Tim Leiweke with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment accepts the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Sports, Entertainment and Venues Tomorrow in Columbia, S.C. on Nov. 22.
For Tim Leiweke, there’s a bit of irony in accepting a lifetime achievement award from a university — the sports and entertainment titan became one of the most powerful men in North America without going to college.
He joked with the audience of 300 students, academics and industry professionals that he might return to school one day, or better yet accept an honorary degree, because his long career in the industry convinced him just how impactful sports and entertainment venues could be for a community.
“What you want to do with your education and career will change communities forever,” he told students who had come to watch him accept his lifetime achievement award in Columbia, S.C. for the 6th annual Sports, Entertainment and Venues Tomorrow conference, held in conjunction with Venues Today and the University of South Carolina’s College of Sport and Entertainment Management.
“What I’m proud about today is winning an award from people who understand that if I’ve given one thing back to this industry, it’s this passion and vision for facilities that have turned cities around and created unbelievable economic impact,” he said. “We’ve changed the way people view their communities, their downtown and their live experience.”
Leiweke was the CEO of AEG for 19 years and oversaw the rapid expansion of the company into a global facilities management and concert promoter powerhouse. He left AEG in April to begin work as the president of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment in Toronto, a huge entertainment firm that owns Air Canada Centre, the Maples Leafs, the Raptors basketball team and soccer squad Toronto F.C.
“I’m very fortunate to go up to Canada and do something the Leafs haven’t done since 1967,” he said. “We’re going to win a Stanley Cup; I just hope it’s within my lifetime.”
The Maple Leafs are the defacto national team of Canada, with an average of 11 million people (about one third of the country) tuning in for each playoff game last postseason.
“The expectations for when you step up to that mantel are absolutely immense,” he said, explaining that as far as the prospects for each team go, “the Maple Leafs are one or two pieces of the pie away from being very good, the Raptors are the entire pie away from being very good and, with our soccer team, we forgot to order the oven. Even if we had the pie, we couldn’t bake the damn thing because we are so bad.”
It’s a chance for Leiweke and the team to reinvent themselves, especially as the sports industry starts to shift and alter its own revenue models, from ticketing to broadcasting rights. The next step, he argued, was to create subscription channels through smartphone apps and digital services to provide additional content to fans. He pointed to the success of the ESPN Insider program, which charges fans a couple of bucks a month to access premium content like national columnists, fantasy football picks and draft analysis.
“ESPN has over one million people who are spending $4 million a month on this service,” he said. “What if Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham, the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Yankees, and the Maple Leafs created their own fan clubs using digital distribution.”
If 10 percent, or approximately 600,000 fans, of the Maple Leafs signed up for a service that included everything from behind-the-scenes footage in the locker room to 100 years of digital archive access and first shot at ticket purchases, at $5 a month “it would generate $36 million and cost us only $10 million to implement. That $26 million would be ours — not the league's. Ours. It’s going to revolutionize the business again if we can get ahead of the leagues and, believe me, they’re thinking about trying to do it because they want to put it into the pool” of funds that wealthy teams share with less successful teams as part of a profit-share agreement.
“We could do it in Toronto, New York and L.A.,” he said. “But’s it’s very hard to do in Columbus (Ohio) and in the small markets.”
Leiweke also spoke about turning around the Raptors, who finished near last place in the National Basketball Association last year and didn’t get any draft picks this year. Shortly after taking the helm at MLSE, Leiweke fired most of the front office, and hired Masai Ujiri from the Denver Nuggets.
“We had a bold vision — let’s change our brand, let’s change our vision and let’s change our mission statement,” he said. Soon, the team inked a deal with Canadian rapper Drake, “one of the smartest businessmen I’ve ever been around,” he explained.
“We told him — ‘Help us understand. We’re Toronto, we’re Canada and we’re proud,” he said. The result was a rebranding effort that includes new uniforms, new recruiting and even a new tagline — ‘We Are The Northside.”
“We’ve been sitting here making excuses for 15 years,” Leiweke said. “We thought no one wanted to come here and we used that as a crutch and a reason to lay blame. Drake single-handedly came along and showed us that we can celebrate our uniqueness. We’re unique. We’re different. And we are the Northside.”
Interviewed for this article: Tim Leiweke, (416) 815-5435