Kroenke and AEG to Partner in Managing Broomfield Event Center (UPDATE)

Gee, E. Stanley Kroenke, what do you want to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night, try to take over the Denver sports world!
A-hahahahaha!!!!!!!

It’s rather astonishing to compile the list of sports and entertainment stakes that one mustachioed mouse has in his pocket.
Let’s do it just for fun.

Teams:
Colorado Avalanche
Denver Nuggets
Colorado Rapids
Colorado Mammoth
Colorado Crush (partial ownership)

Venues:
Pepsi Center
Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
Paramount Theater

Other:
Altitude Sports & Entertainment
Opera Shop, a theatrical production company, (concert light and sound)
TicketHorse: Kroenke’s contract w/ Ticketmaster ends June 30th and all Avs, Nuggets, and Pepsi Center events will be going thru Mr. K. The Rapids and various venues are already on TicketHorse. I doubt many people know this, but this is a major coup against TicketMonster. And let’s face it, it can’t be worse. TicketMonster is a nightmare, and I say that from both sides of the business. I have had the unfortunate experience of selling tickets for the Monster.

In addition there are the two major investments outside the Denver area, some stupid soccer team across the pond, and the NFL’s St Louis Rams (both partial ownership stakes). Kroenke may be in a position to take full ownership of the Rams, soon.

There are rumors that Kroenke has tried and/or is currently interested in buying the Colorado Rockies as well as the Denver Outlaws.

He probably owns my rec. league hockey team…come to think of it that would explain why Tyler Arnason has been playing with us in the D league…OHHHH! That was low!


Here is the Boulder Daily Camera article about the recent decision.

According to other things I’ve read, this partnership with AEG was kept very quiet, (sound familiar?) right up until Paul Andrews “popped in” on the Broomfield city council meeting to hawk the proposal. Apparently council members were not aware that the existing AEG proposal involved Kroenke.

The council still has to negotiate a contract with the partners, but that is likely a done deal. Kroenke is not buying the BEC, but he will be exercising control over the place, and that includes sporting events and teams. It’s important to point out that this is a partnership to manage the arena. Broomfield owns the arena and the teams are privately owned. Kroenke, amazingly, does not own the 14ers or the Rage. The fate of the Rage is unclear at this point.

From what I have heard, the 14ers are moving to Frisco TX. Now from what I have heard this will open up a lot of nights when AEG can book concerts that are expected to significantly outsell the typical night of D-league basketball. We’ll see about that. AEG certainly has the current Denver contacts to book the music. Something the last management team failed to do to any degree. But I’m not sure about the size of the venue. A capacity of about 6000 is an odd middle ground for concerts. I believe Red Rocks is 9000, and that is often a little small for big acts, but they do it because it is an iconic venue. Many smaller touring bands come into Denver and AEG books them into places like the Ogden and the Bluebird. These are funky, urban venues that often draw form the neighborhoods in addition to the people seeking out specific artists. Broomfield, a suburban venue is not going to have that advantage.

On the other hand BEC did run a very successful all-night rave called Caffeine, a national touring “rave” that brought in 7000+ people and apparently went off without a hitch. Being a big fan of music as well as sports I’m all for more music coming to Denver, big, small and in-between. But I’ll skip the rave, thank you.

UPDATE: According to the Denver Post, the Rage have got to let the league (CHL) know by Friday what their plans are. This could make things a little sticky since the city and Kroenke/AEG still need to negotiate a contract. But apparently the Rage can skip a season and remain in good standing with the league, so we may see a situation like that. I would bet on the team taking a chance to stay here and counting on the Kroenke advertising expertise to improve their attendance numbers for next season.

Updated June 18th: The owner of the Rage has publicly stated that the Rage will take a year off. Kroenke said the fate of the team is undecided. So, we may have a bit of a poker game going on between the guy managing the place and the guy those team plays there. Frankly I think losing both teams will leave the place dark way too much next year.

Posted by: From the Point

Dater Watch - Bashing the NBA

Well I guess I got scooped on this one. I usually jump right on Dater when he puts up something interesting in his blog, but I'll try to blame this on the fact that my motherboard decided to burn out this weekend. Closer to the truth is probably that I had no idea this was going to get people so riled, because I just laughed about it and nodded in agreement. Oops.

Dater went off on the NBA and what I should have known was going to peeve a few people: ripping on a woman announcer. Here is the now deleted blog post from The Denver Post, I did capture it in my RSS feed so this is a cut and paste.

NBA: Unwatchable
Saturday, May 09, 2009, 4:59:30 PM Adrian Dater

I just tried watching 10-15 minutes of the Nuggets’ Game 3 against Dallas. That should about complete my NBA viewing quota for the year. Absolutely god awful.
There was a foul on, I’d say, 95 percent of the possessions I watched - a stretch in the third quarter. Every trip down the floor - a foul, followed by whining, followed by an out of bounds play or a free throw.

The announcers were awful. Some female was doing the color. Sorry, I’m a chauvinist on this one. How many women play in the NBA? Zero you say? Oh. So why is a woman doing the color analysis for the game?

I’ll stick with hockey, and every other sport in the universe over the NBAwful. Thanks, that’s all.

The bummer is that Puck Daddy linked Jerseys and Hockey Love in his highly popular blog. Jerseys and Hockey Love got on this one before I did. Now, even if I had been on the ball this weekend I doubt I would have got the link, but it sure would be nice to get some traffic going around here. So I'll just keep plugging along.

I think one reason I started this Adrian Dater Watch feature is because Dater has such a propensity for saying stupid things in his blog. The man has a bit of a filter problem. Not that I don't get that, I do. In fact I like that he goes off every once in a while. I can identify with it. I have had the same tendency myself and it often elicits, at minimum, a baffled look from the people around me, sometimes the "stare at the floor or ceiling" act and sometimes I actually get myself in trouble. All because I said or did something before my filter kicked in.

Frankly I agree with Dater about the NBA, it's really not very interesting. I kind of enjoy listening to people bash the NBA, the fact that Dater put it in a very popular blog makes it all the better. As for his comment about the female color commentator, well, it's just his opinion. He doesn't like it and said so, but the timing and the content of the post were poor. He should have known (and maybe he did) that ripping on a female announcer wasn't going to go over well with a lot of readers and the editor. But perhaps worse is that Denver is in the middle of a building crescendo of fan support for the Denver Nuggets.

This town has seen the Avs hit bottom, the Broncos plateau at mediocrity and the Rockies still stink. The town is ripe with bandwagon fans and the long suffering and loyal Nuggets fans are finally seeing a team play past the first round of the playoffs. So bashing the NBA at this moment in time was a major gaff.

Or...just a good way to ensure that readers keep coming to a blog that is about a team that started playing golf weeks ago. What's wrong with a little conspiracy?

Posted by: From the Point