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Champions 2016: Jeremy Jacobs

Family, loyalty drive Jeremy Jacobs to success with Boston Bruins, Delaware North

Photo by: JIM COURTNEY

Jeremy Jacobs was sprinting toward the bus stop. He was a tardy teenager, running to catch a bus that would take him 30 miles to Batavia Downs, the racetrack where he was working for his father. But his late start cost him as the bus shifted away.

“It took off,” Jacobs says with a slight smile in his Buffalo office. “It was 30 miles away, so I walked and hitchhiked there. I got there around noon, and they just sent me home. You didn’t come late to work for my dad. That was something you didn’t do. So you had to pay the price.”

The lesson stuck with Jacobs — one of many learned under the guidance of his demanding father, Louis, who started Sportservice with his brothers in 1915 by selling peanuts in ballparks.

Jeremy Jacobs’ formative years in Buffalo shaped him — working for his father, meeting his wife, going to college, starting a family and taking over for his father at a young age after Louis’ sudden death in 1968.

That established a path into team and arena ownership, as he became one of the most influential leaders in the NHL. It led him to be a community steward in his home city while he continued to grow Delaware North into a $3 billion sports, food and hospitality force.

But to him, it all starts with his father.

“My mother raised us,” he tells me on a crisp fall November morning in his corner office overlooking Lake Erie. “My father was always working and gone. He was always working on something interesting, different and exciting. Growing up, I absolutely knew I wanted to be in the business, and my mother was a big influence on me coming to work and wanting to work with my dad.”

At 18, Jacobs made two major decisions that determined his path — he married his longtime sweetheart, Peggy, and he started to work for his father.

“I was married at 18 and I started working with my dad almost immediately,” he says. “My father started to become a father when I started working with him. Those 10 years or so that we got to work together were very informative to me.

“My dad was great at sharing things with me. He pointed me in a direction, gave me basic information, but then sent me out to do it. At 21, I was in Canada running our Canada operations, which were the Woodbine Racetrack and Mohawk Raceway. I got to operate and manage that business even though I was very young. I learned the value system of how you count and how you make things work in the concession area. I had the opportunity to lead, which I would have never had if I was working for anyone else.”

The young Jacobs was starting a career and a family.

“I went to Toronto, separated from my country,” he says. “I ran my own business. I learned a lot about the racing business and was fascinated with that. It was my wife and I, and our children. We lived there for about four years.”

He began understanding the concession business but also saw how sports in North America was changing.

“The largest-attended sport in North America was horse racing,” Jacobs says. “It was a big business for us, with large crowds of more than 40,000. I learned a lot about the catering business and premium services. Those weren’t in existence in ballparks back then. At ballparks, it was strictly a concession business. But at the tracks, it was more diversified, so in some ways, I got a preview to where the business was going.”

At 25, his father brought him back to the U.S. to take on a greater role in the company and learn under his demanding eye.

Jacobs has enjoyed success in concessions and hockey.
Photo by: JIM COURTNEY
“I was working closely with my dad,” Jacobs says. “He was a very, very dominant guy. Rightfully so, I was young. He wasn’t going to let me spread my wings necessarily and do whatever I wanted. I loved learning from him, but boy, he was the boss. And no one could outwork him. He spent a lot of time working. He was an interesting guy.”

In observing his dad, the younger Jacobs also knew he didn’t want to emulate him.

With former President Bill Clinton
Photo by: DELAWARE NORTH
“My dad worked all the time, seven days a week,” Jacobs says. “We took him to the office at 7 in the morning and he came back in a cab around midnight. He did that seven days, and he loved it. This was not work; this was his passion. He had a real need for that and he lived it. I knew early on I was not going to do that. I wanted to be more well-rounded than he was. I was going to spend time developing my children and participate in their early years.

“He died in his office. I was 28. He

With Claude Julien at the 2010 Winter Classic at Fenway Park.
Photo by: DELAWARE NORTH
was such a big part of my life at that point that to lose him quickly was totally unexpected, in one sense. In the other sense, his health was not good.”

Delaware North had only one leader during its 53-year existence, but in 1968, the second Jacobs generation was eager to prove worthy to follow the founder.

“The company was in good shape at that time,” Jacobs says. “It was not huge but didn’t have a lot of debt. It was an awesome responsibility to follow in his footsteps. I was 28, I had five children. I was naïve enough that I wanted to do it and thought I could do it. It was a silly ambition, I don’t think I was ready for it. I was too young, I didn’t have enough experience. But in some cases, that works to your advantage. Not recognizing the full task in front of you, you just jump in and say that you are going to do it. And I did. The fact that I had a growing family compelled me to work aggressively. I worked very hard those years, but I enjoyed the hell out of myself.”

Early on, he remained true to his father’s vision.

“The business was growing,” Jacobs says. “I thought that we would build it out in the directions it was already going. With food, I thought of it as, ‘This is what we are good at, this is where our intelligence is.’ The world of sports was huge. We had an advantage there because we had a history. I was very intrigued by the racing business, so I saw us growing in that area and in real estate.

“But it also started to become clearer to me that racing was losing its glamour and excitement. People were not going to the racetrack. It had nothing to do with the racing, it had to do with the fact that they wanted to gamble, as opposed to watching the sport of racing. So I started to pull away from that a bit. It wasn’t going anywhere. We started to pursue more and more sport areas. We started to look at balancing it more with airports, which was then a big part of our business. National parks became part of our interest and I saw that being a great opportunity for us. We pursued all those aggressively.”
 

■ ■ ■

In 1975, at the age of 35, Jacobs had another business opportunity that he pursued aggressively. Intrigued by the hockey business after helping the Knox family with the Buffalo Sabres’ initial concession and arena deal in the early ’70s, Jacobs kept his eye on team ownership.

“It was a real intellectual experience for me during that time with the Sabres, to understand exactly how that worked,” he says. “So when I heard that the Bruins and the Boston Garden were for sale, an attorney said this was the price they wanted and I said that I would buy them. That is how long it took. I purchased them and never looked back.

“Even though we weren’t in the building at the time, I knew from a concession standpoint it was a great building. There were two major league franchises in the building and it was just a no-brainer for me.”

   “I was a poor student up until I went to college and got married. Then I became a terrific student, and I was working at the same time. I became a straight-A student in college. Growing up, I was a terrible student. I just kind of screwed up.”
 
   “My father had a great saying: You cannot listen your way into trouble.”
 
   “I do not think people know how much I enjoy the game of hockey. I really do love it. I love all sports, but I really love hockey.”
 
   “Being [a] private [business] gives you great flexibility. I think having to take direction from a number of people can be time consuming and not productive.”

   “Do something you really love. I have watched too many people pursue too many things they did not enjoy. Find something you enjoy and pursue the hell out of it.”
 
   “I am intrigued by process. How did that happen? Why did that happen? To go to a meeting with a guy like Teddy Leonsis and watch his mind work and where it is going, is intriguing to me. I get very engaged by that.”
 
   “I hate losing, I really do. Show me a good loser and I will show you a loser. I believe that.”
                       
    — Compiled by Abraham D. Madkour

At 35, Jacobs was easily the youngest owner in the NHL. He took a hands-off management approach from the start, which would haunt him throughout much of the first 20-plus years of ownership. But it was another lesson learned from his father.

“My dad always told me, ‘If it is outside your expertise, get the right people and let them run it. Don’t mess with them,’” Jacobs says. “The Bruins had a very strong management, led by Harry Sinden. I said, ‘Don’t mess with him. He is very successful, let him run it.’ Harry knew everything. From a business standpoint, Harry was a 10. Learning what he knew was enlightening to me. He could not have been a better teacher. Harry had such a strong work ethic, and he was running a good business.”

Being hands-off created a negative perception of Jacobs, who the powerful Boston media portrayed as absentee and, worse yet, cheap.

“Harry was the image of the Bruins,” Jacobs says. “He ran a tough and strict ship. By endorsing him, I got portrayed as not interested. But I love hockey. I love the game.”

Jacobs began to change the perception of his ownership by privately financing the development of a new arena in the North End that opened in 1995 and by moving his son Charlie to Boston in 2002. His youngest son took on many roles within the organization before becoming CEO in January 2015.

“Getting Charlie to Boston has changed the image of me being absentee,” Jacobs says. “Having Charlie there is important. He went through some issues when he got there, too, from a PR standpoint — PR and public imaging in sports is a sport itself.”

Having his son in the market, supported by team president and local favorite Cam Neely and successful former general manager Peter Chiarelli dramatically improved the image of the franchise and the family. And winning helps, as the team has made the playoffs in seven of the last eight years and won the Stanley Cup in 2011. Jacobs acknowledges the change, but he knows Boston is a demanding sports town where winning is expected.

“Yes, things are better,” he says. “We did go through a real difficult time. It is a terrific city. I love it. I also know I was fair game for many years. Even when we won the Cup, I was fair game.”

He regrets how he’s been viewed in the market.

“I would like to have been perceived more constructively,” Jacobs says. “I think I am a constructionist and active player in the sport at large. We have invested big into the property and sport in Boston. I think it is in a much better place than when we found it.”
 

■ ■ ■

While Jacobs leaned on his executive team to handle day-to-day operation of the Bruins, he became heavily involved in league affairs. In his early days, he was close to many of the league’s power brokers, including the late Harley Hotchkiss, former NHL Board of Governors chairman. More recently, he’s become a well-known ally and adviser to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

“Part of what I enjoy about the hockey business is the process, the process of the league evolving,” Jacobs says. “When it came to business issues, like labor, it was something I could relate to because of my other businesses. I also began to share the perception with the commissioner that we had to get control of where the game was going. We had to get control of the fact that the cost of players was our dominant cost.”

That has led to a perception of Jacobs as one of the game’s biggest hawks, looking to break the players union. But for Jacobs, it just came back to what he believed was best for the game.

“Whenever Harry and I spoke, he would lay out our expenses, and 60 to 70 percent are player salaries,” Jacobs says. “If we didn’t get control of that, we were not going to be able to make it. I shared the concern that the commissioner had and believed there was a role for me to play to get him there. There is a lot of pulling and pushing in these negotiations, and I thought I could play a role in it.”

He has served as Board of Governors chairman since 2007, and during his tenure as an owner the league has experienced four work stoppages. But he believes they were necessary and have brought solidarity among ownership that he has never seen before in his 41 years in the game.

“The ownership group has certainly changed over the years,” Jacobs says. “But the spirit of our group is outstanding. It is the closest I have seen 30 people in agreement, 30 very substantial people in their own way, in agreement on our direction.”

It’s something he attributes to Bettman’s leadership.

“He is a very strong leader,” Jacobs says. “He is a terrific communicator. He talks to 30 owners and he does it probably every week in some form or another, which is really good. We don’t have these personalities that won’t talk to one another. He has been able to lead very successfully. It is hard to find people that can lead like he can.”
 

■ ■ ■

In January 2015, Jacobs took a significant step to position the company his father founded for the third generation of family leadership — naming sons Jeremy Jr. and Lou, principals with Delaware North, as co-chief executive officers, while Charlie serves as CEO of Delaware North’s Boston Holdings, which includes the Bruins, TD Garden, NESN and real estate holdings in Boston. It was a succession plan more than a year in the making.

“I said, ‘When you guys are ready, let me know,’” Jacobs says. “They goofed around for so long. They were going to have to show they were ready. They did and came forward. I said, ‘Figure out how you are going to do it.’ They came back a year later. This is pretty well thought out.”

Again, Jacobs follows a path set by his father.

“It’s a difficult issue,” he says. “We did it early on. That had something to do with my dad training me back then. My father bought out his brothers, and then I bought out my brothers and sisters. I had five brothers and sisters. In each time, that took money out of the company to do it. I said [to my kids] this company is too big, moving too fast and going forward too much for you to consider that — buying out the family. So have an understanding with your brothers and sisters because you all own the company equally, the six of you. Have an understanding with them that you are going forward together. You cannot have an unhappy stakeholder here. So they spent years developing an understanding of where the company is going. They have become very sophisticated stakeholders.

“We are introducing the third generation. They will be able to do it better than I can, honestly. I always wanted them to be in the business, but I also knew that they had to really want to be here. They all worked elsewhere before they came here, to see how other businesses ran. They always, for whatever reason, wanted to come back here and play a role. Privately owned businesses have a unique place in our capital structure in this country. They all seem to have the same problems. Continuity and going forward, can they do it generation to generation? This one has done it well going forward to the next generation. We collectively seem to share the same direction.”

At 76, Jeremy Jacobs shows no signs of slowing down. He is still “The Chairman,” active as always in the company’s new downtown Buffalo headquarters. He chafes at any talk of retirement.

“I could stay at home, but my wife wants to get me out,” he says with a laugh. “She says, ‘For better, for worse, but not for lunch.’”

As we walk out of his office, Jacobs is on to his next meeting of the day. It’s clear he wants to continue building, and continue winning. He has the look, manner and comportment of a man at ease, comfortable in his own skin and with his legacy of continuing what his father started 100 years ago.

“I can’t imagine myself doing something else,” he says. “I can’t imagine something more fun or interesting than what I did in my life or what I am doing.”

    “He always said that authority is not presumed, it is assumed. His point is that you have to come grab it. He wasn’t going to make it easy to get.”
— Lou Jacobs
 
    “You have to earn respect from him. You don’t get success from your résumé here. You get success from the successful job that you do. All the past accomplishments have been kind of, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ He wants you to be better, and that is the way he pushes you.”
— Rick Abramson
COO and executive vice president, Delaware North

    “When he became chairman and CEO at the age of 28, I don’t think he set out to say, ‘I’m going to build one of the most admired family-owned companies,’ but he’s done that. By being in the spot that the company is in, and really because the family is the foundation, that is where I think it has allowed them to work these long-term partnerships that have transcended generations of owners.”
— Wendy Watkins
VP of corporate communications for Hormel
who previously held the same title for Delaware North

    “I was in many ways honored by how welcoming he was to me as I came into the league as a younger person, and how he would talk to me about business. He was always interested in how [Comcast-Spectacor] grew the business through facility management, food and ticketing.”
— Peter Luukko
executive chairman, Sunrise Sports & Entertainment, parent company of the Florida Panthers, and former president of the Philadelphia Flyers

    “As the industry evolved, he was the first one to buy into the process for where it was going. Now you see where Delaware North is today. They’re clearly a different company from when I joined them. From a personal standpoint, I think he’s an icon.”
— Consultant Michael Thompson
former Sportservice president

    “Is he ever going to be warm and cuddly? I can’t imagine it will ever get there. He’s never going to be adored. But the feelings in Boston toward him are certainly better.”
— Kevin Paul Dupont
longtime Boston Globe columnist

    “The truth is that Jerry would always say one of his greatest accomplishments is winning the Stanley Cup in 2011. I think his greatest accomplishment is probably marrying [high school sweetheart] Peggy and having a wonderful family. He’s a great family man.”
— Larry Tanenbaum
Toronto Maple Leafs owner

    “We always talk about the world. I’m an international guy … and he has pretty good knowledge of what’s happening in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Australia. We talk about sports that he doesn’t know about. … He’s able to get out of his comfort zone and think about things and not be afraid to do that.”
— Satish Tripathi
president, University at Buffalo

    “I think you also have to credit his sons when you talk about the success of the company. Jerry Jr., Louis and Charlie are very smart, and they’ve had a significant influence on the business during their tenure.”
— Rich Krezwick
senior vice president of facilities, AEG Europe and TD Garden’s former president and CEO

    “At 75, most people do not adapt to new technology, but that is one thing he is very keen on. I feel perfectly comfortable sending my father a text at 9:30 p.m. with the gate numbers from tonight and knowing that he has received and read it. It is not going to be lost on his phone.”
— Charlie Jacobs

    “When I was going through breast cancer, you could not find someone more supportive and wanting to help. People don’t see that side of him. It could be anybody in the organization, [and] he would have the same compassion.”
— Wendy Watkins

    “Dad is a softy. He has the biggest heart. This impression that he is a hard-ass is all an act.”
— Jeremy Jacobs Jr.
                       
                                                                  — Compiled by Don Muret and Abraham D. Madkour


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