Remembering Claire Rothman, Trailblazing Exec Of The Forum During ‘Showtime LA Lakers’ Sports Dynasty

Lee Zeidman sat at home one Saturday morning in February 1989 when he got an urgent phone call from his boss, Claire Rothman, president and general manager of the Forum.

Zeidman was barely two months into his job as director of operations and there was an emergency unfolding in the arena parking lots. The Grateful Dead were booked for three concerts at the Forum starting that night and there was no potable water to accommodate “Shakedown Street,” the hippie flea market that popped up wherever the Dead played.

Zeidman questioned Rothman about arriving at the arena several hours ahead of the show at the Inglewood, California venue. Why the parking lots? he asked.

In her “not-so-friendly voice,” Rothman told Zeidman, whom she had hired, to make a beeline for the Forum ASAP before the fire department shut down Shakedown and put the Forum at risk of losing the Dead dates.

Thankfully, Zeidman resolved the issue in tandem with fire department officials in the early days of what would become a fruitful seven-year relationship working alongside Rothman at the Forum.

“There were thousands of people in the parking lot,” he said. “I was a young kid coming from a university and had never been in the [big league] arena business before. I’m shaking in my boots. If this gets shut down, who knows what my relationship is with Claire moving forward.”

Rothman, who died Nov. 22 at age 97, is recognized as a pioneer in the venues industry. Most important, she served as a teacher for many people across the sports and entertainment landscape. Her career spanned three NBA/NHL arenas in Philadelphia, Cleveland and Los Angeles, where she spent 20 years running the Forum from 1975-95. Rothman then spent four years at Ticketmaster before retiring in 1999.

“She was a great mentor for everybody,” said Peter Luukko, co-chairman of Oak View Group, who ran the old Los Angeles Sports Arena from 1987-93. “We were fierce competitors to get shows, but we became really good friends. We served together on the LA Sports Council and on the (1994) World Cup bid. She’s one of the classiest people I’ve met. She knew the industry inside and out, and like any good arena manager, I’m not sure she ever went home between the Kings, Lakers and concerts, like all of us back in those days.”

Rothman, who grew up in Philadelphia, got her start in 1967 as bookkeeper at the old Spectrum, where she worked for Ed Snider, owner of the Philadelphia Flyers, the arena’s primary tenant. Two weeks into her job, she was promoted to business manager and talent buyer. In 1974, she moved to Ohio to help open the old Richfield Coliseum, where the Cleveland Cavaliers played for 20 years.
One year later, Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the Forum, the Kings and the Lakers, hired Rothman to run his arena. In the late 1970s, Cooke sold all three assets to Jerry Buss, as well as Cooke’s 13,000-acre ranch in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The $68 million transaction, the biggest in sports at the time, took place after Rothman initially set up a lunch date with Cooke and Buss to negotiate the deal.

It was those relationships she forged with high-profile team owners that helped Rothman hone her skills as an arena manager, traits that served her well in bargaining with bands, agents and promoters over events.

“This is a woman who grew up working for some of the strongest and most notorious males in the industry — Ed Snider in Philly, (Cavaliers owner) Nick Mileti in Cleveland, Jack Kent Cooke and Jerry Buss,” said Doug Logan, a retired sports executive and arena manager. In the late 1980s, Logan became Rothman’s boss at Ogden Entertainment, the private management firm that Buss brought on to operate the Forum.

“There’s a lot to be said that people who know you the best are the ones you’re under fire with,” Logan said. “Claire was hard working and always looked like she was coming out of the pages of Vogue. She was incredibly stylish and loved wearing nice clothes. She was perfect for ’Showtime,’ Hollywood and the Forum in its heyday.”

Logan first got to know Rothman in the early ‘80s when they both served on a board for the International Association of Assembly Managers, now known as the International Association of Venue Managers. Later that decade, Rothman ended up reporting to Logan, in charge of Ogden’s facilities group, after Buss outsourced Forum operations. It was a delicate situation, considering Rothman was already a “giant” in the industry and Logan was just getting his feet wet running the MetroCentre in Rockford, Illinois.

“I ensured her that she was not going to have her status, in the market or nationally, altered by this deal,” Logan said. “I dealt with it with a gentle hand and she was respectful of the position I was put in. Out of that, emerged a good professional relationship, but also one of great caring for one another. She is one of the people, professionally in my life, that I remember most fondly.”

Together, they resolved multiple issues that arose at the Forum, whether it was standing their ground to tell Axl Rose to get his German shepherds out of the dressing room before a Guns ’N Roses concert; sneaking turkey dinners into the arena to feed the backstage crew on Thanksgiving Day 1989 prior to a Paul McCartney show, defying the artist’s no-meat policy in the rider; or helping fans get home safely after a Lakers playoff game on April 29, 1992, by avoiding the riots that occurred east of Inglewood after four LAPD officers were acquitted that day in the Rodney King beating incident.

“Claire was a great crisis manager,” Logan said. “Because of the elegant and flamboyant way that she dressed and carried herself, people sold her short with regard to substance. If you tried to put one over on her, you did it at your own peril. She was tough as nails.”

Brad Mayne found that to be true during his three years running the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, California, now Honda Center.
The NHL arena, the new kid on the block when it opened in 1993, struck gold when it secured a string of six shows during Barbra Streisand’s 1993-94 tour, beating out the Forum for those coveted dates.

Streisand booked the Pond after the Forum couldn’t clear all the dates that tour officials wanted, Mayne said.

At the time, Ogden also operated the Anaheim arena, which resulted in Mayne and Rothman working for the same company, despite competing for concerts at two arenas sitting 30 miles apart.

“The night before tickets went on sale, CAA wanted a better deal and they called me,” Mayne said. “They got Claire on the phone and she said the tour would be better off going to LA, even though the Forum wouldn’t have as many dates. This was at 2 a.m. and tickets were going on sale at 10. We’re on with attorneys and road managers and (CAA’s) Rob Light. Fortunately, we ended up holding on to the show. Claire fought for it, but she did it with dignity. She was straightforward, saying ‘I know what I’m doing and I hope you know what you’re doing.’”

In that respect, Rothman always had a strategic plan in her back pocket, but at Ogden, more often than not, she did what was right for the company, Mayne said.

“She led the way with women and it wasn’t easy,” he said. “A lot of people back then didn’t think women were capable of running these venues. Personally, I have three daughters, and I’m glad she broke the ceiling. She showed everybody that it could be done. Everybody knew Claire and everybody liked Claire, unless you were on the other side of the negotiating table. She knew what she could do and had a perfect platform to do it.”

Nobody knows that better than Zeidman, who spent 10 years at the Forum before Staples Center, now Crypto.com Arena, opened in 1999 as the new home of the Kings and Lakers. Zeidman ran the newer building for AEG in downtown LA for 25 years before retiring this fall.

At the start of his career, Zeidman learned some valuable lessons by sitting in meetings with Rothman to discuss logistics with police, fire and local government officials. For any facility manager, it’s critical to develop a strong working relationship with those folks that support events, and Zeidman credits Rothman for her guidance in that realm.

“She cut quite a presence when she walked into a room and those people listened to her; she took no BS from anybody,” he said. “Claire was always fair, direct and honest. I learned that if you adopt those three attributes as part of your work ethic, you’re going to go far. There will never be another one like her. She helped shape me for who I became as an arena manager and as a person.”