Milwaukee Bucks President Peter Feigin joined the franchise on Oct. 8 and set out to overhaul the Bucks’ business, while leading the team’s efforts to build a new arena under new owners Marc Lasry and Wes Edens. Feigin, who most recently worked as chief marketing and revenue officer of Deluxe Entertainment Services Group in New York, was also president and COO of Marquis Jet. Feigin spoke with staff writers John Lombardo and Terry Lefton about his new job, the state of the Bucks franchise as it rebuilds, and the effort to build a new arena.
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The Milwaukee Bucks’ new owners brought in Peter Feigin as president.
Photo by: SCOTT PAULUS / MILWAUKEE BUSINESS JOURNAL
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On the state of the team: The Bucks are a place where the high bar had been kind of low for the past few years — off the court and on the court. There is a big opportunity to make a difference … I was with Marc and Wes during the due diligence when they were buying the team, so there weren’t any real surprises. The good surprise is the ability to leverage about a dozen local owners and limited partners. The business community has embraced us on a corporate partnership level as well as our efforts to get more butts in the seats.
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On joining the franchise as an out-of-towner: We have had to accelerate the trust model. Milwaukee is extremely welcoming. We have a distinct advantage in having 12 local owners that represent every facet of politics and finance.
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On the future arena and modeling the project after Sacramento’s $477 million facility, now under construction: We want to be downtown — ownership has been definitive there. This is about revitalizing a city. The footprint will be larger than most people think and we are working toward a plan where we have commercial, residential, wellness, along with the arena, combine to be catalysts for downtown growth. … There are some parallels [with Sacramento] given the city, the community and the arc of the team. I have been to Orlando and the Barclays Center. We are literally looking at cherry-picking what the best practices are. … We have $200 million in commitments and we are looking for another $200 million to $250 million.
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Arena site selection isn’t the biggest challenge in building the new area: We’ve got to improve our overall model and build up the fan base, which has been eroding. Then it’s about transition to this new vision of development. So site selection is step one of maybe five steps, which will include the state, county and the city. … This will be a customized vision for Milwaukee that will include the distinct local heritage of Milwaukee and Wisconsin. We want it to be the most technologically advanced arena, but without losing the roots of our customers and what they like.
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On his top priority outside of the new arena: It’s about creating more value for people who buy tickets, suites, and for our sponsors. It’s about the in-game [experience] being at the higher level, along with the food, the service and the cleanliness. It’s how do we improve on those pillars.
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On growing the season-ticket base: By the All-Star break, we want the base to be in the mid-to-high 5,000 or 6,000. The vision is how do we grow 30 percent this year and 30 percent next and set up a nice foundation for when we open up a new arena. We’ve got a story to tell. We want people to be part of the future. We hired about 50 new salespeople in the last six months. We’re going to hire more on the sponsorship side.
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On growing the sponsorship base: We’re just starting to explore opportunities we didn’t look at before, different categories, different executions, leveraging through partner media. … We’ve got a story to tell, that we want people to be part of the future, so we want them to buy in now and engage.
