PHOTO CAPTION: First row, from left: Larry Rubin, Ron Holliday, Sims Hinds, Stan Riley, Tony Tavares, Aaron Siegel, Don Webb, Mich Sauers and Rich Rumer; Second row, from left: Bill Curl, Rich Krezwick, George Mattson, Dick Schaff, Bob Johnson, Alice Marini, Roger Dixon, Pat Lynch, Gerry Baron, Joel Ralph and Tim Murphy; Third row, from left: Peter Luukko, Matt Brown, Bob Cavalieri, Dave Davis, Peter Sullivan, Steve Greenberg, Manny Fernandez, Neil Sulkes, Joe D’Angelo and Carl Hirsh.
The pending AEG/SMG merger this year is all about girth, and who knows better what it means than the man who helped create SMG with the merger of Spectacor Management Inc. and Facility Management Group in 1977.
Based on Truth talked with Tony Tavares (a call prompted by the picture above, provided by Larry Rubin) about that first big earthquake in private management of venues.
In his inaugural career with SMG, followed by many more successes in other aspects of live entertainment and sports, Tony admitted his first high point was orchestrating that first merger.
“It’s the thing that really launched the business; it gave us bragging rights at that point in time,” he remembered. “We could say we were running, technically, America’s Showplace, which is how the Spectrum in Philadelphia was known; the Worcester [Mass.] Centrum, where we did 63 concerts one year, unheard of for a 12,000-plus seat arena; and then they had the Louisiana Superdome, Moscone Center [San Francisco], and Long Beach [Calif.] Convention Center.
“When you added their properties to ours, we started getting some girth.”
Tony had worked for FMG, which was owned by AN Pritzker of Hyatt Hotel fame and run by Denzil Skinner in New Orleans, at Nassau Coliseum. Allen Flexer then lured him away to run the Centrum for SMI.
Tony remembers that day well. He was in the pool at the then IAAM meeting (now IAVM) with his baby daughter when Spectacor’s Stephen Greenberg, whom he knew well, hailed him.
“Hey Tony, do you know Allen Flexer? He wants to talk to you.”
Flexer recruited Tony to be involved in what was the beginnings of SMG, then Spectacor Management Inc., with Flexer, Mich Sauers, Greenberg, a couple of secretaries and now Tony. The impetus was to launch a management firm because Flexer and Ed Snider, who owned the Spectrum and the Philadelphia Flyers, had been giving out free advice on venue management for far too long.
They promptly moved the “corporate” office to 15th Street in Philadelphia and Tony worked out of Worcester, overseeing the operational side.
Bottom line, it is a relationship business and Tony had relationships — always will. In particular, he knew David Sullivan, who was Denzil’s point person at the Hyatt Group, very well when he was running Nassau Coliseum. Sullivan followed Tony’s career when he left for Spectacor and when Tony became executive VP there, Sullivan started coming up with ideas about a potential merger.
It is also a numbers business, and both Sullivan and Tony knew that it made financial sense to merge the two firms.
His view of what happened this year with AEG and SMG is similar. “This merger has been talked about for longer than I care to think about. I was involved maybe three years ago trying to figure out how to do that, not actively involved, but sort of as a broker. We had a concept out there. We had a big purchaser, to go unnamed, a big equity firm that has tons of money, and they were backing the concept of a merger between the two companies.”
But at the time, SMG was for sale by American Capital/Ares Capital Corp. and they just wanted to sell. They had buyers. They didn’t want to talk about mergers.
“I think AEG has always been a willing player and wanted to be the dominant player and have their people run the company. Effectively, that’s what just happened,” Tony said.
It’s been decades since that first merger, which Tony orchestrated, created girth for SMG. A lot happened since, from Aramark’s entry as a third partner in SMG, to Aramark’s exit and the sale of SMG by the Pritzkers and Snider to the purchase of SMG by Onex Corp. in 2017.
“When you look back at the beginnings of all this, the girth that SMG got was as a result of the first merger and it was me introducing the Pritzkers to Snider and that’s when we pulled the two companies together.
And now the girth has increased again – and not just the corporation’s. Look at that photo again.
Funny side note, AEG Facilities President Bob Newman, who will run the merged companies to be known as ASM Global, got his start in the business right out of school working for SMG under Tony’s tutelage.
“There are whole bunch of people out there who have achieved a lot in this industry that were part of that SMG team.” — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard
Excellent recap, Linda, of the young arena management industry’s growth with the merger of SMI and FMG. Tony Tavares certainly put together a great team to take SMG to great heights. His leadership was bolstered by his enthusiasm, drive and determination to get things done. We had a very special group of men and women in every aspect of of SMG’s operations. I remember fondly those in the photograph who have left us and thank the others for being very special colleagues and friends.