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We are joined now by Danny Wurtz, chairman and CEO of the Chicago Blackhawks, alongside Michael Ryans. We're a president and CEO of the Chicago Bulls. They are both here with us on set in Chicago. Welcome to you both. Thank you so much for being Yes, it is a power table.
That's so sure about that?
I don't know indeed, Well, obviously it's a big week for you guys. I'm sure one that has had probably a year or so of preparation leading up to it. Michael, if we could just start with you talk to us about the decision to host this convention at the United Center and what all has gone into it and whether or not this is the most lucrative thing you could have done with a building of itself.
Well, I mean, clearly, it's not the most lucrative thing we could do, because we've shut down our buildings since the end of our season, so we've had no we haven't booked any events for the last couple of months. But to us, this was kind of a no brainer when Governor Pritzker and Mayor Lifefoot came to us. We're on board from the very beginning we had the convention kind of kicked off. I think that a lot of the redevelopment on the West Side in ninety six, So
the United Centers opened up in nineteen ninety four. This's our thirtieth year, and the ninety six convention was a complete success. And now it's many years later and we want to do our part of supporting the city of Chicago that we love so much.
Fascinating, I'm really taken by the logistics behind something of this scale. You can throw a concert, you can host a game, but this is on a much larger level. You have fifty thousand people attending, and I'm just curious what goes into that type of a transformation.
Tremendous planning.
And the good thing is our team kind of at the United Center are used to these, you know, one hundred and fifty nights a year working games, concerts, et cetera, big events like All Star Games. But this is another level, and I know our team at the United Center kind of liked the challenge of really rising to the occasion.
And then of course it's partnerships.
It's partnerships with all the city as sees and all the people that have to make it all work, and it's an impressive experience to go walk through and just walking through last night and see all the pieces come together to make the event.
Is it public service?
Though?
Also Kailee references the fact that you could be making a lot more money doing something else.
Yeah, I think it's kind of in our DNA to step up and to do the right thing for the city, because when the city does well, we do well as a business. And these conventions are big opportunities to put the spotlight on our great city, to showcase what we do so well, and to bring people and bring business to Chicago.
Well, as we think about the work you're doing in Chicago, obviously you announced a few weeks ago, as Tyler mentioned, the nineteen oh one project, you're investing more than seven billion dollars to reva basically the area where now the area that surrounds the United Center. How do you fund that? As we're having a conversation here about money.
Well, we're going to fund it privately.
You know, We're lucky because the United Center is kind of the anchor tenant, so we have a chance to redevelop the land, the parking lots, when we opened the building, we had six thousand parking spaces available, and we.
Never we didn't want to make it a sea of parking.
But what happened with a lot of people bought parking, you know, bacon lots and made additional parking, so we actually became kind of a sea of parking. And now we have this opportunity to reimagine this neighborhood.
It's not We're not Danny, I've talked.
This isn't It is not an entertainment district that you see in a lot of other cities with their buildings, their arenas and stadiums. This is an opportunity to do something different for the West Side. So it will be privately financed, and you know we're talking, we're talking a lot of development, whether it's we're building a music hall, we're building hotels, affordable housing, open park space. I mean, it's it's kind of like Chicago's West Side. It's it's their time, it's our time.
There's a big conversation about crime in this campaign that you hear a lot about. I'm sure the former president Donald Trump has been criticizing Chica of using crime statistics in some of his speeches, and.
We have to acknowledge the reality of the matter.
But when you consider an investment of that scale and you look at the geography, is it.
You build it and they will come.
The timing is what I'm curious about considering the backdrop of your investment here when it comes to crime in Chicago.
Well, we have a long term view, Danny. How long has your family been been.
Here for almost one hundred years and tell you, you know, crime has always been something that we've had to contend with and work with. But we also know that when when we invest in the neighborhoods and when you invest in economic development, that is one way to help create opportunities that gets to sort of the root cause.
Of some of the crime issues you see today. So I think.
Chicago has a history of really rolling up our sleeves and trying to be part of the solution, try to partner, you know, with the public sector to figure out how do we how do we create those opportunities to help, you know, stem some of those.
Problems from violence. Yeah, you have to understand one thing.
When the Unite Center opened, there was no one went west of the business dissuest yes and units are open. Ninety four, Mayor Daly wanted to bring the Convention to make up for what happened in sixty eight. Ninety six convention went off perfectly, and then all the developments started happening. I don't think Fulton Market, which is just to the east of US, I don't think that naturally happens without the Uniteds that are kickstarting all this. So for us, we're not worried about the timing.
We think the timing is right right now.
Well, the timing for having the public cooperation with investing in things like stadiums, as we've seen evidence by say the Chicago Bears for example, doesn't seem to be great. There's been a lot of pushback in that. And I know you just said that you're planning to finance this privately, But what do you think about the dynamic surrounding the financing mechanism of these investments into sports facilities of Frinkley
the facilities around them. If, as you say, this is about helping to invest economically that could help with things.
Like crime, I think every situation is very different. Every you know, wherever you're looking to do your development has different opportunities, and I think it is that partnership, you know, with the public to figure out where that benefit lies. We know in our situation, you know, we own our land. We've owned our land for a long time. We've been
part of this community for almost one hundred years. So you have a good feel of what the neighborhood needs, how to find those nice trade offs and those important trade offs between our commerce and what we need from the community, and then you build it together. I think other developments are going to obviously are putting that more at the forefront than ever before.
When you consider public private partnership and just the role that you play in this city. You're no strangers to politics, which is what we talk about every day here on this program. Are politics making it more difficult to do business or the conduit for your success?
I mean, for us, I think that there seems to be a lot of interest in our development. When we went to the Mayor's office, we talked to people you know that surround him, all the men, Walter Burnett, everyone seemed to be on board. Like to me, this was almost like a no brainer. You have a group of people that want to spend seven billion dollars.
They might want to take that meeting. Yea, his relationships are long and important.
To you, of course. I mean we have.
You know, we have friendships going back many many years. Now we have a new mayor here who just became mayor of last year, and we're developing a relationship with him. But like I said earlier, our families go back a long long time. We're about Chicago, not about the politics.
It's what can we do to make Chicago a better place.
Well, a lot of the politics today, or at least the political issues that seem to be dominating in there, certainly we're seeing this week and in this election surround the economy as well. We've seen such a change in the economy over the last four years from the pandemic, which obviously shut down facilities like the United Center for an extended period of time, to this resurgence and demand for that experience. People wanted to go to live events
like sports games and concerts. Now we're all asking this question of whether or not the softening is finally upon us in the labor market and potentially in consumption as a result. Are you seeing any any signs of that in a waning of demand ers, there's still demand to go I think for two expensive things.
For sports entertainment, I think it seems like every year is bigger than the last year. I think we had a record year for other events outside of our two teams last season. We obviously here across the board, Lollapalooza had record attendance this year for live music and festivals. So again, I think that desire to be connected, that desire for experience and people willing to pay for it is still there. So at least in that part of
the business, for sure, we see some nice tailwinds. Whereas you know, other parts of the business, I definitely see some of those.
I think it's helped that in the music industry changed so much over the years that before putting out albums, it was really made the money. Now it's touring, so now you have all these acts, and so every year it seems like we're getting more and more acts. And how many different concerts did we do last year? I mean, I think we're almost eighty different content. It's kind of crazy.
So now we're building this music hall, which is a six thousand seat venue, and that's going to get some of the smaller acts, and we don't see.
A softening right now, and especially in the markets like Chicago, which seems to be able to absorb a tremendous amount of live events and entertainment.
Sure, Chicago, Yah, Chicago loves the sports. So we feel pretty good about where we're at here.
But it's an interesting take that you have just broadly beyond even spending on events, sports and concerts, you don't see a consumer prepared to slow down or more wary about conditions.
I think.
I think what we see is that you better make sure that you are delivering a special experience from the time that someone gets into the car or takes the train or takes the ride sharing to you know, get parking the car, owing the building, getting their food, getting their drinks. We better make sure that it is a top quality experience. And that's some of the biggest challenges we have because we don't control the traffic, we don't control certain things. We don't control when it's a blizzard
in the middle of winter. Probably one of the great things about this DNC is that it's in the summer right about that, not here in the winter.
I have to say, the weather right now is certainly preferable.
We ordered up for you guys yeah, thank you.
I want to ask as well, because something we just saw happen in Washington last year was the purchase of a sports team for a pretty rich valuation in the Commanders. We've seen the valuations seem to go up in general, and I wonder if you think this is something that is sustainable. How you're considering your own valuation for the black Hawks at this time, if you've been having any conversations with private equity about these kind of things, can you just shed some light on.
That, Danny, I'm fourth generation owner of our family, I think, one of the longest contiguous owners of a major sports franchise in all sports, and enough for us, it's something we just hold really dear to our family. So we're sort of in a very unique situation from an ownership standpoint, which, of course the interests in these very coveted licenses are
driving those values up. So we love the valuation, but it doesn't necessarily change our strategy to continue to hold and develop and grow our family asset for another few generations.
And what about for the Bulls, for the Bulls, I mean for the Chicago Bulls, who why would we want to get out of being part of the Chicago Bulls. I mean we were the first, probably the first global sports franchise in the world, thanks to Michael Jordan. So for our family and for our investors, our partners, we're not interested in being a seller. Is it nice that
the valuations of these teams are going up. Sure, but at the same time we're not going to realize any of that because it's the Bulls aren't going anywhere.
Well, we have another big sports deal in Washington, d C. And that was Ted Leonsen's teams deciding to stay in Washington and a massive deal to kind of.
Rebuild the neighborhood.
He talked to us about the challenges of moving buildings, changing spaces that allow people to flow into a new area that they might not be going to otherwise. You're facing something similar here when you've got a river in the way, You've got a couple of things. How do you envision this project in western Chicago in a way that will actually.
Bring the flow of people to Europe.
I actually think the hardest part was thirty years ago, as Michael said, you know, crossing that threshold to come to the West Side to see an event, and you know over seventy years.
You know, people got used to coming to the Chicago.
Stadium, but it didn't offer a lot on the way where we're at now. The growth happening on the west side of Chicago is tremendous. Full Market is the most explosive neighborhood in the city of Chicago. That's right at our doorstep. The growth of the Illinois Medical District just south of us. So there's momentum here and there's a lot of other things happening around this development that I think gave us the confidence that the energy is and
the energies here and the infrastructures in the infrastructure. Now, that's an area where I think I think the city is very interested in really understanding what the infrastructure needs are to make sure we can continue to bring people here through the various forms of transportation that we have all the things we need for this to be continued by our neighborhood.
What a treat to have this much time. Thank you both for being so generous, A great conversation here. Yeah, this is why we came to Chicago's Denny Words Michael Reinstorff. Great to see both of you, and thank you for being with US on balance of power, Bloomberg TV and Radio. We are live from Chicago, day two of the Democratic National Convention,