Tim Leiweke

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets Podcast.
My guest today is chairman and CEO of the oak
View Group, the one and only Tim LIGHTWICKI Tim, good
to have you on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Bob. It's good to be here. It's good. Every day
is good to be alive. So let's start with that,
but in particular, it's a good day to be with you,
my friend.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Let's start with the basics. What exactly is the Oakview Group?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
So the Oakview Group was created about seven years ago
between myself and my partner, Irving Asoff, and we wanted
to think outside the box and be a positive disruption
to the live industry, the facility industry, and in particular
our focus is on the music side of the business,
although we obviously are strongly connected and now deeply and

(00:59):
heavily involved in sports as well. But it was taking
my background, in my experience with twenty years at AG
and before that of building the Denver Nuggets and the
Pepsi Center and the Minnesota timber Wilson the Target Center,
and essentially trying to redefine a way to build the

(01:21):
business around building new facilities, renovating new facilities, representing current facilities,
getting into the service business, the sales business, the food
and beverage business. So it really is centered around the
live entertainment experience with a heavy emphasis of the facilities.

(01:42):
And although I have in the past created and been
heavily involved in the promotional side of it, this one's
much more specific, and we strike partnerships with the promoters,
but we ourselves do not promote sell them to we promote.
So it's a core competency. It's highly focused. It's about facilities,

(02:06):
it's about live entertainment, it's about the guest experience, and
it's about trying to ultimately also build the next great
generation of those live venues that people could go and
enjoy their favorite artists.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
At what is the status of arenas around the world today.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, arenas have been through the peaks in the valleys.
Probably the greatest lows and the highest highs have been
these last four or five years. So if you look
at what happened to our industry in particular during COVID,
I'm not sure there was any Every industry was affected,

(02:49):
and some were terribly affected, but the live industry was
essentially wiped out. We disappeared, And so if you looked
at arenas. It was an amazing survival for arenas to
try to figure out how we were going to weather
that storm, and we had to figure out what we
were going to look like when we came out of
the storm. We had just a whole new set of

(03:15):
assumptions and risks and operating challenges that we had to
inherit coming out of COVID from air circulation. And look,
who would have ever thought, I know, in our case,
with many of the arenas that we just recently built
and open, we were in the middle of building seven
of these seven during COVID, and I had to go

(03:38):
back and every one of our projects ultimately had to
be rebuilt with new experiences, with new challenges, and with
a new way of dealing with germs and COVID and
trying to figure out how we were going to now

(04:01):
take something that so dramatically stopped all of our industry
and its tracks and be able to convince people to
come back and feel safe in a live environment in
arenas and stadiums in theaters. And so we had to
go back and rebuild and re engineer and rethink our
HVAC systems, and we installed a filtering system and all

(04:27):
of our buildings that essentially traps and kills the bugs.
And I never thought ten years ago that this would
become one of the highest priorities and the largest expenditure
we would make when we're developing new arenas. But if
you look at our Mer thirteen filterization systems we built
a UBS arena and a climate Pledge arena. They are massive,

(04:51):
gigantic filter systems that essentially hump fresh air in and
take air out. And as we're taking the air out,
we now, I'll send that air through a bunch of
filterization systems, trap the bad stuff, and then literally burn
those germs on site. And so again we had to
learn we had to alter the way we think about safety,

(05:14):
about customer convenience. We had to regain the confidence and
the trust and the consumer that they could walk back
into these buildings and be safe and not get sick.
And in particular, one thing that was unique about COVID
is the scientists and all of the experts that we
brought in to help us think through it. The ice

(05:37):
facilities in particular were a bit challenging because of the
way air floats and airs trapped and hot air and
cold air and the unique aspect of COVID and how
that bug could hang in the air. It was suddenly
a whole new set of rules and a whole new
set of thinking on engineering and airflow that we had

(06:00):
to adjust and quickly react to. So we came out
of that. I think our industry did a phenomenal job
of surviving. We were not an industry that got bailed out.
So the interesting thing is I didn't get one dollar
of subsidies, or we didn't. We didn't get any of

(06:21):
the COVID funds that the government ultimately parceled out. I
think there was a perception, why help billionaires, even though
we're not billionaires. I think sports owners and facility owners
in particular, they weren't going to They weren't going to
get any of the PPP money, and we didn't, and

(06:42):
so we had to go do this on our own.
We had to survive on our own, and in the
case of our company, we didn't lay anybody off. I
didn't let anybody go, we didn't furlough anybody. I didn't
ask anyone to take a pay cut. We we had
great faith that this society that we live in today
and the smart brilliant people that were working on this

(07:05):
on a daily basis. They were going to find a solution,
and we had to be prepared to come out of
this and hit the ground running, so we weren't going
to shut everything down. We very much valued everybody that
worked for us. We had literally tens of thousands of
people that were employed by this company because of all
the people working on the construction sites. And so instead

(07:26):
of sitting here trying to figure out how to save
money or how to go get subsidies or PPP funds,
we did exactly the opposite, which is, how do we
go take care of our people, how do we create
safe work sites today, how do we continue constructing our
seven new arenas, How do we ultimately survive this? But
then how do we come out of this at the

(07:46):
right time and be better for what we're going to
learn in the next couple of years. I'm not sure.
At the time we thought it was a couple of years, Bob.
We were hoping it was a year, but it wasn't
a year. We're just now just now getting back to
what I would say is business as usual and normal
and so hugely challenging for us. Life lessons character in particular,

(08:15):
a very very strong character building moment for our industry
and for our company. And I will say, in the
roughly forty plus years I've been doing it, I probably
lost more sleep and had more nights where I'd wake
up in the middle of the night thinking, my God,

(08:37):
I'm not going to make it through this. Our company's
not going to make this, make it through this. We're
ultimately not going to be able to get these arenas open.
I'm not going to be able to ultimately get people
to buy naming rights or sponsorships or suites. We're never
going to see business as usual again. You have I
call them the demons, and I never had the demons

(08:58):
as much as we did during COVID, and yet God
works in mysterious ways. We came out of that and
now we've had the best year in the history of
live entertainment. And if you see the pent up demand,
and you see what Elton John just did, what Taylor
Swift is doing, what Ed Sheard's doing, what Cold Play's doing,

(09:20):
if you see the success of arena shows now and
Harry Styles just shocking what Harry Styles has pulled off here.
And by the way that young man is my hero
because he stayed through that tour during COVID and dealt
with all the issues he had with the bubble, with

(09:41):
his crew, with his band, with safety, with people getting sick,
and he fought through it in the middle of COVID
kept this tour going, and the poor guy is still
out touring. And so huge admiration for the industry and
in particular the year that we've had and the passion

(10:03):
that the fans have to get out and live life.
We're seeing that and we're all benefiting from that, but
also the artist and how resolute the industry was at
giving people reason to come back together and to celebrate,
giving people an opportunity to be happy, to go back
to these public places and be able to forget about

(10:28):
all of the things and all of the demons and
all of the problems that we were dealing with. I
think it was our finest moment in the music industry
and the live entertainment industry, and I am absolutely proud
to be a part of it, but also hugely grateful
back to the fans that they came back and supported
the industry, our facilities, and the artists the way they have,

(10:52):
and in particular we understand now people everyone appreciates life.
Now when you go through something like that, you're going
to go live the rest of your life and you're
going to live it every day and you're not going
to take it for granted. And music and sports, but
especially music a huge part of that. And I think
that's why our best years are directly ahead of us

(11:14):
and we're going to continue to enjoy this surge in
our business that we've seen this past year.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Let's go back to the HVAC and the arenas. One
of the components of ovg's business is managing and having
relationships with other businesses. You said you have seven new
arenas that you re configured for HVAC. How about the
arenas that you consult? What did they do?

Speaker 2 (11:44):
So I'll tell you you know what I love about
this and the format that you've created and the times
I've listened in to all of your guests is the
ability to have time to tell stories, because after all,
that's actually what we all do, right, Musicians write songs
and tell stories, and you give us an opportunity to

(12:07):
tell stories about our industry and how it affects people.
In our particular case, how we survived the greatest challenge
in the history of our industry. I was the very
early stages of COVID. So ironically, just by chance, if
you look at when COVID broke out, there were three

(12:28):
or four hotspots where it first hit where we're all going,
what is this thing? So one of them was Seattle
and the nursing homes. Unfortunately, just terrible what happened there.
But that was the first place in the United States
where suddenly you're like, wait a minute, something's wrong, hair,
this is serious. Second place was the town in New York,

(12:52):
just outside of New York City, where it was a
temple and a congregation and an actual event became a
super spreader event first, one of those things that we've seen.
No one quite understood super spread until that. And in
the third place that just got absolutely hammered and was

(13:13):
ground zero. I think for what it was how quickly
it was spreading and how many people it was killing,
was Milan. I happened to be in all three of
those places in that one to two week period of
time when all of this started popping. So I was
in Seattle and suddenly you began to hear stories about

(13:35):
people in retirement homes that were getting sick and dying,
and then people not wanting to go into the retirement
homes and trying to figure out how to get the
people out of the retirement homes. And you were scratching
your head, going, man, this is bad. What happens if
this spreads? And it did. And then I went to

(13:55):
New York. I'm sure enough just that one event and
that one particular temple, and then how that reached out instantly,
and You're like, oh my god, this thing is highly contagious.
This is a problem. And then literally the day I
went into Blan, we had a meeting with the mayor

(14:16):
and the Olympic Committee and the meetings get canceled. We're
sitting there in the square outside the Great Cathedral in
the center of Balan, and they closed the cathedral down.
Now I'm a Catholic boy and grew up in a
church and went to Catholic school, and I know when
they start closing the churches down, there's trouble. And so
I'm like, this is not good. And so as we

(14:39):
immediately changed plans and went to the airport to try
to get back home. The airport started shutting down and
they were taking everyone's temperature, and by the way, it
was not a real exact science on how they were
testing people and taking temperature, and so you looked at
it and said, this is a shit show. They don't
have this figured out. This this isn't working whatever they're

(15:01):
trying to do. And by the way, they don't really
have a method of trying to figure out who might
be sick and who might not be sick. And they're
putting all these people on airplanes. This is a disaster.
And that's when I knew. I came back home and
told my wife, this is the most serious problem we
will ever experience in our lifetime. So I was on

(15:24):
the front line, and I'm like, I'm really really worried
about this. So I called up a friend of mine
who happens to be one of our best partners at
ubs Irene in New York with us in the Islanders,
and I talked to the president of the hospital and said, Michael,
what is this. Can you help me understand this? And

(15:47):
he said, he said, this will be the most contagious,
deadly outbreak you will ever see in your lifetime. I
said serious, and he said, this is really bad. And
I said, well, explain to me how does this transmit itself?
I mean, what's going on here? And we in particular,

(16:09):
he told me, we got a massive problem because we
people don't understand it. The government thinks it's touching. It's
not touching. It's in the air and it's circulating in
the air. And I'm like, well, if it's circulating in
the air, tell me, how are you doing that with
your emergency rooms. And by the way, how's it getting

(16:30):
out of the emergency rooms. If it's circulating in the air,
don't you shut those systems down in your emergency rooms.
And he said, it's getting into the ventilating system. And
he said, Tim, it's circulating through the whole hospital. And
he said, we're getting people sick and other wings of
the hospital where there are no COVID patients, none of

(16:50):
the COVID personnel that are working on those patients because
we think it's in the air system and it's traveling
by air. Now, Bob, when I heard that, that was
probably I got to say, the most dreadful, shocking bit
of news I've ever had, with the exception of the

(17:11):
death of some of my family members. I was stunned
when he told me that and I said, Michael, if
that's the case, we're screwed. I mean, how do I
build arenas? And he was the one that said, you
got to give some serious consideration to the way you're
treating your handling systems and arenas. I'm like, Michael, we

(17:33):
got twenty thousand people in our arenas. Do you understand
the magnitude of me trying to figure out how to
clean my air up? And he said I do, and
you're going to have to figure it out. And that's
when everything changed, Bob. That's when suddenly I had We
went back to our engineers and literally after I got
off that call, I went back from the advice that

(17:57):
Michael and Northwell gave me, and I called my engineers
in Dallas that we're doing the air handling system for
all of our buildings, but in particular our New York building,
are Austin Building and our Seattle building that we're all
under construction. And I said, look, I just had a
really smart guy that I trust tell me this thing's
in the air and it's circulating and infecting people within

(18:22):
the air, which means air circulation. And he got shocked
and said, are you serious? And I said, yeah, I
think that's what this thing is. Tell me what that
means and he said, well, you're not building a system
that ultimately deals with that in any of your buildings.
That's not what we're putting in your system. We're bringing

(18:42):
fresh air in and we're taking her out, but we're
not doing anything ultimately to test the quality of that
air or kill anything that's in the air that may
be coming or going. You don't have filterization systems like that,
and I said, well, he mentioned this scene called MERV thirteen.
He said, yeah, routine is what we put into like
emergency rooms and operating rooms in hospital tim It's the

(19:07):
highest filterization system you could possibly have to not only
monitor your air, but clean it and kill the germs
on the spot. I said, well, how complicated is it?
And could we put it in an arena? And he said,
you can't put it in an arena. I said, well,
I think we're going to have to figure out how
to put it in an arena. And to their credit,
Ed and his team worked for about two weeks straight

(19:30):
round the clock and came back to me two weeks
later and said, I think we figured out how to
do it, but you're going to have to start fresh
with all of your ventilation systems, and you're going to
have to build giant, giant plants with this filterization system
and suck everything into this filterization system. And then Tim,
You're going to have to figure out how to burn

(19:50):
it and kill the germs at a high heat rate.
And I'm like, all right, let's figure it out now.
The complication, Bob, that came out of that problem for
Steve Collins, who's my president, develops all of our arenas,
was profiled to try to figure out space and we
had to start fresh, and we had to change our plans,
and we were in the middle of constructing our arenas

(20:12):
and had to change on the fly. What was even
more interesting is the MERV thirteen filterization system they were
proposing to add to our HVAC system was driven by
ultimately gas that would come in and burn and kill
the bad guys to the grums. But the problem with

(20:33):
that is I happen to have a carbon neutral arena
in Seattle. We don't use gas. We use solar power
and electricity. And went back to the engineers and said,
I can't put gas in there, and he said, there's
not enough electrical power in order to generate the kindy
heat you're going to have to generate to kill the bug,

(20:54):
and only gas works. And I'm like, ed, You're going
to have to go back to the drawing board and
figure out how to make it work through electrical power,
because that's all we're pulling into our arena. We pulled
our gas lines out already, so Bob, halfway through building
what became Climate Pledge Arena, we made the pledge to
be carbon neutral, and I pulled all my gas lines

(21:16):
out and we went one hundred percent of the energy
that we utilized at Climate Pledge Arena the solar powered energy.
So we had to refigure not only do we have
to rebuild our systems, we had to go back to
the engineers and refigure out how to get enough heat
in order to build a bad the germs without using gas.
So it was just that, I mean, honestly, I'm so

(21:40):
proud of our team that we were able to turn
on a dime like that and come up with new
ideas and new ways to keep our people at our
arenas safe. And then we had to go do what
everyone else had to do, which is how do I
create bubbles, how do I ultimately, And it was funny
when I talked to Michael and Northwell, he said, you

(22:04):
know those guys, those Ghostbuster guys you have going in
and spring your seats. He said, it's Olbs. Said it
doesn't work, said go send them all in. He said
that that doesn't it's Timiate's not touch it's here, And
we had to rethink everything we were doing. So then
we pull calls together, Bob, back to your question, and

(22:26):
we'd have our arena Alliance and the twenty nine arenas
on there, and we brought these experts on and said
you need to hear this, you need to understand what
we're learning and what we're dealing with. And they were
all shocked, but to their credit, a lot of them,
for example the State Farm Arena and Steve and his
team down there, unbelievably diligent at how they jumped in

(22:50):
and dove into this to try to learn what it
is we're dealing with and how do we correct it.
And so shocking moment, but an absolutely brilliant moment because,
as is typical for our industry in particular, we shared,
we communicated, we explored, there was no territory whatever we learned,

(23:13):
we shared with everybody else, and then we went out
and we tried to deal with the politicians and warned
them what we were dealing with and asked them for help.
And the only request we ever made to Washington was
can you give us subsidies to help us pay for
the systems that we're going to have to now re
engineer and redeploy and all of our arenas. So this

(23:37):
is millions, tens of millions of dollars in some cases
that we're all going to have to spend. Can you
help us? They didn't. So proud of the industry that
we rolled up our sleeves and again not only found
creative solutions, but we paid for ourselves.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Okay, let's pull the lens all the way back, not
solely about the OVG group. How many arenas are there
in the world, to what degree is their room for
more arenas? And what is the state of the infrastructure
out there?

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Great question? So there are thousands of arenas in the world. Funny,
as you look at this industry and you look at
thousands of arenas, and you look at the life cycle
of an arena, which is not you know, I just
came back from Europe, and I had the great privilege

(24:45):
and great opportunity to go explore the Colosseum again. And
I've been to the Colosseum a couple of times, but
I'm fascinated by the genus of the architectural marvel that
is the Colosseum, And to this day it's still in Spa.
Hires me because that's where our industry started, and to

(25:06):
this day we still use many of the architectural designs
and the genius of that particular building and everything that
we do on every design and every building we go develop.
And so I spent time there, and then we also
went to the Vatican and saw the genius of the

(25:27):
architects and the artists that that took the the great
parts of the Vatican and including the Grand Cathedral and
the Systeine Chapel, and just looking at Michaelangelo and some
of the people that ultimately were responsible for thinking through

(25:50):
the way that they designed that chapel and the way
they they they thought about architect and they thought about paintings,
and they thought about finishes, and they thought about the
experience that people have when they go through those places
like the Colosseum. It really is shocking, and every time

(26:12):
I go there it changes my view of arenas. But
what you begin to understand is from there, from those
two buildings, ironically came huge inspiration, huge knowledge, and a
huge amount of what affects our industry today was really

(26:33):
started with the Colosseum in particular. So there's thousands of
arenas around the world, but if you really talk about
our e industry, there's probably two hundred and fifty of
these things, right, So it's kind of crazy. It's a
very big world out there, and there's billions and billions

(26:53):
of people on the planet, but there's only probably two
hundred and fifty arenas that I would consider to be
an A class arena, and even fewer stadiums. And when
you think about, in particular in our country, the demand
that is created in stadiums with the NFL are Major

(27:14):
League Baseball, and then the rest of the world this
little sport called football soccer, and the impact that's had.
What we forget, especially in North America, is we have
lots of new arenas and new stadiums, brilliant stadiums like
Sofar and Allegian. But then as you get into Europe

(27:36):
and even more in particular when you get into Africa
or South America or Asia, there are very very few
new arenas right now. And so in the last couple
of years when we've opened up seven, we've opened up
the only seven that have been built in those two years.
So it was OVG with seven arenas and no other

(27:57):
arenas were getting built, partially because of COVID. So what
you realize is thousands of arenas. Most of them aren't
very good, most of them are very old. There are
hundreds of arenas that are kind of driving our industry
as we know it today, but there are not very
many arenas like we have in North America and the

(28:19):
rest of the world. It is pretty shocking. But therein
lie is the opportunity, which is we're going to see
a huge explosion and a huge opportunity to build these
world class arenas and take what we've learned here on
how to build them and the technology and the acoustics
and the experience in the premium and now transfer that

(28:44):
and be able to take that with us everywhere we
go in the world. And if you don't think the
industry is changing, then go look at what Jim Donald's
building with the sphere, because it's revolutionary, it's masterful. I
don't know how the hecky came up with all of this,
not sure how the hell you pay for it, but
what I know is he's going to change our industry forever,

(29:07):
and the minute that opens up in September, we will
never be the same. And so thousands of arenas, most
of them highly outdated, most of them in effective compared
to where the customer expectations and conveniences, the artists expectations
and conveniences, the technology, the acoustics, the engineering, the demand

(29:30):
is going to be immense for new arenas going forward,
and we keep on reinventing the experience. So we spent
one point one billion on Climate Pledge, Jim spending billions
of dollars on the sphere, Steve Baumer spending billions of
dollars on the indto an arena. And if you look
at how quickly it's changing because of technology, and you

(29:51):
look at how quickly it's changing because of the customer experience,
just things like engineering and acoustics and led, we're in.
We're in a revolutionary moment in time. So even though
there's thousands of arenas, there's very few new arenas outside
of North America, and yet the demand has never been greater.

(30:11):
And I think you're going to see the greatest amount
of development of arenas in the history of the industry
in these next twenty years.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
Okay, in Los Angeles, Irving took the Forum and turned
it into a music only building. There are no sports there.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Now.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
My understanding is you're doing something similar from Scratch and Manchester, England.
There reports that on the Island with the Islanders in
the new building there, you had specific things you added
to make the sound although it's a hockey arena, make
the sound better for music. So as opposed to the

(30:52):
sixties and seventies when they were multi use buildings, do
you need a multi use building to make the economics work?
And if you do have a multi yet use building,
how do you make it a good experience for concerts?

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Well, first of all, you have summarized in one question,
what's taken me seven years to figure out as a company,
So the Forum. When Irving and Jim did the Forum,
so I was at AG at the time, we had
Staple Center downtown. We owned the Forum for some period

(31:27):
of time, but quite frankly, I didn't have the vision
or the foresight they did to understand the demand in
the marketplace and how we needed another music venue in particular,
and we should have paid more attention to it at
AG and I'll put that's my fault. And so we

(31:48):
ended up selling the forms of the Church. The church
then sold it to Jim, and Jim was very intelligent
about coming in and realizing, how do I go create
the same experience that we created at the Garden for
music with a low ceiling, great acoustics, get rid of
the signage, get rid of the scoreboard. I don't care

(32:09):
about sports. We're not going to do sports. I don't care.
We're not going to have an ice plant. We're not
going to do hockey, We're not going to do basketball.
I don't care about any of that. We're just going
to be phenomenal at music. And he spent a couple
of hundred million dollars and from that, by the way,
came the Sphere. So if you ask Jim Dolan, what
he'll tell you is what they created at the Forum

(32:31):
spurred him on to the thinking that eventually is the Sphere.
And if when the Spear opens, I encourage everyone to
go see it. It is a absolute you want to
talk about, an entrepreneurial spirit and an entrepreneurial moment. God
blessed Jim for what he's done there. It is going
to change our industry forever. And so the great debate

(32:54):
that came out of that. So and by the way,
it's a debate I have with Jim. So Jim tells
me you you never build another arena, you should only
build spheres, and I'm like, well, I get it, but
you know I can't afford to bill spheres. I got
to figure out a way to pay for it. Because,
by the way of the seven arenas we built, we
didn't take one penny from the public sector on any

(33:15):
of those seven arenas, and most of the arenas we
built and then gave back to the city. So we
privatized everything, which means we had to pencil this out
and figure out how naming and right sponsorship, premium ticket sales,
food and beverage, parking can pay for the privatization of
these particular buildings. In some cases, Seattle is an example,

(33:39):
You're going to build one arena, and you got to
make it work for hockey, and you got to make
it work for basketball. When we get the NBA back,
but you got to make it perfect for music. And
that was the problem up there. So not only did
the Old Key Arena kind of have that huge roof
that was kind of a pyramid at the top of it,
so the sound of a concert would go up into

(34:01):
the roof and bounce around a few times and then
bounce back down. It was I always use to tell
people Earl's Court is my favorite place to go for
a concert because I get to hear the band three
times because the first time and then the second time
with the echo. On the third time the echo from
the echo. And so we had to go recreate the
music experience in Seattle. And what we did is we

(34:24):
learned from the forum as well, and from an engineering standpoint,
we figured out how to build clouds in our ceiling
with acoustical treatment and drop them and have panels. So
in Seattle, our panels open and close based on where
we know music is coming from and the sound and
the reverb and the base compared to where sports noise

(34:46):
comes from. And so in a very can they both
work together and be aligned. They can't. And here's how
you do it. So if you think about creating the
graized environment humanly possible for sports. And you think about
the crowd noise, which is what you want to amplify
and keep in the building so that you create that

(35:07):
wonderful environment and so many great sports facilities. You understand
that that crowd noise comes from the bowl, not the ice,
from not the cord, It comes from the bull. So
as that crowd noise goes up, you want it not
to be trapped and killed in the roof. You want
it to bounce in the roof and come back down.
That's what creates that intimidating experience in many arenas today.

(35:29):
But for concerts, you do want to kill it. You
want to trap it and take make sure there's no echo,
no reverb. And that means you've got to build acoustical
systems and your roof and your walls and anything that's
a surface that stares at the speakers. And so our
engineers came in and figured out a system in the

(35:50):
roof where it allows sports noise to bounce. But they
knew where the speakers were going to be positioned with music,
and we knew how to take the baffling system and
actually kill the noise, the echo and the reverb as
that noise is coming out of the speakers. We add

(36:13):
the ability to take our acoustical panels and hang them
and curve them in a way where they're directed at
where the speakers are going to be hung for concerts.
So you can make it work together. You can build
a great venue for sports Iubs or by the way,
Moody Center or what we did at Climate Pledge and

(36:37):
have an intimidating environment for sports, but a perfect environment
for acoustics. And for me, the greatest critic in the
world on acoustics are the artists, because they got to
live with it and they're the ones that hear it.
By the way, they're the ones that to deal with
bad acoustics more than anybody. And if you talk about
an artist that really does care about the experience for

(36:59):
their fans, Don Henley is top of the list in
my opinion of an artist that really will critique you
and give you feedback on good experiences and bad experiences.
And the great thing for Don is he noticed in
all of our buildings, including the renovation in Baltimore. He
knew the work that we put in there on acoustics

(37:20):
because he felt it and heard it on the stage,
and he knew the difference in our buildings with the
acoustical treatment that Irving and I had committed to compared
to other buildings, and so same with Springsteen. He really
loved the acoustic He so to one of the great

(37:40):
stories in my life. And as I fooled, Sir Bruce,
He's been running around in my head for about twenty
five years and I can't get rid of him. So
when we open up Staples Center, Bruce agreed to open
the building for us, and we were truly honored, because
you know, when you're in the business for forty five years,

(38:01):
Bruce Springsteen is God. So I'm like, Bruce Springsteen is
going to open our building. Coolest thing ever. And we
had him for a couple of nights, and Rob White
from CAA did a favor and intervened and convinced Bruce
to do it for us, and so Bruce came the
first night. Never forget it, and you know, huge success

(38:21):
for us. Really cool to have Bruce open the building.
And he gets on stage and after one song or
two songs, he said, Hey, all you people up there
in all those boxes, why don't you come on out
and join the rest of us, and I'm like, did
he just say that? And then the person I was listening, Yeah,
he just said that. I'm like, oh shit, and I

(38:45):
was embarrassed. I'm like, oh my god. And then you
can tell he was a little myfthed that there were
a lot of people in those suites having parties that
weren't part of the concert, and you can't do that
to an artist. That's a mistake. And I instantly realized
three levels this week. That was the moment I realized

(39:06):
I made a terrible mistake with three levels of suites here.
I did not think about the artist like I should have.
And so I went to see him afterwards after the
concert and thanked him for opening the building, and then
he said something to me that has run in my
head for twenty five years, which is, you know, Tim,
I know you put a lot of love into the building,

(39:27):
but I like hot, sweaty holes. And I walked away
going jeez. I just got like I'm dressed by the boss.
This is not good, and it stuck with me. So
when we started OVG, ironically, the very question you asked
has been running around my head all these years, which is,
can we build an arena that is phenomenal for music,

(39:51):
acoustically perfect for the artists and their fans so that
they feel like they're right there next to each other.
And can we make it so it's a dominal advantage
for the home team for basketball and hockey when you're
going to share the building. Sometimes like Manchester, We're going
to build the perfect building for music because I'm going
to do one hundred and fifteen nights of music every year,

(40:12):
so I don't need to worry about an ice hockey
team or a basketball team. But other times, like Seattle,
to cover a billion dollar bat, we got to happen
an NHL team and we won an NBA team, so
it all has to work. There are very smart people
that have perfected this if you are willing to spend
the money necessary to build the acoustical treatment in order

(40:35):
to make it perfect. And that's what we've done in
the buildings. And so when Bruce played, he was very
kind and did two nights for us at ubs this
last tour. It was the only two nights he did.
He did one night every place else, so really cool
because he had kind of committed to help us open
the building. But then Covid hit, and he didn't forget us.
So remarkable him, John and the whole team at Bruce's

(40:59):
came phenomenal. How loyal they are to their fans and
to our business. I have huge respect for them for
the way they treat people. It's just so refreshing to
be with people that are that down to earth and
that loyal to the music, the experience, the fans, and
the building. And so they came back into two at

(41:20):
ubs and they told me the acoustics were perfect. They said,
you did a great job here. Good on you. And
they talked about Moody Center and how what a cool
experience that was in Austin. And they talked about Climate
Pledge and how great that was and how unbelievable that
we were able to build a carbon neutral arena. They cared,
they actually knew the whole stick. I'm like, God, you
guys sound like a walking brochure for OVG. So by

(41:45):
the time they got to Baltimore, he was going to
play the baseball stadium and instead did us a favor
and they helped us open the arena. They were one
of the first nights in the renovated arena. Because he
cared about Baltimore. He cared about us spending a quarter
of a billion dollars of a city that some in
the media, not you, but some in the media Fox trashed,

(42:08):
absolutely destroyed the city, absolutely buried it, absolutely treated the
people that are a part of that community with huge
disdain for their own political purposes. And most of it
is absolutely untrue. The city is not burning up in flames.
People are not being shot when they come out of
their homes. Bruce knew that, and he knew that that

(42:29):
city had been treated unfairly, and they need people to
come lift them up. Our partner in Baltimore, Sparrell and Farrell,
talks about steps, giving people that first step on the
ladder and helping them get up, and then they're going
to go the rest of the way up on their
own if you can help them on that first step.
But you got to build the ladder. You got to

(42:49):
build the first step. Bruce got it great news as
he came in and said, the building's phenomeno and it's
amazing what you did here. Good on you because most
people wouldn't have taken this chance. Those they prove two things, Bob. First,
you can build arenas that ultimately are advanced enough to
be acoustically perfect for concerts and work for sports. And

(43:11):
second of all, what a phenomenal industry we all get
the chance to work in when you get had those moments,
and one, I have stopped Bruce from running in my
head for twenty five years finally, and number two, I
guess what I learned from them and understood the mistakes
I had made, and I vowed to myself I'd never
make those mistakes again, and I'd be smarter and better

(43:33):
because I listened to what the artists ultimately want. And
so when Don Henley tells me where we're good and
where we're bad, I listen because Don Henley, in my opinion,
is one of the great artists of our generation. And
I care about how he cares about his fans and
the experience he wants people to have in an Eagle show.

(43:53):
Same with Bruce. I think that's the great thing about
our building or our industry, And it's what you ask
at the very beginning, which is the industry shares. The
industry will learn from one another, the industry will try
to get better from one another. And it's the passion
that an artist has that we have that the fans have.

(44:13):
If you could kind of combine that and align that together,
then great things are going to come out of that,
great musical experiences, great venues and stadiums and arenas and festivals.
But that's part of what I think is encouraging about
our industry right now, is we are building better arenas
and theaters and stadiums. The experiences are ten times better

(44:35):
than they used to be, and people are having a
lot more fun at our concerts when they come into
this environment because we ultimately have figured out how to
make it a better experience for them.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Okay, a couple of things. I remember when Bruce opened
the building, we talked about the acoustics negatively. But you
bring up the luxury boxes, the suites of which there
are three tiers and seats above in what is now
called crypto. So what'd you learn about how many luxury
boxes you can build in how to build them to

(45:16):
see ciate the artists.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Well, again, I made a mistake at Stable Center. We
built too many. We built two hundred and twenty of
them on three levels, and it acoustically wasn't a great experience,
and I'm sorry it isn't today. I know though, they'll
say that's because I compete with them. It has nothing
to do with that. That's just a fact. And so
when you look at the Forum, it takes you two
minutes to figure out, well, why is almost every artist

(45:41):
going into Forum and not going to Crypto. Guess what?
The forums of phenomenal experience. We're an artist in their fans.
There are no suites, none, right, so everybody's right in
that bowl, tight to the artists, tight to the stage,
tight to the experience. The acoustics are perfect, there's no
bounce back, there's no reverb. That's what I learned is

(46:04):
guess what it does matter? And so, okay, you.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Build something from scratch that also has sports, I think
you have to have luxury boxes. How do you decide
how to build them and how many?

Speaker 2 (46:17):
So I think the Garden to me is still the
greatest building in the world. It's still to me is
the cathedral for arenas and sports and live entertainment. And
I still learn from the Garden every time I go there.
I learned from the Calcium every time I go there.
So what we figured is make the bowl pure, but

(46:38):
still build premium experiences that will not take away from
that experience or the acoustics within the bowl. So what
you see now in all my buildings, we still have suites.
We have fifty six weeks total at Climate Pledge Arena,
but it's one level and the seats are all out.
So we have taken the seats and extended them over

(47:01):
the lower bowls, so they actually go into the bowl
and the people are sitting out in that experience. And
then we tuck the sweeps and the common area, the
kitchen area, and the food area. We tuck them back
further and kind of hide them. And we only have
roughly forty of those on that one level at Climb
to Pledge Arena, so we minimized it. And then we

(47:23):
build bunker suites down low. But the bunker suites are
completely hidden. You don't see them in the back hallway.
And so you come down a tunnel of vomitory by
the way from the coloseum, and you walk down that
vomitory and you come into the seats down low from
your sweet but they're disconnected. And so what we're beginning

(47:46):
to learn is with our clubs, with our suites, with
our premium areas, put them on the outside of the
skin of the building, put them so they don't disrupt
the bowl. Put them so that there's not the hous
and the have nots. Still have premium experiences, bring them
out to the seats, but designing it away where the
flow of the bull is perfect and you don't have

(48:08):
three levels of suites and three levels of glass and
three levels of people make a noise where everything's bouncing
off of those suites in that glass. So we still
have suites, we still have premium. We have four or
five thousand premium seats and most of the buildings we're
building today. But what we've done is we've taken the

(48:29):
clubs and integrated them into the concourse, not the bowl,
and then we use the seating in the bowl as
the opportunity to fulfill those commitments for the premium seat
holders in great locations. But we don't disrupt the flow
of the bowl, the acoustics of the bowl, the experience
of the fans by ultimately building three levels of suites.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Okay, you mentioned the experience in the old days, you
go to the arena, there'll be hot dogs and cold pizza. Okay,
And but what we know is if the act is
hot enough, does it matter what is going on, people
will pay the price. So this investment in the experience,

(49:13):
does it pay dividends? Find the insinely.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
So great question. So again I'll tell you another story
that probably answers it well. And So despite what people
think as to the competition between OVG and ABG, yes
we compete. But I still have great respect for Philanes
because he wrote the checks and he took a huge
risk on investment on Staples Center and La Live, and

(49:42):
in particular the two. So at the time, building an
arena in London privately, crazy idea, building an arena privately
in London underneath a tent. Crazier building it up underneath
a tent and not having the ability to go down

(50:04):
because there's a thing called the Thames River are up
because the tent is a National Historic landmark, and so
it's like, how the hell are you going to go
do that? But it was a daring, bold bat by
Phil to provide the money and to the team that
we put together to design it and build it stunningly

(50:27):
brilliant as to here's an idea, let's build the arena
under the tent and create the greatest arena outside of
the United States, and we'll pay for it privately and
all work. And again there's an old saying Bob I have,
which is there are people that want to participate in
the parade. There are some people that want to lead

(50:51):
the parade, and then there's a segment of people that
just want to pee on the parade. And there were
a lot of people that wanted to pee on the
O two idea. And everyone was telling us what a
mistake this was, and partially why are you building an
arena in London? Why are you building an arena in London?
It's music specific. There's a Euro's Court, there's the Wembley Arena.

(51:12):
We don't need another arena. We're fine. So one night
Irving brings the Eagles over. This is, you know, and
a story of my partner, Irving and Tim. There's parts
of our life where we were getting along quite well
and none were parts of our life where we wouldn't
talk to each other and we didn't like each other

(51:32):
very much. So we've seen it all. This was good
Tim and Irving right. So Irving brought the Eagles over
to the old Wembley Arena and I went out to
say out of Irving and the band and I'm working
on getting the O two started and built. This is
at the very early stages of us making the deal

(51:52):
for the Millennium Dome. And I, you know, during the concert,
I go walk the concourse to go see, Okay, how
are they doing here? How do they do food? How
do they And I go up to the one of
the stands and I say to the woman, I'll take
a beer, and she goes okay. So she goes back

(52:16):
to this like crazy ass antique machine and presses the
button and she's pouring twenty four beers at one time
onto this machine, and she presses the button and it
begins to fill up the twenty four cops. But as
she comes away from pressing the button, she hits one
of the cups and knocks the half full cup of
beer over and immediately panics and stops the points that

(52:39):
puts the stop machine. And now she's sitting there with
twenty three half empty cops and she's pondering, well, what
the hell do I do now? And so she gets
a fresh cup, puts it down where she knocked the
old cup over, presses the button and then starts to
fill the beer up. But then she realizes, well, wait
a minute. The machine thinks I'm pouring a fresh cup

(52:59):
of beer instead of a half a cup of beer.
And now she's panicked because there's beer running everywhere from
these cops. She doesn't know what the hell to do,
and I'm looking at her like, this is the worst
time I've ever see. So then she gives me the
beer and I drink the beer and I'm like, oh
my god, this beer tastes awful. And I realized, first
of all, it's warm, and second of all, and I

(53:21):
asked her, I'm like, man, I'm trying not to be considered,
because you know, after all, they think we're ugly, stupid
Americans to begin with, and they were mostly correct. And
I'm like, where where's this beer coming from? She says, Oh,
it's you know, the tap room. Says, well, where's the
tap room? She says, Oh, it's downstairs. I'm like, are

(53:42):
you telling me you got a line that runs from
that stupid ass twenty four person, twenty four cup machine
all the way through the concrete downstairs to some back
of room commissary where you got all the kegs of
beer stacked. She said, yeah, and it's not refrigerated, and
what I realized is two things. One it was an

(54:05):
absolute stupid way to serve a customer. And two, what
happens is those lines that have beer in them get polluted,
and there's a lot of bad stuff in those lines,
including mildew, because remember there's long periods of time where
there's no one in the building and it gets hot
during the summertime, and they didn't add their conditioning back

(54:26):
in the day at Wembley, and so I realized that
this is the worst cup of beer I've ever had
in a place where they absolutely love to drink beer.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. We got to
fix that. And so the idea of building in refrigerators
at every concession stand and serving clean beer where we

(54:47):
had a minimal line was revolutionary, revolutionary at the O
two and everyone was happy because they were getting a
really cold cup of beer, and by the way, they
weren't having to worry about a polluted line that the
bear was traveling from. And so we knew we were
going to succeed because we knew that the threshold and

(55:10):
the expectations were very low, and we were going to
do something extraordinary. Ironically, now that we see the evelp
back to one of your earlier questions. The evolution of
the experience is dramatically different today than it was twenty
years ago when we started building the two. So the
two is old, by the way, and it's outdated in

(55:32):
my opinion, because they haven't put money into it to
update it. So Manchester, why do we go into Manchester
where there's an existing arena? And by the way, Manchester
used to be and you know this, Manchester was a
top five market forever for live ticket sales and the
old men Arena was a top two or three arena

(55:52):
in the entire world for music. It sold more tickets
and did more concerts than any other building in the world,
with the exception of maybe the Garden, the Forum and
occasionally one of the buildings is in London, but it
was that successful. When we went to Manchester ovg we

(56:14):
went through exactly what you were asking about, which is
the evolution of the experience and how is it going
to change? One have we learned that ultimately could build
a better arena and a better experience for artists and
fans that fans will pay for. And what we do
is the AO Arena was built for fifty six million
pounds for the Commonwealth Games. All public, by the ways,

(56:37):
is a public building and it was built for sports.
It was never built for music, and they've never put
a penny into it since they're just now putting money
into it because here we come, and so they're like, oh,
we better put some money into it so we could compete.
Too late. Can't put a band aid on a gaping wound,
not when we're spending three hundred and sixty five million pounds,
so call it five hundred million US to build the

(56:59):
greatest arena ever build anywhere outside of the US, and
we didn't because the experience in AO is bad. It's
not good for the customer, it's not good for the artist.
We have multiple artists when we go over to them
and say, what is it you'd like us to do
back a house at co Op Live that you will

(57:19):
love and that will be meaningful for you in the experience.
And we happen to have Harry Else who's our partner.
Harry has strong opinions on the experience for the artists
and for his fans, and he has been actively involved
in the design of the building. And what we know
is that our building when we open it up in
April is going to be shocking for the industry internationally

(57:43):
because they've never seen anything like this, far better, far
better than the AO experience. They'll never be able to
catch us, no disrespect. It's too good and much better
than the O two. Because we now have twenty years
worth of Jim Dolan and the Forum and Jim Dolan
and the Spear and Tim Lwiki and Irving Azof at

(58:06):
Climate Pledge Arena with Todd Lwiki and David Bonderman and
UBS Arena, and Scott Malkin as our partner, the thinking,
the new ideas, the new air systems, the new acoustic
gold treatment, the new system of creating premium without disrupting
the bull. We have thirty two clubs and restaurants and

(58:30):
private spaces at co Op Lives thirty two, but they're
all buried on the outside of the building, not the
inside of the building. That's why we get twenty four
thousand people into that building. And it's a hot, sweaty hall.
So when Bruce goes in there and plays it, he's
going to look around and go, oh my god, they're all
right on top of me. This is fantastic. I love
this experience. We've had twenty thirty years worth of evolution

(58:55):
on how to make the experience better, and this is
the first arena that's going to be built outside of
the United States. Is taking all of that thinking and
all of that evolution and now putting it to work.
And it's just being entrepreneurial, listening to what people want,
trying to understand your competition, and then building a better
mouse trap.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Okay, moving on to naming rights. Certainly you go back
to the sixties and prior it was Yankee Stadium Shay Stadium.
There was no money involved that changed. Yankee Stadium is
still Yankee Stadium, the Mets playing City Field. Question is,
let me try to break this down a little bit.

(59:38):
All of a sudden, it got to the point where
the audience was feeling, Okay, it's Jiffy lu Marina. They
just paid a price. It's got nothing to do with
the music. In addition, the name keeps changing. Is this
just a giant middle finger to at the fans because

(59:58):
not everybody goes regularly. They don't even know where the alls.
I mean, even in this business we use, some of
these names changed so much you can't remember what city.
Just to add a little add on to that, a
number of these buildings are sponsored by companies that have
a short shelf life, they've gone bankrupt or they're crypto companies.

(01:00:21):
In some cases, the arena got paid, there was an advance,
et cetera. So what's really going on in the whole
naming right sphere.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Well, so, ironically, it's a necessary evil. When you privatize buildings.
You need to figure out a way to create revenue
streams and that are going to be able to help
you pay down your debt and get a rate of
return on the equity that you invest in these things.
And so, but there's a way to do it well,

(01:00:53):
and then there's a way to do it kind of sloppy.
So a lot of people have done and again a
lot of credit to MSG and Jim. It's still the Garden.
It's presented by Chase, and he actually makes more money
off the Chase deal than almost any other naming rights

(01:01:14):
deal in the entire industry. But it's still called the Garden.
Some names are they flow naturally. The O two worked
out extremely well and it's still called the O two,
So good on them for that. That has created a
great brand and a great experience and a massively intelligent investment.

(01:01:37):
Because I always used to tell Matthew, who we made
to deal with for the two in London, Matthew, if
they think you named your company after the arena, that
is a really good bet. And they do. They think
they named a telecomt company after the arena in London.
That's how successful that partnership's been. That's a great partnership

(01:01:59):
that works for the fans, works well for the city,
works well for O two, and worked well for ag
Climate Pledgerina got to give Amazon a whole lot of credit.
It's one of the largest naming rights ever done in
the business. And you don't hear the Amazon name anywhere.
It's their commitment to sustainability and carbon neutral so they
call it Climate Pledgerina, and by the way, was voted

(01:02:21):
the best facility in the world last year, in the
entire world. And that's with so Far and Allegiance Stadium
and the others that were up for the award at
the same time. Huge commitment and statement about not only
Jeff Bezos who drove that decision, but Amazon and Andy Jassey,
the CEO, for their commitment towards sustainability. That name works

(01:02:44):
extremely well. Ubs Arena works extremely well. It's a good name.
It rose well. They're headquartered in New York. Made all
the sense in the world. Moody Center again, we got lucky.
It's a not for profit foundation based in Austin. Wanted
to do something great for the city. Appreciated ourselves in
Live Nation spending three hundred and fifty million privately with

(01:03:08):
Matthew mcconaugheyt and wanted to do something to do to
be a part of that, and so they wrote a
massive check for twenty years, so it's a twenty year
guaranteed deal. They paid upfront and they we never had
to change that name for twenty years. And the Moody
Center is not only a very well known name because

(01:03:30):
the family's from Austin, and there are other things on
the campus and into the city named after Moody, but
the Moody Center has a great ring and a role
to it, so it works out well. Sometimes it's it's
not a natural kind of fit. Acrosuur Arena. Acrosture is
based in Michigan, but the president owner very smart about

(01:03:53):
trying to create a brand that he wants to get
more momentum for as he grows, the company doubles and
triples in size. So we saw a great buy in
Palm Desert because it was Irving and OVG and Tim
and he knew we'd do well. We'd go get Harry Styles,
and we'd go get the Eagles, and we'd go we'd
get Paramore and sell it out. And so he made

(01:04:16):
a bet on us at a rate card that is
a fraction of what these other people are paying for
some of these name it rights. And it turned out
to be great for acrature and great exposure, and they're ecstatic.
So you got to be smart, you gotta be clever,
You got to find good partners. You got to try
to make it last. I don't find any joy and
changing staples out to Crypto or FTX coming and going

(01:04:39):
in a matter of a couple of years. That's tough
for the brand, it's tough for the building, it's tough
for the city. But they are a necessary evil on
in particularly the privatization of these facilities now and so
stan Kronki spent five point five billion dollars building Sofi Stadium.
He deserves to be be able to put a naming

(01:05:01):
rights on there and try to recoup some of his money.
And I think the name worked well for San and
for the Rams and for Los Angeles. It's a great
name and people refer to the stadium in as Sofi Stadium.
So it's a tricky business. You got to find the
right companies, You've got to make sure it stands the
test of time. We're just now beginning to go out

(01:05:22):
and talk about our new arena we're going to build
in Las Vegas and the naming rights partner there and
we want to do the right thing. We want to
make sure that it's the right partner that could last
a long period of time and that the name rings
well and rings long. But that one's tricky because we're

(01:05:43):
not the first arena in the marketplace. And it's tricky
because we don't have an anchor tenant. If the NBA
wants to expand, we'll go after it, but we'll see
what happens. I think it'll be years before they make
that decision. So when you price it at who do
you go get that has longevity? If you get a

(01:06:04):
team after you open, then what do you do with
the naming rights and the value and by the way,
will they support the team and so tough business, complicated
business now and it's not like there's a million companies
out there that can afford to buy naming rights.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
Okay, let's talk about OVG. Who owns OVG? And all
of these are private buildings? Where does the money come from?

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
So? OVG is a private company. I'm proud of that.
We started it seven years ago. The majority of the
company is owned by myself, Irving, and our executives, our employees.
We have a partner, an investor in silver Lake, but
they're an investor. They just simply have given us money

(01:07:00):
to go grow this business, and in particular to provide
the equity we need to invest in to build these arenas.
They don't have to say so on how we run
the company day to day, but we have an alignment
with them, and by the way, love them. They're awesome partners.

(01:07:21):
We don't go make a big bet without them, so
we're aligned. We see everything the same way and if
we don't do it, that's the deal. They've been They've
never told us no, so they've been phenomenal. They've invested
a lot of money in our company. Irving and I
have put money into our company. They put more, they

(01:07:41):
have more, and so we ultimately went for a long
period of time with the company where we actually didn't
have any debt on the company itself and just recently
put some debt on the company because the company is
growing and we're out acquiring things. So we bought Spectrum

(01:08:02):
from Comcasts a couple of years ago. That got us
into the facility management business and the food and beverage business.
And we didn't think the food and beverage brand and
the way we did food and beverage with Inspector our
OVG was great. So we kept on buying additional food
and beverage companies, including most recently a company called Rubarb

(01:08:26):
that's the best food and beverage catering company I've ever seen.
And so we are trying to figure out a way
to continue to grow, trying to figure out a way
to be the best service provider for all of the
needs of an arena. So we're in the food and
beverage business. We sell naming rights through OVGD Global Partnership.

(01:08:46):
We sell our own sponsorships through Global Partnership. We have
one hundred and fifty people that sell in Global partnership.
We have our own parking company, we have our own
facility management company, we have a sustainability company, and so
unlike the rest of the industry, we actually have a
group of people that do nothing but figure out how

(01:09:07):
to have a more sustainable operation for all of our
buildings and created a company called Goal with a Fenway
Sports and our friends at State Farm Arena in Atlanta
that are our partners, and we track how you operate
a building one quarter to the next and whether or
not you're more sustainable the next quoter than the last quarter,
and then we grade everybody and we publicize those grades

(01:09:30):
so everyone knows if you truly have a commitment to sustainability,
not on how you design it. That's leads, but that's
not what's going to stay in the earth. It's how
you operate it. So we have our own sustainability company,
We have our own special event company. We have our
own food and beverage and catering company. So we have

(01:09:52):
fourteen different service companies now that we build and those
service companies they provide all of the knowledge and all
of the outside help that we need when we bring
in outside people for the purpose of operating our buildings.
That's all under OVG. Pardon me, you can hear I've

(01:10:14):
been traveling too much. That's also part of the core business,
which is our own and operated and the equity we
put and the seven arenas we built today and the
eight more arenas now we have under development somewhere in
the world. And then we have probably four hundred accounts
where we manage arenas, convention centers or food and beverage

(01:10:37):
for facilities. And we're committed to growing, and so we'll
double in size here in the next couple of years.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
Again, okay, silver Lake. That's private money putting in. They
usually want a relatively short term return, which would BEG.
The question is the ultimate goal of OVG to go
public and when might that have?

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
So I hope we never go public. I don't want
to go public. I my intention is never to sell
the company. So I learned after building AG that was
Phil's company, and I respect that that was his checkbook,
his money, his risk. He deserves to own that company
and run that company the way he sees that I

(01:11:25):
get it. OVGS our company, and so we have certain
guiding principles and core values as a company. One of
them is we don't want to be public and don't
have any intention of ever being public. It's not a
quick spin. My daughter is one of the key executives here.
She's hopefully going to inherit this company and run it.

(01:11:47):
She's good at it and I'm proud of her. She's
earned it. My executives are committed long term, and so
when you look at Chris Granger, where you look at
Dan Griffiths, or you look at Christina Song who's our
general counsel, or Steve Collins who's the president are Development,
and you look at the group we put together, this

(01:12:08):
group's going to operate this company for a long period
of time. My executive committee average age is in their forties.
By the way, the majority of my executive committee or females.
We're diverse, and I'm proud of that. Our new CFO
just came on and is minority, and he's fantastic, and
he's young. He's in his forties. So we're built to

(01:12:30):
be long term. We're built to be private, We're built
to be generational, and that's what we intend on doing.
And we took Spectra when we bought it. We've doubled
in size in our first full year. We'll double again
in the next two years, and that's what we're going
to do. We're entrepreneurial, we see outside the box. We're

(01:12:51):
not afraid to take risk. We're very driven. We love
building this company, we love operating this company. We have
no intention of selling it. We will always own it,
at least as long as myself and Dudley, my dog,
are alive.

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
Okay, Now, the big cahouna in this world is ASM,
and there's been rumors that it's going to be purchased
by Legends. I know that the contracts come up for
these buildings. I know the people at ASM. How do
you view OVG, VISA v ASM and a perfect world?

(01:13:27):
Would you just like to continue to gain market share?

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
So I always remind our folks, stay focus, stay focused
on us. We're the greatest ass that we have and
we're our own worst animates, So stay focused on us.
We're going to be great, not because ASM is bad.
We're going to be great because OVG is going to

(01:13:53):
sell and so we we We've been on thirty three
accounts here in the last roughly six months, thirty three
we won thirty of the bids. We don't pay attention
to the other guys. We stay focused on us. Our
success is not because of their failure. We can both succeed,
and we both will succeed. They they're they're owned by

(01:14:17):
an investment firm in Toronto, a good investment firm. I
knew them when I ran a police sports and entertainment.
They're very good and we very much like Jerry Schwartz
and the people that run that company. But Onyx is
they're gonna they're they're gonna buy it, they're gonna build it,
and then they're gonna sell it. That's what they do.
That's the difference between having silver Late that invest in

(01:14:40):
my An Irving's company compared to having an investor that
owns your company. They're going to spin it at some
point or another. So does it shock me that they're
for sale. No, but that I don't know that for
a fact. I don't tell them how to run their company.
I used to have that privilege. I don't anymore. I
kind of focus on our company. So we're going to

(01:15:01):
stay focused on our company. We're going to win thirty
of the next thirty three bits we go make. We're
going to build eight new arenas. We're going to continue
to buy food and beverage companies. We're going to continue
to create new genius. I hope service companies like Goal
and that all of this focused on us and what
makes us unique and different than everybody else. I own

(01:15:21):
seven arenas, Irving and I own seven arenas. We understand
how to run arenas. We understand how to build arenas.
We understand how to book arenas. We understand how to
sell arenas. I'm not involved in all the other stuff.
We stay focused on our core. But when I go
out to somebody and say, let me run your building
for you, I looked them in the eye and say,
because I am you, I built the arena, I am

(01:15:43):
in the business. I have accountability, I have risk, I
have money that I put into this. I get the
way you think about what you need out of me
as a service company, and I will be much more
unique at answering your needs because I have been where
you ben and I walk in your shoes. That's the difference.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
And how are responsibilities divided between you and Irving?

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
Actually there is no responsibilities divided by Irving and I
as Shelley, and so at the end of the day,
that is a misnomer. So Irving is one of the
founders and a great partner. Irving's not involved day to day.
He has his own company that he's running, and by

(01:16:30):
the way, he's doing quite well. He is still the
largest manager in the business. He amazes me on a
daily basis based on his age, his passion for the
business and the growth he's having in the business is amazing.
He happens to be very fortunate to have a partner
and a young man named Jeffreys Off, who I think

(01:16:53):
is really one of the finest young men in the industry,
one of the best people in the industry. I love
Jeffrey's Off. He's a breath of fresh air and done
an unbelievable job on Full Stop. And Jeffrey, at some
point or another will probably inherit his portion of this company.
And Jeffrey and my daughter Francesca went to school together

(01:17:14):
and get along quite well, see the world the same way.
So we are uniquely set up to make sure we
pass us on to the next generation, who happens to
get along extremely well. And they're both in the business
and Jeffrey's doing a good job with full Stop, and
Francesca is doing a good job of trying to run
this company. Irving when I need him. He's an invaluable

(01:17:36):
resource because no one understands the business more than Irving.
And he's smart and he's good do Irving and I,
you know, have we had forty years worth of heavenly bliss. No,
but that's what makes us fairly unique. We've had good
days and bad days together. But we're both very emotionally
committed to this company and doing something spectacular, and we're

(01:17:57):
both passionate about what it is we're doing, and we're
both heavily involved and trying to make this a great company.
The difference is I had to get up every day
and operate it. That's my job, that's my part of
this partnership. But there is no one to have that
is a better partner than Irving when it comes to
content and an understanding pipeline and music and how to

(01:18:19):
book our buildings. And he is a huge resource. He
is a he is the Encyclopedia Britannica. Anything I need
to know about the business, I pick up the phone
and call Irving, and he knows that particular issue because
he's experienced that particular issue. He knows everybody in the

(01:18:39):
business and you know there aren't many people that are
going to book around Irving.

Speaker 1 (01:18:46):
Okay, So since you own and are a consultant and
operator of other buildings, what are the advantages and what
leverage you gain? Obviously you can help with routing, but
by having I hate tesity to use the word control,
but I will control of all these buildings. What advantages

(01:19:07):
you gain in leverage?

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
Well, for the biggest advantages, I'm stupid and I've made
a lot of mistakes and I know it, and so
I could go back and tell people, look, I know
the right answer to this because I screwed it up.
And if you don't believe it, go look at the Forum.
And if you don't believe it, go look at three
levels of suits at the Crypto. I'm really good at
acknowledging that to be great in our business you need

(01:19:31):
to do two things very well. Number one, be a
good thief and steal other people's ideas and admit it
and say, you know, I really like what Jim doo
one did at the Forum. It's really clever. He built
a acoustically perfect building. I love the technology Jim Dolan
is putting in at the Spirit and it's going to
change our industry, I admit it. And I spend a

(01:19:53):
lot of time trying to learn from Jim what he's
doing with new technology. You knew stakes at the sphere,
so one just go learn from other people and still
take those ideas. You don't have to recreate everything yourself.
And the second thing is acknowledging that with time comes
good decisions and bad decisions, and you could put that

(01:20:16):
to work for you. And so I've been doing this
a long time now, and I've made a lot of
good decisions, and I've made a lot of bad decisions.
And I remind our young executive team around here come
back to me and at least involve me in the conversation,
and chances are pretty good. I've been there already and
I've done it, and I either did it well or
I probably did it poorly, but I did it, and

(01:20:39):
I can at least make that experience work. That's the
advantage we have as a company. I am an arena geek.
I've spent my whole life doing this. I've built more
arenas than anybody in the world, some good, some bad,
but I'm getting better at it. Just time goes on.
You know, I'm getting smart in my old age. Finally, Bob,
and so the advantage we have with our clients and

(01:21:01):
our partners and our arena alliance. We have twenty nine
in the top thirty three arenas in the business that
are part of our alliance. And we learned, we are
saying as we book together, we buy together, we think together,
and we try to act together. We learn from each
other and we communicate. Once a month we get on
a phone and talk. Irving and I are still actively involved.

(01:21:22):
We got another call next week and we try to
learn with them about how do we operate buildings better,
how do we become more profitable? What else can we
do to be a better business. But we have a
lot of experience and a lot of knowledge. We do
a lot of communicating with our twenty nine partners in
the alliance. I got seven arenas that I operate, so
I can tell them what I'm doing well when I'm

(01:21:44):
not doing so well. Of the seven, most of them
are really good. A couple of them we're trying to
get it where we want them to be in or
out there yet, but they'll get there. Most of them
are doing much better than we thought we're Seattle's one
of the high grossing arenas in the world. It's top
ten arena in the world. We're really proud of that

(01:22:04):
fact that we build an arena privately and it's one
of the top arenas in the world. Now the Moody
Center is one of the top arenas in the world.
We're really proud of that building. Very creative what we
did there to build an arena on a campus at
the University of Texas that the state owns, and we
figured out a way to make it work. And so

(01:22:25):
that's unique to have that kind of experience when you're
talking to people about managing their building or we have
twenty nine partners in the alliance. They respect us because
we have put up four and a half billion dollars
to build arenas and I'm about to spend another four
and a half billion on eight more. And by the way,
I'm going to put eight more in the pipeline as

(01:22:46):
soon as those eight are under construction. So we're we
want to have twenty five to three arenas that are
the best arenas in the world that we own and operate,
and that's we're allowed to do that, right. There's no
competitive issues there. That's what I love about our industry
is I could have twenty five of the best arenas

(01:23:06):
in the world, I could sell them together. I could
great naming rates, so I could sell somebody at naming
rights in one city, but then take that brand and
make them sponsors in ten other cities and give them
a worldwide reach. They're not going to get any other place.
It's impossible to do what we do because we have
arenas and some of the biggest best markets in the world.

(01:23:28):
Now I can learn from premium. I could go to
companies and sell them premium in multiple arenas in multiple cities.
I can go to artists and ultimately say, come play
all my buildings and all of my different markets, and
by the way, I'll give you an economic advantage for
giving me bolk mass that is unique on what we're building,

(01:23:50):
and we're the only ones that could do it. Now.
There is no one that will hit our critical mass.
If you think about it, twenty five of the top
fifty arenas in this world five or seven years will
be ours. No one else could claim that, and no
one else could replicate that. That's the goal, that's the ambission,
that's the job at hand. We got a lot of
work to do to get there. But that's what we're

(01:24:11):
trying to do. That makes us unique, doesn't make us smarter,
doesn't make us better, just makes us unique.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
Let's just talk ticketing for a minute. All these buildings
were not operated by someone with as much experience or
smart as you, and they all had exclusive deals frequently
with Ticketmaster and sports not necessarily. And if you talk
to those like Fred Rosen in the business, the deals

(01:24:47):
would end up being in perpetuity because it'd be like
a five year deal. You would give an advance to
the building, and the building would come back for more money,
and then ultimately the ticketing enter rise would get more years.
So what is your belief in feeling about exclusives and

(01:25:08):
how much should the building get in fees? This is
dark arts if the average person doesn't understand, but you know,
like the back of your head.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
So all good questions, all important questions, right now and timely.
So we look we sell as a company. We're selling
tens of millions of tickets and all of our buildings
now and we probably are, you know, with seven open
and eight more coming. If you look at those fifteen

(01:25:40):
buildings and then you look at the buildings we manage
where we got one hundred million tickets, we probably sell
as a company here. Once we get everything up, we
could probably be our own ticketing company. But the decision
we make of ticketing has a little bit less do
with money and more to do with having a system

(01:26:05):
and having a technology that actually works without having to
go spend the time and the money to go create it.
So at AG I started with Brian Perez on building
Access Ticketing and they're still going strong. Into Brian's credit,
he's done a good job of building that company from
the ground floor. Hard to do, really hard to do.

(01:26:26):
It's like a black hole. I mean it is. The
amount of money you got to spend on technology in
order to make a ticketing system efficient is just astronomical.
What people don't get about Ticketmaster and the reason we're
with Ticketmaster is a couple of things, and it's really simple.
They are the best ticketing company in the world. Everyone

(01:26:47):
can sit here and argue, but look, I sell more
tickets I think than just about anybody else in the world.
Ticket Master is the best ticketing system in the business,
bar none, no disrespectbody else. No one sells as many
tickets as Ticketmaster. No one does it as well as

(01:27:07):
they do it, and yes they have their days, but
guess what this whole thing with Taylor, that's Taylor. She's amazing.
I mean, I don't care what system you use, she'd
break it. She's that big. We've never had an artist
like this before ever. There has never been someone this
young lady is a force of nature that we've never

(01:27:30):
seen in our industry. And again people will say, what
about Elton John, what about this? We've never had a
Taylor Swift. She's incredible. She'll break any system out there,
guarantee you, because she's that good. With that much demand
day to day, every show we put on sale and
we put on you know, we've had hundreds and hundreds

(01:27:51):
of shows in our buildings. Ticketmaster's system is highly reliable
and they do a good job. So one, I don't
want to have to go spend the time and the
money to go create my own system. It's you don't
fight a war on two fronts. That's stupid. So if
we find a good partner that is best in class,
that could do that for me while I spend my

(01:28:13):
time trying to figure out a way to build a
great arena, then why wouldn't I do that so I
could stay focused on my core business. That's one. Number
two is they've been great partners. Honestly, they're fantastic. When
I got a problem, I pick up the phone and
Marla and the team there, they are unbelievably responsible back
to me. They help me, They help us think. They

(01:28:37):
know how driven we are on technology and a customer experience,
and they're very good at trying to make that experience better.
When we had COVID issues and we had four checkpoints,
four checkpoints people had to go through to get into
our buildings, they came along and they were unbelievably good
at trying to help me eliminate wait times because we

(01:28:57):
had people waiting for twenty or thirty minutes weather in
some of our buildings because they had to do the
COVID test and they had to do security checking, and
they had to do tickets waye and it was a problem.
And so I love the fact that the smartest, most experienced,
most knowledgeable people in the world happened to also be
my best partners, and they're unbelievably good at helping me

(01:29:18):
think through problems. And then finally, my relationship with Live
Nation is one that started out of necessity. At first,
Age didn't want to work with us, and I get
it they I guess, I don't know what I m
to them, but they didn't go to Polestar, they didn't
participate in Pollstar. I begged them to ultimately participate, speak,

(01:29:42):
be on a panel, do their own panel, do a
keynote anything. They've prohibited their people from going to Polestar,
So what was I supposed to do? Irving and I
went with Live Nation because I didn't have an alternative,
and they accepted us and put their arms around us
and made a huge bet on us. Now they look
pretty good. So Ticketmaster looks pretty good and Live Nation

(01:30:03):
looks pretty good because we exploded. I'm never going to
forget who helped me start this company. I'm never going
to forget the fact they made a bet on us
and believed in us to begin with. And now they're
my partner on a bunch of buildings. So now they're
writing checks with me. So I'll work with any promoter
in the business because I'll work with any artist. This

(01:30:24):
is about the artist period. Every artist should play our
building because I'm trying to build the best buildings Irving
and I are committed to building the best area has
ever built. We want every artist to come experience that
We're dedicated to that. That's why I think we'll win
is because we have a unique thought process of what
does the artist and their fans want out of this experience.

(01:30:46):
But I'm not going to forget Ticketmaster because they gave
me the best system and adopted me from day one,
and I'm not going to forget Live Nation because at
the end of the day, they were there when I
started the company and they've been unbelievable ever since, and
they put their money where their mouth is. I have
a great relationship with Jamar Seattle. They book our buildings.
They've had a pretty good run with us in Austin

(01:31:06):
and Seattle in particular. I wish they booked the building more,
but in time that'll come and so we get on
with it. But I love Ticketmaster because it's a good system,
and they're loyal people and they've been great friends, and
it's the best system in the business. And I absolutely
adore Live Nation. Doesn't mean we don't fight every day.
We do, but when I have a problem, I pick

(01:31:28):
up the phone and call Michael or Omar Bob or
the team over there, and they call me right back,
and we are unbelievably good at solving problems and creating opportunities.
They think outside the box like we do. So look,
I'm blessed, Honestly, I am so damn lucky to have
partners like Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which made our decision
much easier. Now doesn't mean, Bob, we don't go press.

(01:31:50):
So I've had huge battles with the leagues about our
security system. We happen to own a security company called
Prevent Advisors. It's the best security company and the facility business.
We do the Homeland certification checks for Homeland certification on
all the facilities. We're the only one that is certified

(01:32:11):
by Homeland Security, so we're certified. We have a system
on security that we think is the best system in
the industry, and we couldn't get the leagues to allow
us to use it in our buildings because that system
wasn't certified. But it takes three to five years to
get certification from the US government. It's a bureaucracy, and

(01:32:32):
so we're always pressing for new systems, new technology, new
ways to make the experiences better. We'll always look outside
the box. We're not wedded to somebody because of an
old boys network. We will go explore new ticketing. We
will go find new ways to do ticketing. But right
now there is no one better than ticket Massart, and
they're doing an extraordinary job for us. Last thing, I

(01:32:55):
don't believe in the secondary tickets companies don't. I don't
think they have skin in the game. I've spent Irwie
and I have spent four and a half billion dollars
trying to build these arenas. I've had the demons come
visit me often at night, in the middle of COVID,
in the middle of economic stress and inflation and interest
rates going up. There's a lot we have to fight

(01:33:18):
through to be successful. As an entrepreneur and as somebody
who is privately financing these arenas. What right do they
have to come in? No skin in the game. They
don't give us a penny, They don't make the arena
better for the fan ar the artists. They don't give
the artists any money. So they're not sharing anything with
Bruce or Down or Tailor. So they just simply come

(01:33:41):
in and exploit as a middleman. Right, They're just a
mentalman buying tickets and then reselling them for a lot
more money, and in particular they're disrupting the system. So
the bots the they unleash on early on sale are
part of why we see some of the technical issues

(01:34:04):
we see on Giant on sense is because the bots
and the technology they deploy absolutely cost having and their middlement.
They don't share the money with the artists and they're
not sharing the money with the building. Now that's my
own opinion. I'm you know, I check my car every
day because i know I'm not their favorite person. But

(01:34:24):
we don't believe that scalpers and the secondary ticket companies
have the right to exploit the fans and the artists
the way they do without sharing in the risk, sharing
in the entrepreneurial spirit, and sharing where the money should go,
which is we come to go see Don Henley in
the Eagles. That's what I pay money to go see.
Why is Don Henley in the Eagles not making a

(01:34:46):
portion of that money like they should?

Speaker 1 (01:34:48):
Okay, that's a much longer conversation we have to take,
but this does beg the question. Before Irving got involved
with Oakview, one of his main complaints was all the
tickets that are not on the manifest whither you're a
building owner, which how do you address that?

Speaker 2 (01:35:07):
Well, we actually, I believe in the artists look at
I'm very fortunate that I've had forty years in the
business and I see it the way they see it,
because again, we're buying tickets to go see Bruce Springsteen.
By the way, he's spectacular. I just saw him in
Hyde Park. My god, I'm blessed her. We to have

(01:35:31):
this guy still spending three hours, three and a half
hours every night entertaining us. What a great industry and
what a great world to be able to participate. And
as a fan, I went to Hide Park is by
the way, guests of age thanked them, and what a
great experience. They've done a phenomenal job with that counselor

(01:35:51):
experience there, and it just it made me understand how
much I love this industry. Is just someone that want
that night to go experience Bruce Springsteen. After or I've
seen them I don't know eight times this year already,
and I walked away. My daughter went with me, and
I said, how great was that? Bruce Springsteen should get
the money? He just should, So I see it the

(01:36:12):
way they see it, which means on the manifest when
we build a new arena, we have to find in
economic balance. Now I gotta go pay for the arena.
I've created a better experience for them. And by the way,
they're making a hell of a lot more money in
my arena than they used to making the old arenas.
So I'm giving them more seats. They could charge more

(01:36:32):
for the seats because the experience is better for the
seats and cut I do bonuses if you will, back
to promoters and artists to reward them for the number
of dates they'll do in my buildings. So what we
do is actually very simple. On my premium seats, I
will buy the ticket from the artists, and then the

(01:36:54):
upside for the premium services, for the special food, the
special club, the special parking, the special experiences, the right
to buy the tickets before the rest of the people
get a chance to buy them, so they got predictability.
I'm going to keep the upside. I'll give them a
little bit of the upside, that's that bonus. But I'm
going to buy the ticket from them because they deserve

(01:37:15):
to be paid for the ticket. We're going to do
that now we have to go deal occasionally with an
artist that comes on and says, well, I don't want
anybody getting a first right to the tickets. I want
the fans, everybody to have the first right to the ticket.
So we work through that. There are a lot of
bands out there that are passionate about that, Kurnel Jam
for example. We figure it out. We take our premium

(01:37:38):
seaholders and say, hey, occasionally, we're going to do the
best we can that not every night are we going
to be able to guarantee the first right to buy
that seat. And so you got to be flexible. You
got to understand the ne aedge of the artists. You
got to be fair. You should buy the ticket from
the artists. We don't buy the sweet tickets because we
sell them annually. That's the one place where it goes

(01:38:00):
to help pay for the building. Every promoter we deal with,
and every manager we deal with, and every agent we
deal with, they understand that. They get that I'm spending
five hundred million on average to build an arena, and
the arena's making them a lot more money than they
used to make, and it's a much better experience, and
the back house is better, the loading is better, the
rigging is better. They spend less money coming and going.

(01:38:21):
They make more money at the end of the night
because they could charge more for my arenas because the
seats are fantastic. We share, We figure out a way
to be partners. We're aligned. We make sure we take
care of them and respect them. That's what does get
me wound up about. You know, those that are making
money that don't participate in that alignment, don't take risks,

(01:38:42):
don't make the experience better, and don't reward the artist.
That's a problem. But I'm not the problem. I figure
out a way to see it in their eyes. I
try to treat them fairly, and I also ask them
to remember, I'm spending five hundred million dollars to build
this arena. I got to make my money back. Help
me do that, and I'll help you and I'll pay
you for the tickets.

Speaker 1 (01:39:04):
Okay, where are you from originally and what were your
circumstances growing up?

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):
So I grew up in Saint Louis, six brothers and
sisters six Wow. Yeah, My brother Todd is I think
the most accomplished person I'd met in the industry. He's
much better and smarter than I am, so I'm not
sure what I think. They dropped me on my head
a couple of times, and thoroughly enjoy working with him,

(01:39:31):
which we do every day. He's running the Kraken and
Climate Pledge for us up in Seattle. We're partners and
by the way, he's a shareholder in this company for
being a part of our partnership up there. So both
of us have enjoyed growing our careers together. We enjoy
spending time with each other. We just jointly been on
Memorial Stadium and Seattle won that bid, So we owe

(01:39:55):
a huge debt of gratitude to both my mom and
dad who have passed. One of our brothers just died
and it was sad because he died quickly, and it
was an experience that shook both of us because we
were with him. He's the healthiest of everybody in the family,
so it was quite shocking. But it shows you how

(01:40:17):
devastating cancer could be because he literally he disappeared in
front of us in three weeks. So it was the
just one of the worst things I've ever seen, and
so we appreciate every day the five that remained. We
were installed great work ethic. I didn't go to college
because I couldn't go to college. We were doing the
dog paddle. My brother didn't go to college. Todd and

(01:40:38):
I are very unusual to be in the positions and
to have the fortunate opportunities that we both had, and
neither of us have a college education. But we were
very fortunate that our mother and our father, and we
lost her mother. I was I think seven or eight
years old when she died. But they taught us work ethic,

(01:41:00):
and they taught us how to get up every day
and earn your keep, and so both of us are
relentless at living our lives every day hard. We are
relentless at trying to be successful. Were relentless on pushing
ourselves and our people. But he, in particular builds some
of the greatest culture I've ever seen for employees. He

(01:41:23):
does a phenomenal job up there for not just the
people that work for the Kracking and for Climate Pledge,
but for the fans of the KRACK and the people
that come to that building every day. And I think
that's kind of Yes, we kind of had to fight
when we were young and went through some really tough times,
but I think that installed within us a character and

(01:41:45):
a work ethic that hopefully still at our core value today.

Speaker 1 (01:41:52):
So what did your father do for a living and
what kind of kid were you growing up? Were you
the strawsters the drink?

Speaker 2 (01:41:58):
Were you a loader or what? So my dad was
he did what he had to do to survive because,
you know, suddenly he was trying to raise six kids,
because we were all pretty young still my two older
brothers were in college already, but still pretty shocking to
lose your wife at that age, because he was they

(01:42:20):
were in their forties and then having six kids you
got to raise and then still go have a career.
So he sold his whole life. So that's probably where
Todd and I learned how to sell. But he bounced
a lot, and you saw him deteriorate as a you know,
that takes a huge toll on this. The next wife
died of cancer, so he went back to back and

(01:42:40):
we lost our mom and our step mom to cancer,
and so that that changed him and he was never
the same, and thank god he didn't. You know, quite frankly,
that would have driven most people to abuse their life,
and he didn't. He got up every day and worked hard.
But it he lost confidence, and he lost hope, and

(01:43:03):
he lost ambition, because you can't go through life and
take two gut punches like that and not have it
affect who you are as a human being. But he
didn't let the demons get him, and I have a
deep appreciation for the fact he lived till his nineties
and he never let the demons get him. Meant the
rest of us Again, the dog paddles in the middle

(01:43:25):
of the lake. I was very committed and attached to
my mother, And then I'd say I was a disciplined
young man, and I worked two or three jobs at
all times in my life. When I was growing up,
I'd get up early in the morning and work at
a bakery, and then I'd go from the bakery to
a deli. And so I always worked hard and I

(01:43:46):
didn't cause a lot of havoc and a lot of trouble.
And I say that for my later years, and now
I'm making up for being a good kid, I guess,
so it all averages out. But lucky that those values
also give me a wife of thirty plus years and
a daughter I'm really proud of who has chosen to
go into business and two grandsons, and the oldest grandson,

(01:44:09):
who's eight, wants to go build arenas for a living.
And so it's a full circle. And I've been blessed,
and I'm very fortunate that I learned a lot of
tough lessons early on that have come in and I
hope given me other opportunities later in my life that
have overcompensated me quite frankly for some of the early challenges.

Speaker 1 (01:44:31):
Okay, but growing up, were you good in school? Bad
in school? Were you popular? And ultimately, how did you
decide not to go to college?

Speaker 2 (01:44:42):
So I'd say I was good at the things I
was interested in. I was really good. So I selled
in things like debate, history, fascinated by history, politics, math.
Everyone that's worked around me knows I sit there and
add stuff up in my head as we're talking, and

(01:45:04):
they're all fearful of my ability to make decisions quickly
on stuff like that. But there was other stuff I
just wasn't interested in. And so but I graduated a
year early in high school and got all with it.
I could have gone to college, but I was working,
and I had to work. I wasn't living at home.

(01:45:24):
I was living on my own and I had to
go work, and I was working two jobs. And then
I started with a company called New England Life, which
is a very old, conservative, established life insurance pension investment
firm out of Boston. And you had to be twenty
one years old. Somebody had to recommend you into the company.

(01:45:47):
You had to have a college education. I didn't have
two of the three, but I had somebody that really
believed in me, called Bill Whitney, and he spoke up
and said, we got to bring this kid in and
let him do the internship program. Stanley. He's only twenty
years old, but there's something about the kid. They did.
And then I was a Rookie of the Year. And

(01:46:08):
my third year of doing that and beginning to have success,
I went to work for an indoor soccer team. I
was the number two employee. The number one employee got
caught doing something he shouldn't have done, and I became
the number one employee and became the president like twenty
one or twenty years So wait, wait.

Speaker 1 (01:46:25):
You were selling you were selling insurance. What motivated you
to jump to indoor soccer which was not lighting up
the world at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:46:33):
To boot, So my brother ironically, so I think I
was twenty three or twenty four actually at the time,
and my brother was the announcer for the Houston Arrows,
which was a World Hockey League team with the Gordy
how and his sons, and the owner of the Houston

(01:46:54):
team bought the expansion rights to Saint Louis and I
was in Saint Louis and my brother said, you should
go talk to him. I talked to him. My god,
this is really interesting. And I grew up in a
family that liked sports and enjoyed sports, and they offered
me a job and I decided to take it. And
so ironically, the Saint Louis Steamers averaged about eighteen seventeen

(01:47:17):
thousand people, and I ate our first year shocking. So
we sold out the Czecherdome. The Blues were there, and
the guys that ran the Blues thought we were a circus,
and I said, I know, and everybody loves the circus.
You don't get it, do you. We were unbelievably successful,
and then I got hired at the age at twenty

(01:47:37):
five to be the president of Baltimore Blast, which is
my passion for Baltimore. We sold out pretty much every
game there and did well. And then went to Kansas
City and we created the comments and did extremely well there.

Speaker 1 (01:47:50):
Okay, okay, a little bit slower. These seats don't sell themselves.
What was the special philosophy were employing to make these
teams successful?

Speaker 2 (01:48:01):
We worked hard, honestly. So for example, in Baltimore, you know,
I was a twenty six twenty seven year old kid,
and I was the president of the whole organization, so
everything reported into me. And so in the summer when
we had our we hadn't started playing yet, so we
were in breaking in the community. We created a concept

(01:48:22):
called beat the Goalie. So we brought our players in early,
paid them nothing. It was I think we paid one
thousand dollars a month. That was kind of ridiculous at
the time. Except Geentenheimer was our keeper. I remember him
quite well. And then we had another kid named Alan Mayer,
and we brought him in during the summer and said, look,
we're going to we're going to work. You're going to

(01:48:44):
help me go out and meet everybody in this community.
And every weekend we'd go to every festival and every
fair everywhere in Baltimore and Maryland, and we do beat
the goalie. And by the way, I was the third goalie,
so we'd rotate, so I'd give them a break and
I wouldn't let the kids score on me. That was
the difference. I'm like, no one's scoring on me today.

(01:49:05):
We met thousands, tens of thousands of people and turned
them into Blast fans because we got to know them
and we got to build a relationship. And then we
did a thing in Saint Louis, in Kansas City and
in Baltimar called Introductions, which no one had ever tried before.
So I was working with my brothers in Kansas City,

(01:49:27):
but in Saint Louis and Baltimore, I did Introductions. So
in Saint Louis we created a song. We stole a
song called Ain't No Stopping Us Now, and I created
a light show with mirror balls and I'd turn out
the lights and I'd use small because we were the steamers,
so we came out of steam and I made it
a show. And then in Baltimore we did Diana Ross

(01:49:50):
I'm Coming Out. I made it a bigger show. And
by the time we got to Kansas City, we were absolute,
like perfect at producing the circus and we were the
circus and we created a ten minute show in an
introduction where every night we do a different piece of
music and I'd orchestrate a different special effect from fireworks

(01:50:10):
to mirror balls, to smoke to lasers. And one day,
true story, We're sitting at lunch in Kansas City, my
brother and I and the bus boy comes up and
I'm looking at this kid and he says a few
words and I'm like, has anyone told you you look
exactly like Michael Jackson And he says, oh, yeah, I
do a Michael Jackson imitation. I said, well, can you

(01:50:33):
show me? So right there in the middle of the
hind it where we're having lunch, he is the middle.
I want you to come see me after your shift today.
He came down to the Kemper arena and I said,
do you sing? And he sings a few songs he
is Michael Jackson. Like, my god, I've never seen anything
like it. We put him in the pregame show, so

(01:50:55):
we do some Michael Jackson music. Introduced this young man.
He's out there in the middle of it, and he's
so good that everyone thinks it's Michael Jackson. I'm like, yeah,
Michael Jackson is doing the opening of a Kansas City comments,
believe what you will. He became a sensation. We actually
everyone would show up ten minutes, had a tip off

(01:51:18):
to see the pregame show. Sixteen thousand people every night,
and we became a sensation. That was really the first
time you saw introductions in sports, and it was the beginning.
And then I think the bulls and Steve Shamwald came
in and did an even better job. God bless him
with Manford, man of the Earth being if I'm not mistaken,
and so we were perfectionists though, and I'd literally go

(01:51:42):
create a new ten minute pregame show every night, and
I'd hire people. I brought it in a kid's choir
one night to do the course for Kenny Loggins. I'm
free and we'd coreograph it and rehearse it. And I
had these special effect guys that were stagehand guys for
and Roll, and I said, I want to create a
rock and roll show every night for ten minutes before

(01:52:05):
we introduced the players. It was going along swimmingly until
one night the mirror ball he forgot to turn the
crane off and it hit the top of the ceiling
busted and came down on the floor and almost took
out my entire team, But we had a good time.
It was a life lesson. I'd learned how important it
was to put on a show. And also we kind

(01:52:25):
of ran temper arenas, so we got to get into
the rock and roll business and we were promoters. So
that's what got me into arenas, and that's what got
me into music, and that's what got me into eventually promotion.

Speaker 1 (01:52:40):
So where'd you go From Kansas City?

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
I was hired as the youngest person ever for the
Minnesota Timberwolves. That was their first employee, and I was
in charge of all the business and we broke at
tennants records our first year at the Metrodome, so to
this day, I think they still stand. We sold over
a million tickets our first year for the Timberwhiss that

(01:53:02):
we averaged something like twenty seven thousand people a night.
We were terrible, terrible, the worst form of basketball mankind
had ever invented. Bill Musselman believed in running out the
shot clock every possession and if a player tried to
score too quickly, he'd bentioned. It was like, oh, this
is god awful. But we sold twenty seven thousand tickets

(01:53:24):
a night, and then we moved into the new Target
Center and helped build that. Although that was not my
favorite building, it's amazing it's still there today. They needed
a new arena in Minnesota, the timber Will snow it
and then spent four years there and then hired as
the youngest president in the NBA for the Denver Nuggets

(01:53:47):
and came in and resurrected that franchise from near bankruptcy,
and then we had great success on the court. Bernie
Bickersteph was the general manager and Danis was the head coach,
and we had the mutumble mathon Zoellis and a group
of kids that were fantastic, and we made it all

(01:54:07):
the way to the Western Conference finals, I think in
our third year, and that's where we created the Pepsi
Center at the time, so I negotiated the deal to
build a new arena and we decided to do it
privately and it became the Pepsi Center. And then I
went from there to a thing called the La Kings
and it became ag.

Speaker 1 (01:54:27):
Okay. Now that's a megalopolis in downtown Los Angeles. Tell
me how you ran the Kings and how you ultimately
came up with the idea for LA Live, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:54:41):
So the Kings Phil Phil was smart. Phil is smart.
He bought him out of bankruptcy, paid everybody off, God
bless him. Convinced me to leave what I was doing
and moved to LA which that was tough and a transition.
Frankly and my family stayed back in Denver for a

(01:55:02):
while while I was out in LA. So we were
a terrible team that didn't have a philosophy. We had
just traded away the greatest player in the history of
the game and Wayne Gretzky, which was stupid, and we
had to build it from there, and I ended up
having to fire everybody and bring on a whole new staff.
And I didn't know anything about hockey, so I had
to teach myself the game, and I wasn't very good

(01:55:24):
at it, by the way. At first we made a
lot of mistakes, but then we Phil partnered with a
guy named Ed Rosky, and I got to know ed Rosky,
and ed Roski's the guy that created the genius behind
LA Live. That was Ed's vision, not mine, not Phills,
that was Eds. But we took it and ran with
it as I said. We took a good idea and said, Okay,

(01:55:45):
I get it. Let me go try to make this happen.
Forged an unbelievable partnership with doctor Buss. He put me
under his wing and I learned about naming rights and
premium seats and showtime. I was the only non Bust
member on the board there for a very long time
and got to watch genius at work. We won. I
still have I think five or six championships and rings

(01:56:08):
from my time with the Lakers. Loved Genie Buss, loved
the Bus family, loved doctor Buss. He taught me more
than anybody I've ever been around in my life and
was an unbelievably good partner. We were highly lucky with
Staple Center that we had two kids named Shaquille O'Neil
and Kobe Bryant, and we won championships, and then when

(01:56:29):
they slowed down, the King started winning championships in twenty
twelve and twenty fourteen and won Stanley Cups. So we
were blessed by the Lakers in the run they had
and Jerry West and Phil Jackson. Amazing to be around
those gentlemen and learn that literally from doc Bus to

(01:56:50):
Jerry West, to Phil Jackson and just watched them. They
taught me a lot about how to win, and I
use that in order to help the King win and
helped the Galaxy win, and we grew as a company.
We bought the only Galaxy. We built the Home Depot Center,
and then we went out and I got a little
English lad named David Beckham to come to the league

(01:57:11):
and to help us change the league forever. And then
we got into the promotion business and decided to do
concerts and became the second largest promotion company in the
world and bought We were lucky. We found a partner
and a young man named Paul Tillett, and became partners
in Coachella and then created the festival called stage Coach.
The Eagles were our partners on Stage Coach originally, and

(01:57:35):
we grew from there, and we jumped into Randy Phillips
and j Marciano got us into things like Hyde Park.
We built new arenas in London, and built a new
arena in Berlin at the Wall, literally staring at the
wall our first night we had Metallica opened the building
for us, and five thousand people protested and I couldn't

(01:57:56):
understand it. It's like, wait a minute. We privatized the building,
built it for free. We hired all these people. We
brought in Metallica to open the building. What are they protesting?
And they said, they're just protesting. They don't care. They
just wanted to come together and protest you because they can.
So we built arenas in Shanghai and other places around

(01:58:20):
the world. It was an unbelievable experience. Philly Anshuts is
to this day someone I highly respect for the risk
and the money he gave us to go build that
company and get into all things that he probably would
look at me and go, what the hell are you
doing here? But it was an amazing experience in an
amazing twenty years, and we enjoyed every moment of including

(01:58:40):
building what became the most important entertainment district in the industry,
LA Live and showing what you could do. I remember
when we were debating building Staples Center and getting approval,
and remember we priva sized it, so we built the
arena ourselves privately. Mister Anshuts and had Rosky paid for
that out of their own pockets, and in the debate

(01:59:01):
to get entitlement there was a council the named Joel Wax,
and Joel was opposing us because he could. He was
Piston on the parade and Joel would hold these public
meetings and be showcases. And as I learned at the
time and now it's my other favorite, saying every city
has cave people, which is citizens against virtually everything. And

(01:59:23):
so they all came out, and Joel brought in this
professor from the University of Chicago, and he said, sports
facilities do not make an economic difference. Sports facilities don't
create jobs. Sports facilities will have zero impact on the
future of urban growth in a community. And there's no
reason to get these guys the entitlement they want because

(01:59:44):
they won't help the city. They'll hurt the city. And
I remember getting up after the guy spoke and said,
I cannot believe this man is teaching our kids. We
have a serious problem. Turns out, I think Staple Center
saved downtown Los Angeles. And when you look at downtown
Los Angeles, to the credit of ed Rosky and the
vision he had, it dynamically changed a city that no

(02:00:06):
one wanted to live and no one wanted to work,
and then no one wanted to come down and play
in and LA Live and the investment that happened the JW.
Marriott and the Ritz the Convention Center and turning that
back into something that was an important, dominant convention center
in the industry pretty amazing. And then my favorite part

(02:00:26):
of my favorite thing is the Grammy Museum that we
built there and a wonderful gentleman that also adopted me,
Jerry Perncio, giving us the grant to help build that thing,
and moving the Grammys downtown and being a part of
the lure of Staples Center, and changing lives, hopefully of

(02:00:50):
thousands and thousands of kids because we put music back
into schools at a time when they were the first
damn program everybody was yanking out of the curriculum. So
really enjoyed LA Live and enjoyed AG, enjoyed AG Presents,
and it was a fascinating time. But eventually, when you
have two people that are a bit polar opposite, which

(02:01:12):
Phil and I were politically and in a lot of
other ways. And by the way, it was his company
and he felt like I didn't respect that he was
probably right after twenty years, I forgot that he wrote
the checks and he owned it. And so I respect
that now as somebody that owns the company and has
taken the financial risk that we've taken here, I get

(02:01:33):
that and so fortunate that I get a chance to
go build my own company with Irving and our executives
here and my daughter and Silberly, Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:01:44):
It ends with AEG very quickly. You take a job
in Toronto. My personal belief is when they have a
job that good, you know you want to sit back
and assess the landscape. Although you were successfully Toronto, was
that a rash decision? And ultimately, why did you decide

(02:02:05):
to leave Toronto?

Speaker 2 (02:02:06):
So I went to Toronto just because I didn't want
to pick a fight with Phil and I had to
respect his decision that we needed to part and go
for different ways. And I didn't want to stay in
la because one it hurt right, we were winning championships,
and it just I didn't want to have to sit

(02:02:30):
here and go every day and have the Kings Lakers
Galaxy results on TV that night and me going, you know,
what the hell? So it was a good decision to
move and get out and not pick a fight and
not have a conflict. If I would have started OVG
that first year. My guess is it would have been

(02:02:51):
a bigger fight between the two companies because that that
was really rubbing, and out of respect to Phil, he
treated me well at AG for most of the years
and he gave me a great opportunity, and so I
wasn't going to go pick that fight. And I had
to get out of LA and let him go do

(02:03:12):
his thing. And by the way, they have a hell
of a company today. So I went to Toronto. Larry
Tannebon was kind enough to convince me to come up there,
and I quickly realized they were definitely afraid of winning. Crazy, right,
we're in the sports business. We should get paid to
win and that's all we should think about. They were

(02:03:34):
afraid to win, didn't know how to win, and had
too much pressure on them. I remember going to one
of my first soccer games for the Toronto FC and
we're in this it was a sweep and I called
a nutri suite. It was a sweet substitute and I said,
I'm going to go outside and sit outside and I said,
don't do that. I'm like, why not? I said, well,

(02:03:55):
the fans are going to help you and throw things
at you. And I said, well, first of all, we
deserve it, and if I was a fan, I threw
rocks at me based on the way you guys have
run this franchise. We stuck, so let them have that
me and it'll make them feel better. And sure enough
they did. They hurled stuff at me and insulted me,
and I'm like, you're right, I get it. We're going
to switch it. But it taught me about kind of

(02:04:19):
how they just respect. They forgot about the fans. So
we came in and we rebuilt the organizations. Was. I
was there roughly four years, so two years full time
in two years where I was allowed to do both jobs.
It was. It was actually a lot of fun. Met
great people, had a great staff, great organization. Stolen me
Si you Jerry from Denver and he came in, was

(02:04:40):
the president. Stole a kid a kid. Then Tim Vezbachenko
from MLS and he became my president. We won championships
with TFC. We went and got Giovinco and he came
in and toured the league up Michael Bradley. So we
had a lot of fun with the team and that
team changed the league in a iamic way and we

(02:05:01):
were winning championships and having fun there and then Messa.
I won a championship with the Raptors that I was
fortunate enough to be a part of at the end there,
and you know, I still think they're going to win
a Stanley Cup. I hired Brendan Shanahan to be the
president there, and I think they're on the right track
and will win a Stanley Cup here. So I enjoyed winning.

(02:05:23):
That was fun. Championships are fun. That culture was fun.
We became much more aggressive at music, had a good
joint venture with Live Nation, made music a much higher
priority in the building, built a new training center for
the Raptors, built essentially a new stadium for Toronto FC,

(02:05:43):
and great owners with Rogers, Bell and Larry and enjoyed it.
But I told them day one, hey, I'm going to
do this, but understand, there's going to be a day
and time sometime in a five years here where I'm
going to go build my own company. And I just
want you to know that's what I'm going to do.

(02:06:03):
I'm not going to be here forever. And they knew it.
But you know, when I walked in the door one
day and said I think I want to go do that,
it was hard because we were just starting to win.
So we figured out a way to share, and I
bounced between OVG and maple Lice forts and entertainment, and
they were kind enough and good enough to allow me

(02:06:24):
to do that for some period of time before we
found a successor Do you have any free time or
do you just consider work to be play? Where is
there some you have down time where you either do
something else, maybe you don't want to travel or watch
streaming television, read whatever. So it's definitely work is not play.

(02:06:48):
It's hard. I do like working, I do work hard,
and I do really enjoy what I do. But it's hard.
It's very hard. We started with four of us at OVG.
We now have forty thousand employees, and so it's hard.
And we've grown quicker than even I thought we would.

(02:07:08):
You go from COVID to inflation to interest rates to
you in Manchester Brexit. Still can't figure out why the
hell they did that one. It is just you just
it's not easy to be an entrepreneur anymore. I don't
get the politics and most of the places we're at
in putting here, I stretched my head saying, what the

(02:07:28):
hell happened here? And we got to deal with a
lot of politicians, some phenomenal like in Baltimore, unbelievably blessed.
Mayor Scott is fantastic, young, dynamic, great for the city,
believes in the city. Governor Moore, He's going to be
president one day. This guy is fantastic, just fantastic. It
gives me new hope for our country. There are still

(02:07:52):
great leaders out there that are willing to sacrifice their
lives and their time and their families to go make
a different and he's going to make a difference. So
we were lucky that we get to deal with a
lot of good politicians. We you know, in Texas, I
wanted to make it a carbon neutral building, and they're
looking at me, going what's carbon neutral? So you know,

(02:08:15):
to each his own, and you've got to adopt, and
you got to make sure you're a mirror image the
community you're supposed to represent it. We're trying to do that.
That's hard work. Traveling is hard work. I just spent
three weeks traveling internationally. Hard work. But I look, I
get to go to places now. I just came back

(02:08:36):
from Riad. We don't understand Saudi Arabia. We're making a
mistake with Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince is going
to change that country. And we have you could have
your opinions on the politics there, but he's opening the
country realts. You can't wave a switch and do it overnight.
And I understand a lot of people on on what

(02:08:57):
happened with the journalists and it's unfortunate. But as some
of the people's Honey Arabia said to me, just people
on the street when we would talk, and I said,
tell me, I said, first, our lives are better. He's
opening up society. The quality of life is ten times better.
They're reinvesting, there's less less corruption, they're putting money back
into the system. And by the way, look you guys

(02:09:20):
didn't exactly do a great job with the Indians, and
so you've got to understand there are moral standards and
values each society needs to put upon themselves and then
figure that out from within that society. I'm not sure
you have the right to go tell us how we're
supposed to run this country. And I'm like, I get it.
I understand. I am shocked at the trillions and trillions

(02:09:44):
of dollars they are putting into that country and rebuilding
that country as quick as they are and by twenty thirty,
Rion is going to be the center of the universe.
The airport, the development, the arenas, which you see the
arenas they're building there, they're all the charts. I've never
seen anything like it. Abu Dhabi, Yes Island, Dubai, That

(02:10:05):
whole world there is just amazing, and it's the center
of the universe. And let's not forget they are right
next to India, which is one of the fastest growing,
most important countries in the world. They're right near Africa,
and Africa is going to be a really critical part
of the world and a part of our society that

(02:10:26):
we need to pay attention to. Think of what Nigeria
is doing to music today and the artists that are
emerging and dominating our music from places like Legos. So
we're going to build an arena in Legos because that's
the future. And by the way, that's all centered around
places like Rihann and so earth shattering to go learn

(02:10:49):
about the rest of the world. We spend a lot
of time in the UK. We hopefully are going to
get an arena on the West side of London. One day.
We're on another project in Bristol, so we're excited about that.
We just wanted to bid in Vienna, fascinating part of
the world in Central Europe because Vienna has about thirty
million people that live in and around that region to

(02:11:12):
go to Vienna for their culture and their activity, their sports,
their music. It is the birthplace of music in many ways,
with great composers that came from that part of the world,
like most art. So highly excited about that project. We're
excited about San Pollo, thirty million people in Brazil, South America.
You cannot ignore Brazil and the growth of that country

(02:11:35):
and Pollow thirty million people trying to bid in Singapore
because we understand that part of the world is growing
as well. So the majority of our growth is internationally
and that means to spend a lot of time working internationally.
That's good news, but it's hard. It's not easy. It's
not easy to have forty thousand employees. We got five

(02:11:57):
thousand permanent employees. We have six headquarters I think six
in London and New York and Los Angeles and Austin.
It takes a lot of time and a lot of
energy to try to do this right. We're not always right.
We have a lot to learn. We could do better,
we will do better. But you've got to be committed

(02:12:18):
and you've got to be passionate, and it doesn't leave
a lot of time for everything else. Do have a family,
and they travel with me when they can, love my
two grandsons and spend as much time with them as
I can, and blessed, I'm the favorite person to play
golf with it at my club because everyone could beat me,
so I'm the sure thing. But I do try to

(02:12:38):
get out occasionally and play with some of my buddies
and I we have a home still up in the
mountains in Colorado, and I love Colorado, and so we're
going to open up another office there and I'll have
the fortunate working out of there and working out of
LA and working out of New York. So my job
is my passion. I do enjoy my job. That it's hard,

(02:13:00):
and I'm not that good at golf, so I think
I better keep the day job.

Speaker 1 (02:13:06):
Okay, you have a long history in sports and now
you're focusing primarily on music. Are you a sports guy
or a music guy?

Speaker 2 (02:13:16):
Well, we you know, we own a sports team. We
own the coach Umvel Firebirds with the Cracket, so we're
fifty to fifty partners. It's funny to watch Irving A's
off get enamored by an American Hockey League team that
he was. We went all the way to the seventh
game of the finals and lost in overtime, and he
was heartbroken and was like, how did that happen. I'm like,

(02:13:38):
welcome to sports. That's what sports is. You don't know.
That's why sports is still the most valuable commodity and
the most valuable asset, and they're going for six billion
dollars because you don't know. It's highly unpredictable and a
lot of fun. We're partners with the Kracket. We're partners

(02:13:58):
with the Islanders, so we do a lot there. I
still have great Genie Buss and Linda Rambis were kind
enough to do a preseason game in our arena, and
I for sure Steve Baumer, God bless his heart, he's
doing a preseason game for us in Seattle. Adamsilver was
one of my best professional friends and relationships I have
in the industry. I hope they expand one day. If

(02:14:20):
they do, we're going after it. In Las Vegas and
I have phenomenal partners there and we're excited about the
possibilities of that ever occurs. So I'm still heavily involved
in sports where partners with the greatest sports franchise in
the world today that no one will ever guess. It
just astounds me that people don't understand the absolute brilliance

(02:14:43):
of man City. So City Football Group and US are
fifty to fifty partners with Harry Styles on co Op Live.
I am Manchester and I get to spend a fair
amount of time with them and went to the Championship
in Istanbul where they got the TRIFECTA huge admire of
that franchise and they have where they grossed more money
this past year than any other franchise anywhere in the world.

(02:15:04):
They are the most valuable franchise. We're partners with Fenway
Sports and Tom Warner, who's a dear friend, and John Henry,
So we were fans of the Red Sox and fans
of Liverpool and fans of the Penguins. We run PPG Arena,
so I'm partners with the Penguins and we do a
lot with them. We're about to announce another partnership in basketball.

(02:15:26):
We're going to be partners with an NBA team, So
I am a huge sports fan. I spend a fair
amount of time with Gary Bettman on new arenas for
NHL teams. It's the world that we live in. It's
you know, we live and die with music, we enjoy
sports in between, and I love being a part of
that because it moves people. I always like to say

(02:15:50):
the uniqueness of sports is it's the only industry I
know where you were the name of the community on
your uniform, that's pretty damn unique. I didn't have that
at the bakery or the deli.

Speaker 1 (02:16:02):
And on that note, I'm gonna let you go.

Speaker 2 (02:16:05):
Tim.

Speaker 1 (02:16:05):
This has been wonderful. Thanks so much for sharing this.

Speaker 2 (02:16:08):
Time with my ordance and Bob. Thank you for allowing
all of us to tell our story, allowing us to
tell our passion for music. I know you're equally as passionate.
Thank you, because normally I don't really like spending time
talking about me, but I love the fact you have
a format that makes people so damn comfortable about talking
about themselves. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:16:30):
Until next time. This is Bob left Sense

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Bob Lefsetz

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