Jeanie Buss in her office overlooking the basketball court in UCLA Health Training Center, El Segundo, Calif. (Linda Deckard)
Jeanie Buss, controlling owner of the NBA Los Angeles Lakers, is a venue manager again. She honed her business skills early on managing the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., for her flashy father, Dr. Jerry Buss, back in the 1990s.
Last year, she moved the Lakers organization into its new 120,000-square-foot UCLA
Health Training Center headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., designed by Rossetti. It comes complete with an “arena,” which seats up to 1,000, training and health facilities, offices and a fully staffed kitchen.
So her storied career in the family business has come full circle. When visited at the new headquarters, her pride in the venue is obvious. This 2018 VenuesNow Woman of Influence even calls it the highlight of her career. “Now we’re all under one roof,” she said of the accomplishment after 17 years of multiple offices and make-dos.
Here, they book events, including 25 G League games, bring in food trucks for concessions, sell season and GA tickets, find sponsors, sell an owner’s suite and take care of the fan and artist experience.
“Creating basketball is at the core of what drives us. That is the lifeblood of this whole building. I’m really proud of this facility,” Buss told VenuesNow. And the timing is perfect as she adds basketball operations to her business development role.
“When we moved into this building last year, none of our young players had to inherit Kobe Bryant’s old locker. This is their opportunity to write their own chapter of Laker history, but not be buried by Laker history. In this building, you feel the Laker culture, but it’s not overwhelming,” Buss said.
Headquarters is open 24/7, because it is home for the players. They come to practice, eat, play video games, get haircuts, or possibly access the quiet room. “With UCLA Health as our naming rights partner, that opened up a whole realm of resources we hadn’t had before. This building became an opportunity, not just an office,” Buss said.
When Rossetti gave their pitch for the contract, they talked about how architecture could change a culture. “That resonates with me. I was trying to get the basketball and business sides to work together. What’s cool about this building is you can circulate throughout the whole building. It flows. Basketball is at the center, wherever you are, when they’re bouncing the basketball you hear it – it’s like a heartbeat,” Buss said.
She expects the G League will soon outgrow UCLA Health Training Center and they’ll be looking for a new arena to house the team.
“The G League will become the second best professional league in the world,” she predicted.
Everything with Buss has a history she is keenly aware of. The G League is one. When the NBA first launched a development league to replace the failed CBA to keep up-and-coming players stateside, Dr. Buss wanted to own his own team. David Stern, NBA commissioner at the time, told her dad it was against the rules to own two basketball teams.
Voila. The rules were changed.
Her other current passion, besides the dual role of running Lakers business and basketball operations singlehandedly for the first time this past year, is Women Of Wrestling (WOW). She hopes to turn it into an arena touring show.
Her WOW partner, David McLane, is the original creator of the Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling, which is now a Netflix TV series. For two years, they have been putting on small events in Los Angeles. This month, they announced a media partner, AXS-TV. Once they are on national TV, beginning in January, and can build a fan base, an arena tour will follow, she says.
“I’m involved because these are female superheroes, good versus evil, typical wrestling, but what I like is it’s women taking on their own battles,” Buss said.
One of her mentors is tennis great Billie Jean King, who helped with passage of Title IX, offering equal college scholarship opportunities for women. “I’ve seen this incredible talent at the collegiate level in volleyball, gymnastics, but there’s no pro league—other than WNBA, Pro Tour or becoming an ice skater. There is no place to make money as a professional athlete as a woman,” Buss observed.
She’s proud to say one member of WOW whom they trained is now a hugely successful stunt woman for the movies, doubling for Queen Latifah. “If you are an athlete, if you are a competitor, you are a performer, you like the stage,” Buss explained.
For her own self, Buss prefers behind the scenes. It is the path she chose. “I’m not a performer, I’m a fan. My job with the Lakers is to give them everything they need to be the best they can. I sit in the background. Someone said to me ‘do you realize you could be the first female owner in the Basketball Hall of Fame?’ What would make me happier is to have Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball or Kyle Kuzma in the Hall of Fame.”
For all and each of them, that depends on the success of the new Lakers organization Buss has brought together since last year taking over basketball operations from her brother. When her flashy and unconventional father passed in 2013, his daughter took over the business side, which she had been well schooled in, and his son, Jim, was put in charge of basketball.
“We haven’t been in the playoffs for five seasons now. When my dad ran the team for over 30 years, he missed the playoffs twice,” Buss said. Last year, famously, she exercised the option her father had stipulated to take over the entire operation if it was not doing well.
LEARNING THE BUSINESS
Buss joined the family business at 19. Growing up, the family business was real estate, where her dad made his fortune, and that was what she had thought she would do until sports and entertainment entered the fold. She remembers going to her dad to ask for the job and suggesting that now that she had it she could quit school. His response: You can work for me and go to school or you can go to school.
From his own experience as a runaway pool hustler who was salvaged because of his brilliant mathematical mind and a professor’s recognition of his potential, Dr. Buss believed in education foremost.
Jeanie Buss started on the marketing side, basically acting as promoter for their own events. “That was important to my experience because I always said, if you are a revenue generator in our business, you can write your own ticket. Businesses look for people who can bring in money.”
When Claire Rothman, one of her mentors and the woman who ran the Forum, moved on to Ticketmaster, she recommended Jeanie for her job. Buss said the fact that Rothman was so successful in her position inspired her as a woman in a man’s world. “Claire had no fear. No one could intimidate her. It was out of confidence and not listening to detractors. She had a job and she did her job.”
“When my father sat down with me and wanted me to consider that job, he said, ‘I’m coming from two different places. As your boss, I think you are capable of doing the job. As your father I worry that it is going to eat into a lot of your personal time,’” Buss said. “That’s something about our business people need to know and understand, that you work a lot of nights. It’s your whole life.”
She wanted the challenge. Having been a promoter who went to the other side, she had a special viewpoint on negotiations. What she had to learn was working with unions, concessionaires, scheduling, box office, parking and all things operations. She joined the International Association of Assembly Managers (now IAVM) and developed her network while managing an arena (1995-99).
Peter Luukko, now with Oak View Group (which also owns Venues- Now), first knew Jeanie back in the days when there was a Roller Hockey League. “I admire the fact she worked her way up through the business,” Luukko said. “She’s not just Jerry’s daughter, she’s her own person who worked hard to get where she is and she’s real smart. She’s also one of the nicest people I’ve met. People really want to do business with Jeanie.”
Luukko recalls being at an NBA meeting in New York with Jerry and Jeanie talking about the state of the leagues and arenas. “In the old days, some of the greatest owners were, in my mind, players’ owners. Ed Snider [Philadelphia Flyers] and I were talking about management fighting their players and Ed said, ‘Peter, why wouldn’t we want to like the people we work with?’ You never worked for Jerry Buss or Jeanie Buss, you worked with them; the same experience I had with Ed Snider.”
Jeanie Buss, who serves on the NBA Labor and Advisory Committees in her role as governor, believes “we’ve evolved our relationship with our players to the strongest connection between our union and our teams. I couldn’t be more proud that the players are our partners in the NBA and they are allowed to speak about the things they believe in,” Buss said. “Our CBA [Collective Bargaining Agreement] is basically 50/50. Truly we are partners.”
Buss’ career path is about understanding all aspects of the business. One of her most telling moments as a venue manager came when the Artist Formerly Known as Prince (his name at the time) canceled at the Forum after doors opened. Buss expected the worst, an unruly mob. But when informed that Prince would not play the show because “he wasn’t feeling it,” the excuse he gave, his fans understood. They just wanted to know when Prince wanted them to come back.
“The music side of the industry is so interesting because fans take on the persona of the artist,” Buss observed. “If you have a more aggressive punk rock act, the crowd has that same angst. In any kind of assembly, it’s like a crowd has their own identity. It becomes one person. I thought that was fascinating.”
When the Lakers left the Forum and moved to Staples Center in 1999, Jeanie became EVP, business operations. The team side was a lot different and she struggled to let go, but they had a good relationship with AEG, which runs Staples. “I felt we were an important tenant and our team and fans would be supported,” Buss recalled.
But she still has that understanding of the building side, which leads her to hope and work toward a day when the NBA does not black out so many playoff dates.
She aches for Staples Center management when two of three anchor teams don’t make the playoffs and the third gets swept. That’s 60 date holds gone. She’s lobbying for more flexibility.
She also feels for the teams and her advice to any team moving to a new arena is to win the championship that year. The Lakers did and it stopped the grumbling about downtown L.A.
THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Jeanie learned a lot from her dad. “My dad was unique – he was a winner. He knew he could put himself into situations and figure out how to win. Later in life, in 1993, he was voted rookie of the year on the poker tour. He loved the challenge. That I did not get from him at all,” she said.
When she took over the entire business, including basketball operations, her number one goal was to apply the lessons she learned from her father and from other mentors and friends like coach Phil Jackson and player Magic Johnson.
Her dad taught her to surround herself with the best people, give them what they need and then get out of their way. “You empower people; that’s when you can build something special, when you have that truth,” Buss said.
“After my dad passed away, he envisioned I would oversee the business and my brother would oversee the basketball. As time went on, what my dad had taught me and what I saw was not the decision-making process being done on the basketball side. Ultimately, my dad gave me the power to make a change if things weren’t working the right way. He knew it would be hard. He knew I would do what was best for the business because that would be what was best for the family.”
“Famously, last year happened, so now we’re set up so this is more in accordance with how Dr. Buss ran the Lakers as far as the basketball decisions.”
This is her low point at the same time it is her high point. She brought Magic Johnson back and a course has been set. There will be no more annual turnover if she can help it. “If you are changing coaches every 18 months, you can never give the coach what he needs to be successful.” And if you sign players to one-year terms, fans get fed up, wondering “now what do I do with my Dwight Howard Laker jersey?”
“We were treading water; we were going nowhere. Now with Magic, we have a consistent path and consistent message of the type of style we play under Luke Walton, the type of athlete we want. We’re building something.”
Bottom line, Buss says she’s just doing what her dad asked her to do. “Everything that seemed to be organic the way he ran the team was lost. I’m just getting back to what he did. It wasn’t that complicated.”
It got easier because it’s coming from an authentic place.
Other 2018 Women of Influence honorees: