Brett Yormark is, simply put, a sports industry colossus. The man behind Nascar’s ground-breaking US$750 million title sponsorship deal with Nextel in the early 2000s, Yormark has been a rainmaker at every organisation he’s led. Chief executive of the Nets National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise since 2005, he cites the US$400 million deal that saw British bank Barclays put its name to the team’s new state-of-the-art arena ahead of its move from New Jersey to Brooklyn as the best he’s ever done.
When Forest City Ratner, the developer that built the Barclays Center, won the right to refurbish the historic Nassau Coliseum venue in Long Island in 2013, Yormark was given the opportunity to repeat the tricks he pulled off in Brooklyn.
Speaking to SportsPro ahead of a headline appearance at The Brand Conference in London on 30th September, Yormark explained his plans for the redevelopment, teed up the announcement of his next mega-deal, and gave an insight into how he keeps the various brands under his jurisdiction linked but distinct.
SP: The Nassau Coliseum closes its doors after a Billy Joel concert on 4th August and you break ground on the 16-18 month refurb later in the month. What will you be doing and why?
Long Island is a vibrant market. It’s got great density and great demographics. It’s a market, not unsimilar to Brooklyn before we got there in that it’s been underserved in the area of sports and entertainment. As the building became antiquated, many of the artists no longer went out there. And we decided that if we could recreate and reimagine the venue, make it architecturally pleasing, leverage the programming expertise that we have developed at Barclays, we felt that we could really make the Coliseum a viable venue and return it to its glory days.
In addition to renovating the Coliseum and putting north of US$130m into it, we’re creating a retail destination right next door: premium retail, celebrity chef restaurants. There will be two phases of that retail totalling 400,000sq ft of development. In some respects, the O2 in London has been a bit of an inspiration for us because it is obviously the most successful venue in the world and it doesn’t have a core tenant. We might have some minor league sports in Long Island but this is all going to be about music, college sports, boxing, family programming.
We also feel that there is a lot of synergy between Barclays and what we are going to do out there in Long Island. We are going to be able to leverage the two venues, create some synergy in respect to staffing, management and programming. Our research tells us that Long Island and Brooklyn are totally different markets. We get very few people from Long Island to Brooklyn, in fact we only get 13 per cent of our non-Nets buyers from Long Island. So we know that if we put a Jay Z show in Brooklyn we can cross-book and put one in Long Island and not cannibalise our business. We will see a lot of similarities in how we activate both buildings.
How will those synergies between the Barclays Center and the Nassau Coliseum work in practice?
There will be similarities with respect to the exteriors of the buildings. There will be commonalities with the architecture. Hunt Construction are going to do the renovation. SHoP architects, the same ones that did the Barclays Center, will be doing the Coliseum.
The interiors are being done by Gensler. Disney Institute, which did our training at Barclays Center and which provides our fans with an incredible experience, is going be with us in Long Island. Levy Restaurants which does a wonderful job with our food and beverage, and helped us identify the Brooklyn Taste programme, they are going to be with us in Long Island and in fact our culinary programme will be Long Island Taste.
No different to what we did in Brooklyn, we will identify great Long Island vendors to be a part of our food programme. We are in final negotiations for an overarching naming rights partner for the entire project and I’m very excited about that. We’ll be announcing it before the end of August.
You now have the Brooklyn Nets NBA team, the New York Islanders NHL team, who are moving to the Barclays Center this year, the Barclays Center itself, the Nassau Coliseum, and the Paramount Theater within your portfolio of operation. How much effort do you put into keeping their brands distinct?
I think all the brands needs to have their own personality but there needs to be a common denominator. So let’s think about the Islanders: the Islanders are all about tradition, and you will see that in some of the marketing that we’ve done. But we need to try to ‘Brooklynise’ that tradition. We need to speak to the hardcore fans but we also need to speak to the casual fans who reside in and around Brooklyn. I’m not going to be able to make the Islanders the hip, cool Brooklyn brand that I have done with the Nets, but I think there is a common denominator.
So as an example, we are not doing a total rebrand of the Islanders, it will be the Islanders in Brooklyn, but I am introducing a third jersey which is a black and white jersey that connects their team and brand to the Nets, the official colours of Brooklyn, and that grounds them into the fabric of the community. I believe that every brand we build will have its own personality and brand architecture. However, at the same time I want to create some common links between the brands so that they know that there is some connectivity. So that is the goal and I think so far we have been pretty successful on it.
Forest City Ratner, the developer that built the Barclays Center, won the right to refurbish the historic Nassau Coliseum venue in Long Island in 2013.
What do you think the key distinction between the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center brands is?
The common denominator is they are both in Brooklyn and when you think about the Barclays Center and the architecture, it speaks to the community it’s in and obviously the Brooklyn Nets have many similarities as it relates to how we connect the brand to Brooklyn. Obviously we have aspirations for the Nets to be global, but the Barclays Center is truly global and aligning the venue with that name has given us that incredible global positioning.
And obviously we push the Nets to be global but there are a lot of restrictions about how we can market given that we’re part of a league. So I think the biggest distinction between the two, as much as we aspire for the Nets to be global and we’re doing everything we can given the limitations, the Barclays Center truly is a global brand and it starts with having that global name on top of it.
You yourself are a renowned figure in the sports industry; you’re famous for being a brilliant deal maker and for your ferociously hard work ethic. You are known as being very industrious. Are you conscious when you’re doing business of your personal brand and your own reputation and if you are, what would you say it is?
I’m very conscious of it and I think I’ve gone through a bit of a shift too from my days at Nascar to New Jersey to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn I’m much more conscious, and I’m speaking really more as a professional, about who we align with, adapting the philosophy which I guess reflects who I am today. It is a bit more about ‘less is more’ and amplifying the great brands that we work with, versus ‘more is more’. I think much of that is the situation that I’m in today versus the situations I have been in previously. But for us, and for me personally, it truly is about being best in class at everything.
I’m all about premium right now from a brand perspective. I’m all about best in class, but I’m also shifting a little bit where I’m leaning towards doing less in the trenches. And I’m giving the guys that work for me an opportunity to truly build their own personal profiles and careers because I’ve been in the business for some time now and I’ve had a great run and I’ve been fortunate enough to attract some wonderful people to work with. I’m transitioning into a position where it’s their moment and I’m here to help them define what that moment is.
Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center chief executive Brett Yormark will speak at The Brand Conference, SportsPro’s two-day event dedicated to a top-to-tail examination of sport as a communications platform. For more information about the event, click here.
James EmmettBrett Yormark is, simply put, a sports industry colossus. The man behind Nascar’s ground-breaking US$750 million title sponsorship deal with Nextel in the early 2000s, Yormark has been a rainmaker at every organisation he’s led. Chief executive of the Nets National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise since 2005, he cites the US$400 million deal that saw British bank Barclays put its name to the team’s new state-of-the-art arena ahead of its move from New Jersey to Brooklyn as the best he’s ever done.
When Forest City Ratner, the developer that built the Barclays Center, won the right to refurbish the historic Nassau Coliseum venue in Long Island in 2013, Yormark was given the opportunity to repeat the tricks he pulled off in Brooklyn.
Speaking to SportsPro ahead of a headline appearance at The Brand Conference in London on 30th September, Yormark explained his plans for the redevelopment, teed up the announcement of his next mega-deal, and gave an insight into how he keeps the various brands under his jurisdiction linked but distinct.
SP: The Nassau Coliseum closes its doors after a Billy Joel concert on 4th August and you break ground on the 16-18 month refurb later in the month. What will you be doing and why?
Long Island is a vibrant market. It’s got great density and great demographics. It’s a market, not unsimilar to Brooklyn before we got there in that it’s been underserved in the area of sports and entertainment. As the building became antiquated, many of the artists no longer went out there. And we decided that if we could recreate and reimagine the venue, make it architecturally pleasing, leverage the programming expertise that we have developed at Barclays, we felt that we could really make the Coliseum a viable venue and return it to its glory days. In addition to renovating the Coliseum and putting north of US$130m into it, we’re creating a retail destination right next door: premium retail, celebrity chef restaurants. There will be two phases of that retail totalling 400,000sq ft of development. In some respects, the O2 in London has been a bit of an inspiration for us because it is obviously the most successful venue in the world and it doesn’t have a core tenant. We might have some minor league sports in Long Island but this is all going to be about music, college sports, boxing, family programming. We also feel that there is a lot of synergy between Barclays and what we are going to do out there in Long Island. We are going to be able to leverage the two venues, create some synergy in respect to staffing, management and programming. Our research tells us that Long Island and Brooklyn are totally different markets. We get very few people from Long Island to Brooklyn, in fact we only get 13 per cent of our non-Nets buyers from Long Island. So we know that if we put a Jay Z show in Brooklyn we can cross-book and put one in Long Island and not cannibalise our business. We will see a lot of similarities in how we activate both buildings.
How will those synergies between the Barclays Center and the Nassau Coliseum work in practice?
There will be similarities with respect to the exteriors of the buildings. There will be commonalities with the architecture. Hunt Construction are going to do the renovation. SHoP architects, the same ones that did the Barclays Center, will be doing the Coliseum. The interiors are being done by Gensler. Disney Institute, which did our training at Barclays Center and which provides our fans with an incredible experience, is going be with us in Long Island. Levy Restaurants which does a wonderful job with our food and beverage, and helped us identify the Brooklyn Taste programme, they are going to be with us in Long Island and in fact our culinary programme will be Long Island Taste. No different to what we did in Brooklyn, we will identify great Long Island vendors to be a part of our food programme. We are in final negotiations for an overarching naming rights partner for the entire project and I’m very excited about that. We’ll be announcing it before the end of August.
You now have the Brooklyn Nets NBA team, the New York Islanders NHL team, who are moving to the Barclays Center this year, the Barclays Center itself, the Nassau Coliseum, and the Paramount Theater within your portfolio of operation. How much effort do you put into keeping their brands distinct?
I think all the brands needs to have their own personality but there needs to be a common denominator. So let’s think about the Islanders: the Islanders are all about tradition, and you will see that in some of the marketing that we’ve done. But we need to try to ‘Brooklynise’ that tradition. We need to speak to the hardcore fans but we also need to speak to the casual fans who reside in and around Brooklyn. I’m not going to be able to make the Islanders the hip, cool Brooklyn brand that I have done with the Nets, but I think there is a common denominator. So as an example, we are not doing a total rebrand of the Islanders, it will be the Islanders in Brooklyn, but I am introducing a third jersey which is a black and white jersey that connects their team and brand to the Nets, the official colours of Brooklyn ,and that grounds them into the fabric of the community. I believe that every brand we build will have its own personality and brand architecture. However, at the same time I want to create some common links between the brands so that they know that there is some connectivity. So that is the goal and I think so far we have been pretty successful on it.
What do you think the key distinction between the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center brands is?
The common denominator is they are both in Brooklyn and when you think about the Barclays Center and the architecture, it speaks to the community it’s in and obviously the Brooklyn Nets have many similarities as it relates to how we connect the brand to Brooklyn. Obviously we have aspirations for the Nets to be global, but the Barclays Center is truly global and aligning the venue with that name has given us that incredible global positioning. And obviously we push the Nets to be global but there are a lot of restrictions about how we can market given that we’re part of a league. So I think the biggest distinction between the two, as much as we aspire for the Nets to be global and we’re doing everything we can given the limitations, the Barclays Center truly is a global brand and it starts with having that global name on top of it.
You yourself are a renowned figure in the sports industry; you’re famous for being a brilliant deal maker and for your ferociously hard work ethic. You are known as being very industrious. Are you conscious when you’re doing business of your personal brand and your own reputation and if you are, what would you say it is?
I’m very conscious of it and I think I’ve gone through a bit of a shift too from my days at Nascar to New Jersey to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn I’m much more conscious, and I’m speaking really more as a professional, about who we align with, adapting the philosophy which I guess reflects who I am today. It is a bit more about ‘less is more’ and amplifying the great brands that we work with, versus ‘more is more’. I think much of that is the situation that I’m in today versus the situations I have been in previously. But for us, and for me personally, it truly is about being best in class at everything. I’m all about premium right now from a brand perspective. I’m all about best in class, but I’m also shifting a little bit where I’m leaning towards doing less in the trenches. And I’m giving the guys that work for me an opportunity to truly build their own personal profiles and careers because I’ve been in the business for some time now and I’ve had a great run and I’ve been fortunate enough to attract some wonderful people to work with. I’m transitioning into a position where it’s their moment and I’m here to help them define what that moment is.
Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center chief executive Brett Yormark will speak at The Brand Conference, SportsPro’s two-day event dedicated to a top-to-tail examination of sport as a communications platform.
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