into the promotion business and decided to do
Speaker 2: concerts and became the second largest promotion company in the
Speaker 2: world and bought We were lucky. We found a partner
Speaker 2: and a young man named Paul Tillett, and became partners
Speaker 2: in Coachella and then created the festival called stage Coach.
Speaker 2: The Eagles were our partners on Stage Coach originally, and
Speaker 2: we grew from there, and we jumped into Randy Phillips
Speaker 2: and j Marciano got us into things like Hyde Park.
Speaker 2: We built new arenas in London, and built a new
Speaker 2: arena in Berlin at the Wall, literally staring at the
Speaker 2: wall our first night we had Metallica opened the building
Speaker 2: for us, and five thousand people protested and I couldn't
Speaker 2: understand it. It's like, wait a minute. We privatized the building,
Speaker 2: built it for free. We hired all these people. We
Speaker 2: brought in Metallica to open the building. What are they protesting?
Speaker 2: And they said, they're just protesting. They don't care. They
Speaker 2: just wanted to come together and protest you because they can.
Speaker 2: So we built arenas in Shanghai and other places around
Speaker 2: the world. It was an unbelievable experience. Philly Anshuts is
Speaker 2: to this day someone I highly respect for the risk
Speaker 2: and the money he gave us to go build that
Speaker 2: company and get into all things that he probably would
Speaker 2: look at me and go, what the hell are you
Speaker 2: doing here? But it was an amazing experience in an
Speaker 2: amazing twenty years, and we enjoyed every moment of including
Speaker 2: building what became the most important entertainment district in the industry,
Speaker 2: LA Live and showing what you could do. I remember
Speaker 2: when we were debating building Staples Center and getting approval,
Speaker 2: and remember we priva sized it, so we built the
Speaker 2: arena ourselves privately. Mister Anshuts and had Rosky paid for
Speaker 2: that out of their own pockets, and in the debate
Speaker 2: to get entitlement there was a council the named Joel Wax,
Speaker 2: and Joel was opposing us because he could. He was
Speaker 2: Piston on the parade and Joel would hold these public
Speaker 2: meetings and be showcases. And as I learned at the
Speaker 2: time and now it's my other favorite, saying every city
Speaker 2: has cave people, which is citizens against virtually everything. And
Speaker 2: so they all came out, and Joel brought in this
Speaker 2: professor from the University of Chicago, and he said, sports
Speaker 2: facilities do not make an economic difference. Sports facilities don't
Speaker 2: create jobs. Sports facilities will have zero impact on the
Speaker 2: future of urban growth in a community. And there's no
Speaker 2: reason to get these guys the entitlement they want because
Speaker 2: they won't help the city. They'll hurt the city. And
Speaker 2: I remember getting up after the guy spoke and said,
Speaker 2: I cannot believe this man is teaching our kids. We
Speaker 2: have a serious problem. Turns out, I think Staple Center
Speaker 2: saved downtown Los Angeles. And when you look at downtown
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, to the credit of ed Rosky and the
Speaker 2: vision he had, it dynamically changed a city that no
Speaker 2: one wanted to live and no one wanted to work,
Speaker 2: and then no one wanted to come down and play
Speaker 2: in and LA Live and the investment that happened the JW.
Speaker 2: Marriott and the Ritz the Convention Center and turning that
Speaker 2: back into something that was an important, dominant convention center
Speaker 2: in the industry pretty amazing. And then my favorite part
Speaker 2: of my favorite thing is the Grammy Museum that we
Speaker 2: built there and a wonderful gentleman that also adopted me,
Speaker 2: Jerry Perncio, giving us the grant to help build that thing,
Speaker 2: and moving the Grammys downtown and being a part of
Speaker 2: the lure of Staples Center, and changing lives, hopefully of
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of kids because we put music back
Speaker 2: into schools at a time when they were the first
Speaker 2: damn program everybody was yanking out of the curriculum. So
Speaker 2: really enjoyed LA Live and enjoyed AG, enjoyed AG Presents,
Speaker 2: and it was a fascinating time. But eventually, when you
Speaker 2: have two people that are a bit polar opposite, which
Speaker 2: Phil and I were politically and in a lot of
Speaker 2: other ways. And by the way, it was his company
Speaker 2: and he felt like I didn't respect that he was
Speaker 2: probably right after twenty years, I forgot that he wrote
Speaker 2: the checks and he owned it. And so I respect
Speaker 2: that now as somebody that owns the company and has
Speaker 2: taken the financial risk that we've taken here, I get
Speaker 2: that and so fortunate that I get a chance to
Speaker 2: go build my own company with Irving and our executives
Speaker 2: here and my daughter and Silberly, Okay.
Speaker 1: It ends with AEG very quickly. You take a job
Speaker 1: in Toronto. My personal belief is when they have a
Speaker 1: job that good, you know you want to sit back
Speaker 1: and assess the landscape. Although you were successfully Toronto, was
Speaker 1: that a rash decision? And ultimately, why did you decide
Speaker 1: to leave Toronto?
Speaker 2: So I went to Toronto just because I didn't want
Speaker 2: to pick a fight with Phil and I had to
Speaker 2: respect his decision that we needed to part and go
Speaker 2: for different ways. And I didn't want to stay in
Speaker 2: la because one it hurt right, we were winning championships,
Speaker 2: and it just I didn't want to have to sit
Speaker 2: here and go every day and have the Kings Lakers
Speaker 2: Galaxy results on TV that night and me going, you know,
Speaker 2: what the hell? So it was a good decision to
Speaker 2: move and get out and not pick a fight and
Speaker 2: not have a conflict. If I would have started OVG
Speaker 2: that first year. My guess is it would have been
Speaker 2: a bigger fight between the two companies because that that
Speaker 2: was really rubbing, and out of respect to Phil, he
Speaker 2: treated me well at AG for most of the years
Speaker 2: and he gave me a great opportunity, and so I
Speaker 2: wasn't going to go pick that fight. And I had
Speaker 2: to get out of LA and let him go do
Speaker 2: his thing. And by the way, they have a hell
Speaker 2: of a company today. So I went to Toronto. Larry
Speaker 2: Tannebon was kind enough to convince me to come up there,
Speaker 2: and I quickly realized they were definitely afraid of winning. Crazy, right,
Speaker 2: we're in the sports business. We should get paid to
Speaker 2: win and that's all we should think about. They were
Speaker 2: afraid to win, didn't know how to win, and had
Speaker 2: too much pressure on them. I remember going to one
Speaker 2: of my first soccer games for the Toronto FC and
Speaker 2: we're in this it was a sweep and I called
Speaker 2: a nutri suite. It was a sweet substitute and I said,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go outside and sit outside and I said,
Speaker 2: don't do that. I'm like, why not? I said, well,
Speaker 2: the fans are going to help you and throw things
Speaker 2: at you. And I said, well, first of all, we
Speaker 2: deserve it, and if I was a fan, I threw
Speaker 2: rocks at me based on the way you guys have
Speaker 2: run this franchise. We stuck, so let them have that
Speaker 2: me and it'll make them feel better. And sure enough
Speaker 2: they did. They hurled stuff at me and insulted me,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, you're right, I get it. We're going
Speaker 2: to switch it. But it taught me about kind of
Speaker 2: how they just respect. They forgot about the fans. So
Speaker 2: we came in and we rebuilt the organizations. Was. I
Speaker 2: was there roughly four years, so two years full time
Speaker 2: in two years where I was allowed to do both jobs.
Speaker 2: It was. It was actually a lot of fun. Met
Speaker 2: great people, had a great staff, great organization. Stolen me
Speaker 2: Si you Jerry from Denver and he came in, was
Speaker 2: the president. Stole a kid a kid. Then Tim Vezbachenko
Speaker 2: from MLS and he became my president. We won championships
Speaker 2: with TFC. We went and got Giovinco and he came
Speaker 2: in and toured the league up Michael Bradley. So we
Speaker 2: had a lot of fun with the team and that
Speaker 2: team changed the league in a iamic way and we
Speaker 2: were winning championships and having fun there and then Messa.
Speaker 2: I won a championship with the Raptors that I was
Speaker 2: fortunate enough to be a part of at the end there,
Speaker 2: and you know, I still think they're going to win
Speaker 2: a Stanley Cup. I hired Brendan Shanahan to be the
Speaker 2: president there, and I think they're on the right track
Speaker 2: and will win a Stanley Cup here. So I enjoyed winning.
Speaker 2: That was fun. Championships are fun. That culture was fun.
Speaker 2: We became much more aggressive at music, had a good
Speaker 2: joint venture with Live Nation, made music a much higher
Speaker 2: priority in the building, built a new training center for
Speaker 2: the Raptors, built essentially a new stadium for Toronto FC,
Speaker 2: and great owners with Rogers, Bell and Larry and enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: But I told them day one, hey, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do this, but understand, there's going to be a day
Speaker 2: and time sometime in a five years here where I'm
Speaker 2: going to go build my own company. And I just
Speaker 2: want you to know that's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be here forever. And they knew it.
Speaker 2: But you know, when I walked in the door one
Speaker 2: day and said I think I want to go do that,
Speaker 2: it was hard because we were just starting to win.
Speaker 2: So we figured out a way to share, and I
Speaker 2: bounced between OVG and maple Lice forts and entertainment, and
Speaker 2: they were kind enough and good enough to allow me
Speaker 2: to do that for some period of time before we
Speaker 2: found a successor Do you have any free time or
Speaker 2: do you just consider work to be play? Where is
Speaker 2: there some you have down time where you either do
Speaker 2: something else, maybe you don't want to travel or watch
Speaker 2: streaming television, read whatever. So it's definitely work is not play.
Speaker 2: It's hard. I do like working, I do work hard,
Speaker 2: and I do really enjoy what I do. But it's hard.
Speaker 2: It's very hard. We started with four of us at OVG.
Speaker 2: We now have forty thousand employees, and so it's hard.
Speaker 2: And we've grown quicker than even I thought we would.
Speaker 2: You go from COVID to inflation to interest rates to
Speaker 2: you in Manchester Brexit. Still can't figure out why the
Speaker 2: hell they did that one. It is just you just
Speaker 2: it's not easy to be an entrepreneur anymore. I don't
Speaker 2: get the politics and most of the places we're at
Speaker 2: in putting here, I stretched my head saying, what the
Speaker 2: hell happened here? And we got to deal with a
Speaker 2: lot of politicians, some phenomenal like in Baltimore, unbelievably blessed.
Speaker 2: Mayor Scott is fantastic, young, dynamic, great for the city,
Speaker 2: believes in the city. Governor Moore, He's going to be
Speaker 2: president one day. This guy is fantastic, just fantastic. It
Speaker 2: gives me new hope for our country. There are still
Speaker 2: great leaders out there that are willing to sacrifice their
Speaker 2: lives and their time and their families to go make
Speaker 2: a different and he's going to make a difference. So
Speaker 2: we were lucky that we get to deal with a
Speaker 2: lot of good politicians. We you know, in Texas, I
Speaker 2: wanted to make it a carbon neutral building, and they're
Speaker 2: looking at me, going what's carbon neutral? So you know,
Speaker 2: to each his own, and you've got to adopt, and
Speaker 2: you got to make sure you're a mirror image the
Speaker 2: community you're supposed to represent it. We're trying to do that.
Speaker 2: That's hard work. Traveling is hard work. I just spent
Speaker 2: three weeks traveling internationally. Hard work. But I look, I
Speaker 2: get to go to places now. I just came back
Speaker 2: from Riad. We don't understand Saudi Arabia. We're making a
Speaker 2: mistake with Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince is going
Speaker 2: to change that country. And we have you could have
Speaker 2: your opinions on the politics there, but he's opening the
Speaker 2: country realts. You can't wave a switch and do it overnight.
Speaker 2: And I understand a lot of people on on what
Speaker 2: happened with the journalists and it's unfortunate. But as some
Speaker 2: of the people's Honey Arabia said to me, just people
Speaker 2: on the street when we would talk, and I said,
Speaker 2: tell me, I said, first, our lives are better. He's
Speaker 2: opening up society. The quality of life is ten times better.
Speaker 2: They're reinvesting, there's less less corruption, they're putting money back
Speaker 2: into the system. And by the way, look you guys
Speaker 2: didn't exactly do a great job with the Indians, and
Speaker 2: so you've got to understand there are moral standards and
Speaker 2: values each society needs to put upon themselves and then
Speaker 2: figure that out from within that society. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: you have the right to go tell us how we're
Speaker 2: supposed to run this country. And I'm like, I get it.
Speaker 2: I understand. I am shocked at the trillions and trillions
Speaker 2: of dollars they are putting into that country and rebuilding
Speaker 2: that country as quick as they are and by twenty thirty,
Speaker 2: Rion is going to be the center of the universe.
Speaker 2: The airport, the development, the arenas, which you see the
Speaker 2: arenas they're building there, they're all the charts. I've never
Speaker 2: seen anything like it. Abu Dhabi, Yes Island, Dubai, That
Speaker 2: whole world there is just amazing, and it's the center
Speaker 2: of the universe. And let's not forget they are right
Speaker 2: next to India, which is one of the fastest growing,
Speaker 2: most important countries in the world. They're right near Africa,
Speaker 2: and Africa is going to be a really critical part
Speaker 2: of the world and a part of our society that
Speaker 2: we need to pay attention to. Think of what Nigeria
Speaker 2: is doing to music today and the artists that are
Speaker 2: emerging and dominating our music from places like Legos. So
Speaker 2: we're going to build an arena in Legos because that's
Speaker 2: the future. And by the way, that's all centered around
Speaker 2: places like Rihann and so earth shattering to go learn
Speaker 2: about the rest of the world. We spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time in the UK. We hopefully are going to
Speaker 2: get an arena on the West side of London. One day.
Speaker 2: We're on another project in Bristol, so we're excited about that.
Speaker 2: We just wanted to bid in Vienna, fascinating part of
Speaker 2: the world in Central Europe because Vienna has about thirty
Speaker 2: million people that live in and around that region to
Speaker 2: go to Vienna for their culture and their activity, their sports,
Speaker 2: their music. It is the birthplace of music in many ways,
Speaker 2: with great composers that came from that part of the world,
Speaker 2: like most art. So highly excited about that project. We're
Speaker 2: excited about San Pollo, thirty million people in Brazil, South America.
Speaker 2: You cannot ignore Brazil and the growth of that country
Speaker 2: and Pollow thirty million people trying to bid in Singapore
Speaker 2: because we understand that part of the world is growing
Speaker 2: as well. So the majority of our growth is internationally
Speaker 2: and that means to spend a lot of time working internationally.
Speaker 2: That's good news, but it's hard. It's not easy. It's
Speaker 2: not easy to have forty thousand employees. We got five
Speaker 2: thousand permanent employees. We have six headquarters I think six
Speaker 2: in London and New York and Los Angeles and Austin.
Speaker 2: It takes a lot of time and a lot of
Speaker 2: energy to try to do this right. We're not always right.
Speaker 2: We have a lot to learn. We could do better,
Speaker 2: we will do better. But you've got to be committed
Speaker 2: and you've got to be passionate, and it doesn't leave
Speaker 2: a lot of time for everything else. Do have a family,
Speaker 2: and they travel with me when they can, love my
Speaker 2: two grandsons and spend as much time with them as
Speaker 2: I can, and blessed, I'm the favorite person to play
Speaker 2: golf with it at my club because everyone could beat me,
Speaker 2: so I'm the sure thing. But I do try to
Speaker 2: get out occasionally and play with some of my buddies
Speaker 2: and I we have a home still up in the
Speaker 2: mountains in Colorado, and I love Colorado, and so we're
Speaker 2: going to open up another office there and I'll have
Speaker 2: the fortunate working out of there and working out of
Speaker 2: LA and working out of New York. So my job
Speaker 2: is my passion. I do enjoy my job. That it's hard,
Speaker 2: and I'm not that good at golf, so I think
Speaker 2: I better keep the day job.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have a long history in sports and now
Speaker 1: you're focusing primarily on music. Are you a sports guy
Speaker 1: or a music guy?
Speaker 2: Well, we you know, we own a sports team. We
Speaker 2: own the coach Umvel Firebirds with the Cracket, so we're
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty partners. It's funny to watch Irving A's
Speaker 2: off get enamored by an American Hockey League team that
Speaker 2: he was. We went all the way to the seventh
Speaker 2: game of the finals and lost in overtime, and he
Speaker 2: was heartbroken and was like, how did that happen. I'm like,
Speaker 2: welcome to sports. That's what sports is. You don't know.
Speaker 2: That's why sports is still the most valuable commodity and
Speaker 2: the most valuable asset, and they're going for six billion
Speaker 2: dollars because you don't know. It's highly unpredictable and a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. We're partners with the Kracket. We're partners
Speaker 2: with the Islanders, so we do a lot there. I
Speaker 2: still have great Genie Buss and Linda Rambis were kind
Speaker 2: enough to do a preseason game in our arena, and
Speaker 2: I for sure Steve Baumer, God bless his heart, he's
Speaker 2: doing a preseason game for us in Seattle. Adamsilver was
Speaker 2: one of my best professional friends and relationships I have
Speaker 2: in the industry. I hope they expand one day. If
Speaker 2: they do, we're going after it. In Las Vegas and
Speaker 2: I have phenomenal partners there and we're excited about the
Speaker 2: possibilities of that ever occurs. So I'm still heavily involved
Speaker 2: in sports where partners with the greatest sports franchise in
Speaker 2: the world today that no one will ever guess. It
Speaker 2: just astounds me that people don't understand the absolute brilliance
Speaker 2: of man City. So City Football Group and US are
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty partners with Harry Styles on co Op Live.
Speaker 2: I am Manchester and I get to spend a fair
Speaker 2: amount of time with them and went to the Championship
Speaker 2: in Istanbul where they got the TRIFECTA huge admire of
Speaker 2: that franchise and they have where they grossed more money
Speaker 2: this past year than any other franchise anywhere in the world.
Speaker 2: They are the most valuable franchise. We're partners with Fenway
Speaker 2: Sports and Tom Warner, who's a dear friend, and John Henry,
Speaker 2: So we were fans of the Red Sox and fans
Speaker 2: of Liverpool and fans of the Penguins. We run PPG Arena,
Speaker 2: so I'm partners with the Penguins and we do a
Speaker 2: lot with them. We're about to announce another partnership in basketball.
Speaker 2: We're going to be partners with an NBA team, So
Speaker 2: I am a huge sports fan. I spend a fair
Speaker 2: amount of time with Gary Bettman on new arenas for
Speaker 2: NHL teams. It's the world that we live in. It's
Speaker 2: you know, we live and die with music, we enjoy
Speaker 2: sports in between, and I love being a part of
Speaker 2: that because it moves people. I always like to say
Speaker 2: the uniqueness of sports is it's the only industry I
Speaker 2: know where you were the name of the community on
Speaker 2: your uniform, that's pretty damn unique. I didn't have that
Speaker 2: at the bakery or the deli.
Speaker 1: And on that note, I'm gonna let you go.
Speaker 2: Tim.
Speaker 1: This has been wonderful. Thanks so much for sharing this.
Speaker 2: Time with my ordance and Bob. Thank you for allowing
Speaker 2: all of us to tell our story, allowing us to
Speaker 2: tell our passion for music. I know you're equally as passionate.
Speaker 2: Thank you, because normally I don't really like spending time
Speaker 2: talking about me, but I love the fact you have
Speaker 2: a format that makes people so damn comfortable about talking
Speaker 2: about themselves. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob left Sense