Ed Snider and Dave Scott announce yet another Comcast Spectacor innovation.
Ed Snider once told Venues Today that he didn’t want to own the Philadelphia Flyers all alone, he didn’t really plan to build a major arena with private funds and he didn’t know his private venue management enterprise would make industry history.
“Luckily I didn’t know a heck of a lot about it,” he told VT in 2010, the year he and Peter Luukko, his former COO, were our Publisher’s Pick. “I was scared anyway.”
But the legendary entrepreneur, who died after a long fight with cancer April 11 at his second home in Montecito, Calif., put Philadelphia on the sports map, hired incredibly talented entrepreneurs to help along the way and left friends, family and empire in great shape as his legacy forever.
It’s not the time to talk succession and inheritances but the path forward is in place, said Dave Scott, CEO of Comcast Spectacor of which Snider was chairman and founder and managing partner. “Ownership will unfold in upcoming weeks,” Scott said. “It’s not something that isn’t planned.”
The executives are already in place to carry on and Snider partnered with Comcast in 1996, assuring continuity. His relationship with Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast, was mutually respectful and insightful, Scott said. They took care of business.
Of course, Snider will never be replaced. He was unique in his leadership style, vision and dedication. His accomplishments start with his decision to buy a hockey franchise for the city of brotherly love. The Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League debuted in 1967, the year sports journalists voted the Flyers as the least likely to succeed. Philadelphia had a history of nonsupport for hockey, both minor and major league.
Phil Weinberg, executive VP and general counsel at Comcast Spectacor, recalled Snider’s stories of that first decade of struggle. “When the team was getting launched, all the players piled into a convertible and rode around city hall and no one showed up,” Snider told him. Ten years later the Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup and there were more than a million people in the parade in center city. The next year, they repeated and there were close to 2 million people.
In 1972, Snider bought the now-demolished Philadelphia Spectrum out of bankruptcy to keep his team there in exchange for a 20-year lease on the building.
Then he built Wells Fargo Center in 1996 to give them a proper, up-to-date home. He saw the value of the expertise his executives had achieved and expanded it by forming Spectacor Management Inc., taking on private management of other facilities. He was joined by the Prtizger family of Hyatt Hotels and Aramark. That company became SMG, sold to other investors.
After his no-compete expired he did it again, buying Global Spectrum, then Ovations Food Services, and finally Paciolan. Those firms morphed into Spectra in the last two years.
Snider was the longest-running operator of a team in the four major North American professional sports leagues.
His entrepreneurial style was one of decisiveness and empowerment. His staff knew they were expected to have ideas and take action, always with him as a sounding board.
Under Snider’s guidance, Spectacor developed and acquired nearly a dozen related lines of business including PRISM, the country’s then fastest growing regional paid sports cable network, and WIP, one of the nation’s first all-sports radio stations. He merged Spectacor with Comcast Corporation in 1996 to create Comcast Spectacor, and the newly-formed partnership immediately acquired the Philadelphia 76ers, a National Basketball Association member club. Comcast Spectacor-owned companies today include over 300 clients and more than 400 global properties.
But it is his whole persona, not just his entrepreneurial feats, that is being remembered this week.
“One thing that struck me about Ed was what an incredibly seamless person he was,” Weinberg said. “Many people have family, political beliefs, religious beliefs and whatever they do for a job, all pieces of them. Ed acted what he believed and what he was in every way. He was the whole package.”
Weinberg also remembered his style of leadership around every business situation. “He had a strong view of things and trusted his instincts and judgment, but he was very, very careful to take in all the information he could collect. He would bring his team around all the time and collect all the information and he would challenge you to be precise and clear in the advice you were giving.
And he wasn’t afraid to move off his view. At the end of the day he was very decisive. Over a 50-year business history, he almost always proved to be spot on.”
“His experiences, knowledge and entrepreneurial acumen was such a benefit,” agreed John Page, who has been with the company since 1991 and is now president of Wells Fargo Center. “Anything you were trying to accomplish, he had a great sense of what made the most sense. There’s nothing he hasn’t done or been exposed to in this business. He knew everybody. He was friendly with Irving Azoff, Kenneth Feld, Kenneth’s father Irving. Any time you thought your day was bad, anecdotally he could solve your problem and get you going in the right direction, not really telling you what to do but giving you ideas and concepts and sending you off to resolve it and make the best business case possible.”
Page vividly recalled the first million-dollar guarantee, the amount it took to book the Eagles from Irving Azoff at the old Spectrum in 1993. Spectacor partnered with promoter Larry Magid in that historic deal. “We didn’t ever meet with Irving and Ed directly, but whenever I met with Irving, we spent a large part of our conversation talking about Ed. When the Spectrum and Larry Magid were doing the Eagles Hell Freezes Over tour I remember Peter [Luukko] and I taking it to Ed, because it was still a family-owned enterprise. We weren’t partnered with Comcast. We talked about the ticket prices and what we could do and the risk factors. He had significant concerns about the exposure. He trusted Peter, but that was uncharted territory.” But he blessed it and history happened…again.
Snider is one of the very few people who acquired his wealth in sports and entertainment, Page added. “Most team owners today made money in other places and sports is their second business or hobby, but he’s quite the opposite.”
Snider was “ahead of his time in this industry in so many ways,” Weinberg said, noting his purchase of PRISM and WIP in the late 80s. “WIP was a struggling radio station that had lost its way and format, which he quickly changed to all sports radio. It was one of the first stations in the country to do that and became a forerunner of that format.”
He created the Super Box concept at the old Spectrum, a row of 100 seats with private amenities like bars and bathrooms, the forerunner of club seats, Weinberg remembered.
And he stayed involved up till his death. Scott recalled meeting with him about the current renovations to Wells Fargo Center just two months ago. Having personally come from the Comcast side of the business, Scott saw that Snider truly understood television, even 20 years ago.
“He had one of the first public channels that televised sports. He not only did the Flyers with Comcast and created the first Comcast Sportsnet, but purchased the Sixers at the same time. That was the first Comcast sports network and today there are eight of them across the country,” Scott said, referring to the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association.
“He loved the live event but his vision with TV was that you could extend that experience into the living room,” Scott said.
Snider’s legacy to the industry also includes the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation, locally referred to as Snider Hockey, which is the only philanthropic effort he ever put his name on. Snider Hockey serves over 3,000 children a year in Philly who never would have been introduced to the sport of hockey for lots of reasons and are now in a program where hockey becomes the hook to teach them and help them with homework and all sorts of life skills. Seven rinks are operated by the Foundation, four of which were city-owned that the city couldn’t maintain.
“The NHL has studied the model and wants to fund further models across the country,” Scott said.
But no one questioned that Snider’s central passion was the Flyers and the live event. And he indulged in superstition to add spice to the game.
If you were sitting in Snider’s box (or living room) during a Flyers game and the team scored, you were to remain in that seat for the duration of the game. Scott, when he was a newbie, was sitting with Snider in his box when Lin Snider, his wife, arrived. Making a gentlemanly move to give her his seat, Snider pulled him back down. The Flyers had scored. Scott was not to move.
Heaven help you if you were in the restroom when the team scored. That became your seat.
Fun was a big part of Snider’s persona. He was totally engaged.
“I never worked for a guy who listened as well as Ed,” Scott said. “He would pay close attention to what you were saying and, if he didn’t agree with you, he let you know.”
“He prepared all of us for this moment,” Scott said, but that doesn’t make it easier. The job now is to continue the legacy.
(Editor’s Note: Venues Today will publish a tribute to Ed Snider and his remarkable legacy in the June magazine. To contribute stories, photos and thoughts, email Linda@venuestoday.com.)
Interviewed for this story: Phil Weinberg, (215) 952-5217; Dave Scott, (215) 389-9530; John Page, (215) 389-9558