SPORTS NEWS YOU CAN USE

Issue 17--Team Facility Managers

The last issue of Sports News focused on facilities managers. Most are more accountable to their respective facilities than to any sports organizations which temporarily or permanently reside there. But there is a smaller group of sport managers who work for sports organizations which own facilities or plan to own facilities. Here are three examples:

Evans started his career at Walt Disney Corp., working there from 1960 to 1973. He was involved in the early development of Disney World.
 
From 1973 to 1975 he worked for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, helping to plan a theme park which was never built. Then he did similar work for Marriott Corporation, developing a feasibility study for Wet & Wild park in Orlando.
 
From there he moved to a crisis-management firm in Atlanta and in 1977 started his own firm, Leisure General Corp., to help troubled companies restructure, reorganize, or liquidate. One of those companies was New York's Radio City Music Hall, where he worked from 1980 to 1986. Within three years of his involvement, the company was making a profit for the first time since 1955.
 
Then Evans became president and chief executive officer of Madison Square Garden Corp. He oversaw operations of the NBA New York Knicks, the NHL New York Rangers, MSG Sports Network, and a $200 million renovation of the facility. Evans applied to the job some of what he learned at Disney, encouraging the staff to become more guest-friendly. In 1991 he left when he ran into conflicts with a new chief operating officer hired by Paramount, MSG's parent company.
 
Evans then became president and CEO of Dorna USA, a subsidiary of an international sports marketing company.
 
In 1993 he was hired away to become chief operating officer of Gaylord Entertainment, a large firm which owns the Grand Ole Opry, Opryland Hotel, Opryland USA, several other theme parks, several television and radio stations, and, until recently, two country music cable networks. Evans was with Gaylord for 3 1/2 years. While in Nashville, he was instrumental in getting an arena built and attracting major league professional sports to the city.
 
In 1996 Wayne Huizenga hired Evans to run his ever-growing sports operation.
He started out as an accountant and then moved into building management. He went from being comptroller of the Providence Civic Center to president and CEO of Spectacor Management Group (the largest facilities management company in the country) by the time he was 30.
 
Tavares was with SMG for 11 years. Then he left in the early 1990s to become a consultant. After helping Disney decide whether it should acquire an NHL team, he was hired in 1993 as president of Disney Sports Enterprises. His first assignment was to create the Mighty Ducks. He started from scratch and seven months later had a team.
 
Tavares had no previous experience with sport management, but he felt sports business operates on the same principles as any other business:
 
"The only thing that is somewhat dissimilar is the perception of the industry. The most successful organizations run their businesses as businesses, so there are huge amounts of similarities, whether you are running an arena or a widget manufacturing shop. You try to do things in a cost-effective way. You market your product the best way you possibly can. You try to control your labor costs, because it is one of the highest costs that you experience. So all of the business acumen that you have learned over the years is certainly applicable to sports." (2)
 
The Pond, the city-owned arena where the Mighty Ducks play home games, is not run by Disney but rather by Ogden Entertainment Services, a major sport facility management company. Said Tavares, "We don't agree across the board on everything, but we have a better relationship than most marriages." (3)
O'Malley's father was a lawyer who worked for Abe Pollin (owner of the Bullets and Capitals). He eventually became president of the Capitals, a job he held for four years until 1978.
 
When O'Malley was in college in the early 1980s, she worked as an intern with the Bullets and Caps. She was told by someone in the organization that if she wanted to move up she needed to go out into the world, get some experience, and come back as a midlevel executive.
 
She took a job at a local advertising agency (run by a close friend of her father's) and then three years later applied for director of advertising at the Bullets. She feels family connections did play a part. "I think the door was opened to me because of nepotism ... I think people are given opportunities, and then you have to make the best of it." (4)
 
The following year O'Malley became director of marketing and then executive vice president of the Bullets. Four years later (in 1991) at the age of 29 she became president of the Bullets. To increase ticket sales, O'Malley and her staff offered promotions, did consumer surveys, put out a newsletter, and personally contacted season ticket holders on a regular basis.
 
In 1994 O'Malley, along with another executive, was put in charge of corporate advertising and sponsorship of USAir Arena.
 
In 1995 Pollin combined his two teams and his arena into Washington Sports and appointed O'Malley president. "The thing I can do better than anybody else in the whole world is hire people. To me, everything is always about people. And if I hire the best people and they do the best job, it's going to work out." (5)
 
 
1 (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, December 9, 1996.
2 OC Metro, October 15, 1995.
3 Los Angeles Times, January 7, 1996.
4 The Washington Post, January 12, 1997.
5 The Washington Post, September 14, 1995.
Copyright 1997 Suzanne Lainson/SportsTrust

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