Golden Knights president on team business; NBA vs. NHL; Raiders in Vegas (Q&A)
LOS ANGELES â Thereâs a lot happening in the life of Vegas Golden Knights president Kerry Bubolz.
He recently closed on a house in Las Vegas. He is trying to get situated in a new part of the country that involves a different type of lifestyle. Heâs also readying the NHLâs expansion franchise for a seamless transition into their first season in 2017-18.
âYou know what, just with the amount of work that we have to do to get ready for next October, itâs almost like going to the NBA Finals again just in terms of the amount of time and effort and energy,â said Bubolz who was hired by the Golden Knights after a 13-year stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers. âIt has been a ton of fun â weâve been on the ground full time since November 1 and so you got all the work related and transitional elements that youâre going through.â
Since Bubolz arrived in Las Vegas from the Cavs where he was the president of business operations, he has hit the ground running, setting up sponsorships, ticket sales and trying to figure out a broadcast partner.
Bubolz has a hockey background with the Cleveland Monsters â the AHL affiliate of the Columbus Blue Jackets. He notes that this team was a new franchise and his time there should help him in Vegas. He had also worked with the Dallas Stars and Carolina Hurricanes in sales the past.
âWe literally started from scratch in terms of the name, the logo, the building out of the business team,â Bubolz said. âNow, we had an advantage in that we had an NBA organization so we had infrastructure and data and relationships, but it was still a startup.â
We spoke with Bubolz about business operations in Vegas, what owner Bill Foley expects of him and how his team can succeed in such a crowded entertainment marketplace.
We also asked Bubolz about the trademark issues involving the Golden Knights and what he thinks about the possibility of the NFLâs Oakland Raiders moving to Vegas.
Q: So are you all set up in Las Vegas?
BUBOLZ: You know what, just with the amount of work that we have to do to get ready for next October, itâs almost like going to the NBA Finals again just in terms of the amount of time and effort and energy. It has been a ton of fun â weâve been on the ground full time since November 1 and so you got all the work related and transitional elements that youâre going through and even just on a family front, we just closed on our house about 10 days ago, so itâs a lot of work and moving is not easy. I have a ninth grader who is transitioning so itâs just the two of us right now. I have an older daughter who is staying with my wife back in Cleveland. Sheâs going to finish out high school. Sheâs a senior and sheâs going to finish out. So theyâll move out in June so weâre anxious to kind of get everybody together. But at least over the next whatever, four months Itâll just be me and the ninth grader, so just managing her and all her schedule stuff in addition to what we need to do to get ready for next October. We just have a lot going on.
Whatâs it like jumping from the NBA to the NHL?
Theyâre different maybe more so Iâd say kind of the team side. I think from the business side theyâre very similar. We have 82 games on both sets. The schedules are fairly similar in terms of the timing of the year. The revenues in terms of ticket sales and sponsorships and media rights and those important streams that are important to the business, those are very similar. So in terms of what I do on a day-to-day basis, to me itâs very, very similar to what I was doing in Cleveland other than weâre building an organization. So thereâs more time spent on hiring and infrastructure and CRM (data management) systems, interviewing the different vendors. So we donât have any of that and in Cleveland all of that stuff was already in place so all of our time was just on the selling and the marketing where weâve got to build in some of this infrastructure. So hiring your business team â every single position youâre interviewing multiple people obviously. Itâs part of the process. Itâs just a lot of time and energy. Itâs fun. Weâre having a blast.
What specific task does Bill Foley have you doing?
I would say the most important kind of big rocks in what he wants me focused on is driving our two most important local revenues, which are sponsorship and ticket sales, so making sure that those are strong, and they are strong. The last piece is we have to go out and find our partner on the TV side and so weâre going through that process.
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The TV partnership isnât easy, right?
No, itâs not easy and those are kind of the obvious players that are out there from Fox Sports to Sinclair Broadcasting to the different groups like Comcast and DirecTV. Weâre talking to everybody trying to figure out whatâs going to be the right fit to not only distribute the games when we want and how we want to build the organization and its availability in the market, but also thereâs an important economic component to that, as that is one of those âBig Threeâ in terms of revenue rocks within an NHL organization.
Are you picking the broadcasters?
We will, absolutely. Our first process is to get the deals done. Weâre working on both the TV side and weâre also in the market working on the radio side. Thereâs four large kind of clusters of different radio station groups that are in the market. Weâre talking to all four. Once we get both complete, then weâll start the process of both the radio, radio color, TV color, postgame, pregame all the ancillary programming and build out the team for that. What I can say is Iâve been blown away by the interest already, I shouldnât even say on a national basis because itâs really more of a North American basis in terms of people that are interested in coming to work here. Some of them already have great jobs in the NHL, itâs like, âwow.â And that shows the interest level in what weâre doing.
How do you sell a team thatâs not playing games and how do you keep that interest robust without games?
I think a big part of it, and weâre fortunate in that both from the traditional media to the digital media thatâs in the marketplace and then how weâre looking to position the team again through a lot of those same channels, that we already have kind of a natural way to tell our story and keep it live. Thereâs just a lot of interest and more importantly a lot of excitement about the team, so having visibility as weâre trying to sell tickets hasnât been an issue. It has been off the charts.
Did the trademark stuff with the name hurt some of your momentum or publicity?
Not at all.
Honestly we havenât spent a ton of time on it. The NHL is on point with that process. Theyâre working on it. We anticipate success. Iâm spending zero time thinking and working on it.
Thereâs been a lot of noise about the Oakland Raiders coming to Vegas. Is this something you welcome? Is this something you see as an issue?
I think at the end of the day these are really two different businesses. The NFL is vastly different economically in terms of how it relies on local revenues vs. an NHL or an NBA team, otherwise you wouldnât have the Green Bay Packers. I think thatâs a really good example. We look at it as being if itâs good for Las Vegas, then ultimately itâs going to be good for everybody but weâre not looking at it from an economic kind of challenge situation. Now if this was an NBA team playing the same time of year with the reliance on the same kind of local core revenue, then it would be a different discussion.
The NFL has to go through their process so once they finish that, if it becomes a reality, then weâll spend more time on it but now itâs just part of it.
How would your experience in Cleveland with the Monsters help you with this and what is your experience with startups in the past?
So in Cleveland back in 2006 we bought an AHL franchise and we literally started it from scratch in terms of the name, the logo, the building out of the business team. Now, we had an advantage in that we had an NBA organization so we had infrastructure and data and relationships, but it was still a startup. About five years later in 2011, we launched an NBA Development League team in a new market in Canton, Ohio. Same thing â name, logo, lease, hiring of the business staff, selling of the tickets and so even though those werenât on this level, those were two examples where we literally did it from scratch. I feel like we have enough experience from that perspective and then going back to the Cleveland example â we were really fortunate in a strange way as I look back on the 13 years I was there because I was able to work in a very, very low demand environment before LeBron (James) 1.0, then we had LeBron for seven years and then he left and he went to Miami and then we had to get back to ⊠it was a different type of marketing as a team. We basically broke the team down and rebuilt back through the draft and in terms of what that looks like and then he decides in 2014 heâs going to come back. And so we immediately went back to a high-demand situation. So learning with those different situations has just given me a lot of perspective on really how we need to build this business and candidly we made some mistakes along the way in Cleveland, and we can learn from those mistakes âŠ
What were the mistakes?
Iâll give you some examples. When LeBron left in 2010, I just felt that we were too heavily reliant on more of the full season ticket base and we didnât have enough diversity in our ticket products. I would much rather have a slightly smaller full season ticket base and have more people that have 11-game plans, 22-game plans, setting aside tickets actually for group ticket sales and in that instance, youth basketball, for the community church programs and whatever â and also actually holding seats for the individual marketplace. Just making the tickets more available because at the end of the day, even as Cleveland goes through it now, LeBron canât play forever. So at some point heâs going to move on and the lesson that we learned along the way ⊠whenever that point comes, whatever point that is because the product has been much more diversified, I believe that there wonât be as much of an impact on their business in Cleveland because they just have more people involved and I just think thatâs a good thing for business long-term, I really do.
How do you deal with the casino element in Vegas? Theyâre huge potential partners, but there is this negative association with gambling, which has been chipped away over the years. How do you deal with them from a sponsorship perspective? A marketing perspective? Is there some finessing there?
I donât think thereâs a lot of finesse. I think that as you look around the NHL and the NBA, the vast majority â this is one of the highest performing sponsorship categories thatâs out there. In Cleveland we owned a gaming company under Dan Gilbert. He owns five casinos now, under Rock Gaming.
In the NHL for example you have Gila River Arena in Glendale âŠ
You have numerous examples already. You used the term âchip away.â I think a lot of that has already happened. In our market I think the only unique finessing is that you have so many great gaming companies, and we want to be partners with all of them. Thatâs easier said than done because theyâre competitive entities. Theyâre on the same side of the table when it comes to selling Las Vegas, but once you get here theyâre competing in that local market for everything. From the shows, to the hotel rooms, to the gaming, to the restaurants so the finessing for us is just how we play a role in that but we want to work with all of them.
In the market you have so many distractions and competition for your entertainment dollar. How do you approach that?
I think what it does it just raises the bar because thereâs a heavy expectation on event presentation. So hockeyâs a great game but we have to be great in other areas so our video presentation, our music our player introductions, how we integrate our players and kind of showcase them throughout the game. Tampa is probably one of the best Iâve seen in the NHL, Tampa, Nashville, Chicago are really good with what they do with that side of it. So weâre looking at those models. But to me it just raises the bar. Yeah, weâre going to have to be great to meet that expectation of the market demand or I think itâs going to be shame on us if we donât meet that expectation.
Vegasâ visitors have been mentioned as a possible ticket base. Are we going to see Golden Knights ads in Canada for snowbirds who come to Vegas? Or in Europe for the long distance travelers?
I donât think youâll see that. The vast majority of the tickets that have been sold already are local already so weâre anticipating that between 85 and 90 percent of the people that come to games are going to be from local Las Vegas. Now, they may be transplants from Boston, Chicago, Canada living in Las Vegas now but the vast majority of our business from a business planning perspective is focused on maximizing the local market, which we will, and then weâre setting aside certain product for that leisure traveler, that convention traveler, but those are pretty limited in terms of what those would look like, but we do want to have that product available. As a matter of fact, we were at NHL meetings several weeks ago and I bet we heard from 20 teams already saying âlook, we want to bring our sponsors there. Our booster club wants to come.â We already know weâre going to have a lot of interest from that end. I think the trick is going to be managing to make sure everybody feels good about it, so itâs going to be awesome.
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You wonât be able to start marketing players until the expansion draft. Is it tough to have to wait that long to start to show the guys on your team to your local fans?
I think philosophically we want to be very team oriented in how we position the team, but obviously until we get to that second to third week in June weâre not going to have any faces of our organization but as soon as that happens weâll go from zero to 30 guys pretty quickly. Then youâve got the amateur draft and youâve got the free agent period thatâs going to take place. Once we have that and we have the group that we feel is most likely to be a part of our NHL team vs. what we would do at the minor league level, then we will start to position those guys to make sure thereâs great communication with George McPhee, our GM, and our owner (Bill Foley) and weâre all on the same page and start to position it out, but you wonât see us hang our hat on one or two guys. We will be very team oriented. And even if we were a more mature organization and we had an elite player or two or three like some of the other teams that are in the league we would still be team oriented in how we position. Itâs just a philosophical position.
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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper
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