INTERVIEW - Pitching seat rights to a sports team near you

Sat, Nov 7 02:11 AM

Lou Weisbach's young company is offering a way for sports team owners to raise debt-free capital by selling equity in the seats under their fans' backsides.

The man who brought you the first ads in baseball dugouts is back with another idea catching on with colleges and possibly a professional team near you: the right to buy tickets, also known as "equity seat rights."

Already this year, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Kansas have adopted Stadium Capital Financing Group's idea to fund stadium renovations and other programs through the sale of seat rights.

"The environment is perfect right now on the pro side because there's so many teams in the NHL, in the NBA and other professional sports as well that are having financial difficulty," Weisbach said from his downtown Chicago office.

"There's no doubt because of what's happened economically in this country and in the world the appetite for debt-free capital ... has made people much more open minded," he added.

Under the program, fans buy seats at a premium, paying for them over a period of time, Weisbach said. They then own those rights, free of future price increases, and can even sell them.

Unlike the much-hated "personal seat licenses" used by several National Football League teams that require fans to pay for the right to buy tickets, equity seat rights are voluntary. Their popularity is growing in a weak economy where people are more resistant to the use of public money for sports stadiums

But they don't come cheap.

At the Kansas school, for example, fans can buy memberships ranging from five to 30 years, requiring lump-sum payments per-seat of $30,000 to about $100,000 or smaller amounts spread over 10 years at no interest.

DEALS ON THE WAY

The idea lets teams take a smaller number of seats in a stadium and sell rights to them at a premium for a set period of time that in some cases could be in perpetuity, Weisbach said. The college or owner can then use the money for stadium construction or renovation, buying out a partner, retiring debt or other operations.

"If you want to raise $30 million, $50 million, $70 million, you're talking about 100 seats, 200 seats," he said. "You're not changing the financial model of the franchise."

For example, a National Basketball Association team selling just 1,000 seats through seat rights could raise $300 million, Weisbach said. And if the team then used some of that money to add seating in the arena, the revenue lost due to the inability to raise prices on those seats would be mitigated.

The 4-1/2-year-old company's idea did not start garnering real interest, however, until Morgan Stanley Principal Investments, an investment arm of Morgan Stanley, bought a majority stake in 2007, Weisbach said.

Now the Chicago firm has its two college deals, a third one with an unidentified school on the way and a deal in the works with the Tottenham Hotspur soccer club in England. Stadium Capital also is in talks with other European soccer clubs, U.S. pro teams and other universities, he said.

Weisbach, who formerly owned an indoor soccer team, is used to introducing new ideas. He convinced seven Major League Baseball teams in the mid-1990s to sell him the right to place advertising in the teams' dugouts.

(Reporting by Ben Klayman; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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