Features
AEG Sale Off, Leiweke Out
AEG was abruptly yanked off the auction block March 14 and president/CEO Tim Leiweke has left the company by mutual agreement, ending a sale process begun in September.
Leiweke’s successor is chief operating officer Dan Beckerman, a 15-year AEG vet, who moves into the president/CEO’s chair effective immediately. Jay Marciano’s stint as president/CEO of AEG Europe will end as he moves back to Los Angeles from London to fill Beckerman’s previous COO slot. AEG chief legal and development officer Ted Fikre becomes AEG vice chairman.
Also among the executive maneuverings: Todd Goldstein, who has been with AEG since 2001, becomes chief revenue officer. And Anschutz Company EVP Steven Cohen will play a dual role, retaining his current position while serving as AEG’s chief strategic officer.
All of them, along with Anschutz Company principal Philip Anschutz, will make up AEG’s Office of the Chairman. The function of that office isn’t immediately clear, but it does appear to back up an AEG press release contention that Anschutz will play a more hands-on role with the company after recent back surgery.
No mention was made in the press release if
That AEG might not end up being sold at all was already one of the scenarios being floated in recent weeks as word leaked that bids may not have risen to the level Anschutz sought.
A source reportedly with knowledge of the numbers indicated not only that the bids were in the single-digit billions, rather than the $10 billion Anschutz reportedly expected, but that AEG’s most recent year’s EBITDA was about $350 million – penciling out to a valuation of only about $5 billion, far less than the asking price.
But the departure of Leiweke, who was expected to remain with the company even in the event of a sale, took many by surprise. Considered to be a close confidant of the reclusive Anschutz, Leiweke had been with the company since 1996.
Las Vegas and MGM officials are probably pretty surprised, too. Just two weeks before his departure, Leiweke and AEG and MGM Resorts International announced an agreement to develop a privately funded, 20,000-capacity arena in Las Vegas.
But most surprised of all may be Los Angeles city officials with whom Leiweke was closely working on AEG’s proposal to build an NFL football stadium, repurpose the city’s Convention Center and continue development of L.A. Live and its adjacent real estate.
The future of Farmers Field – AEG has already secured naming rights to the proposed-but in-limbo L.A. football stadium – wasn’t immediately clear with the departure of Leiweke, who told Pollstar in a 2011 interview that the project had Anschutz’s full support.
Despite some initial speculation to the contrary in the hours after the announcement the AEG sale was off, Anschutz is holding firm on bringing football back to L.A. – and served notice to the NFL that it’s time to come back to the table.
“We’re open for business to do a deal,” he told Los Angeles Times “It’s not rocket science … we’ll do a reasonable deal, but we won’t be pushed into a deal.”
However, without a team to call Farmers Field home, groundbreaking on that and associated projects, such as the Convention Center overhaul, infrastructure, traffic mitigation and other upgrades, are in a holding pattern. And published reports indicated in recent weeks that the bloom may be off the rose for the NFL, which is said to be cool to the idea of AEG controlling both a team and stadium – or at least its revenues.
But Anschutz told the paper it’s time for the NFL to take an active role and be a party to the process.
“We’re not going to make the NFL happen by ourselves,” Anschutz said in the rare interview. “The NFL is a player here. They have to decide what they are going to do.” But, he added, “if there is a profitable investment to be made, I’m for that. We’re very flexible.”
And he commented on Leiweke’s departure – particularly unusual as his earlier statement contained a farewell, however tepid – suggesting his former lieutenant made his own choice to leave.
“I think he made his decision based on the fact that I had terminated the process for the sale,” he told the Times, calling press coverage “too noisy.”