Suites/31″/mike1st/mark2nd
By DANIEL TAUB
Staff Reporter
At the downtown law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, a complex battle is about to be played out.
But it has nothing to do with establishing an important legal precedent or proving that someone was falsely accused of a crime.
It’s over who gets into O’Melveny’s Staples Center suite to see the Eagles perform on New Year’s Eve, or the Lakers take on the Knicks.
Virtually all 158 Staples suites (and the 30 or so suites about to be built at Dodger Stadium) are being leased to corporate groups. With each Staples suite holder having as many as 12 tickets per event, and with as many as 230 events each year, that’s 2,800 tickets to be passed out.
“It’s a ton of work, and I have a regular job to do,” said Jodi Yamada, the office administrator at O’Melveny & Myers who has been given the task of deciding who gets what. “I’ve spent a lot of time on it already. It’s going to be very difficult.”
Many of the tickets, of course, will end up going to clients, prospective clients, suppliers and other business associates, rather than employees, since the $197,500-$307,500 annual expense for a suite is often categorized as a “business development” expense.
As such, the jockeying among employees is not just about recreation it is about wining and dining business prospects.
“Even if you’re not trying to sell them anything, it’s a relationship-building thing. It’s not all fun and games,” said Bill Dorsey, executive director of the Association of Luxury Suite Directors, a Cincinnati group that advises arena owners and managers on the construction, leasing and operating of suites.
Typically, a company’s top brass has the ultimate veto power over who gets to view which events from the luxury suite.
“There is certainly a food chain involved, with the more prestigious events going to top management, and middle management left to jockey for position for the secondary games,” said David M. Carter, principal of Sports Business Group, an L.A.-based sports marketing firm.
The bigger the game, the more senior the executives. “You tend to recognize the people there,” Carter said.
But company honchos don’t always get to call the shots.
Michael Meyer, a managing partner in the downtown office of Pillsbury Madison & Sutro LLP, which has a one-quarter interest in a Staples Center suite, said senior partners won’t be allowed to bump lower-level associates once tickets have been allocated.
“If all the tickets to a particular event are spoken for, and some senior partner calls me up and says, ‘Hey, I’m with this senior banking executive and we’d like to see the game,’ I’ll go to a ticket broker or call another firm that has tickets,” Meyer said. “I would never take tickets back from an associate after they’ve already asked a client.”
Many of the suites are co-owned by several companies, each of which may own a different stake. One company may own a two-thirds stake and two others may each own a one-sixth stake. While the two-thirds stakeholder obviously gets priority, setting specific ground rules can become convoluted. Then there’s the issue of making sure the various clients being invited are not personal adversaries or competitors.
Even without such issues, the ticket-allocation process can be daunting. Downtown’s Jonathan Club, which has a 12-seat suite near center court, has devised an elaborate system for deciding which of the 3,300 members get to go to what events.
Asked to describe how it works, Jonathan Club President Todd Anderson laughed and responded, “Do you have three hours?”
The club, which formed focus groups and sent out surveys for input, decided to allocate all tickets by lottery. Last week, the staff was finalizing a form listing each of the 126 games and events that have been scheduled.
“Our members will prioritize from one to 126 the events they want to go to,” Anderson said. “And each member will have one ticket in a drawing. When their tickets are pulled, they will get to go to the highest-priority event on their form that’s available.”
Each person can request up to six tickets. If all the tickets are not given out in the first round of the lottery to be held on Sept. 18 additional rounds will be drawn.
“We expect the response to be overwhelming, quite frankly, and as such we don’t know how many rounds of lottery it will take,” Anderson said.
At O’Melveny, Yamada will be utilizing the firm’s internal computer network to field requests from the Newport Beach, Century City and downtown L.A. offices. With the Lakers, Clippers and Kings playing all their home games at Staples, Yamada does not expect any major conflicts over a particular game. But one-time events may be more challenging.
“It’s not like Bruce Springsteen is going to be at Staples Center every quarter,” Yamada said. “Hopefully there’s going to be equally popular bands that are going to be there that I can offer to others.”
The management of Staples Center plans to distribute to suite tenants a software package either on CD-ROM or through a Web site that will help distribute tickets.
Cushman Realty Corp. is dealing with the event-popularity issue by assigning an “A,” “B” or “C” grade to each event.
The firm is still coming up with grades for individual games, but everyone at the company will have an equal shot at going to “A” events, said Andrew Ratner, an executive vice president at the downtown-based commercial real estate brokerage.
Intently watching the suite-ticket saga are the Dodgers, who plan to add 30 to 35 luxury suites to Dodger Stadium after the season ends. The task of giving out tickets is likely to be less troublesome, since the stadium only has 85 to 95 events a year, and just one team.
“We haven’t gotten that far down the path yet,” said Bob Wymbs, director of ticket marketing. “It’s something we’re evaluating and will look to the Staples Center experience.”
