Before Mario Lemieux gained control of the failing Pittsburgh Penguins NHL franchise, the sponsorship commitment of local heavyweight Mellon Financial Corp., "the official bank of the Penguins," stood at a paltry one-year, $300,000 deal.
Then Lemieux and his team of executives arrived at Mellon for an amiable early morning meeting the day before Thanksgiving last year. Lemieux and Mellon CEO Marty McGuinn already shared a casual social relationship. But more than that, he was Mario Lemieux, hockey hall of famer and a Pittsburgh sports icon. Even without business experience or formal education beyond the junior-high level, Lemieux could negotiate as an equal with the formidable McGuinn, while the motley collection of previous Penguins owners could seldom convince CEOs of that stature to take a meeting.
Within a month, contracts had been signed for two deals, one of which made Mellon the naming-rights sponsor for Civic Arena. The Mellon commitment over 10 years now totals $35 million. "There's absolutely no question that Mario took us to the next level," said Jim Lauteri, Mellon's vice president and brand marketing manager. "His presence is one of those intangibles you can't put a value to. Just watching him during the presentation, it was clear he was the leader."
This wasn't Lemieux in an end-to-end rush, but he did convert a centering pass into a goal, so to speak. "Our team talked to theirs, and then when it came time to make a deal, Marty McGuinn and I got involved," Lemieux said between periods of a recent Penguins game. "That's the way it's supposed to work."
Little more than a week ago, Lemieux announced that he will attempt to rejoin the Penguins as an active player. The Penguins are gaining the high-powered centerman that All-Star wing Jaromir Jagr is lacking as a linemate, but they're losing the full effectiveness of the most powerful force in their front office, a man who — as unlikely as it might seem — has already been lauded by many including SportsBusiness Journal as one of the brightest 40 young executives in the sports industry.
"Certainly, our access to him will be reduced," admitted Penguins COO Tom Rooney. "Still, we'll take the tradeoff for the excitement this generates. It's a little bit like General Patton going to the front lines and saying, 'I'm taking over.' "
If this were any of the other former superstars who lately have ventured into ownership, the question of a tradeoff would be moot. Michael Jordan, a minority investor in the Washington Wizards, has focused his efforts on player procurement, not business matters, and appears to have had little impact on either. Wayne Gretzky's active participation in running the Phoenix Coyotes remained minimal while his group's bid to buy the franchise was in limbo. (How active he will be after the sale will become evident in the coming weeks and months.) Magic Johnson, who owns a piece of the Los Angeles Lakers, had his fingers in so many other projects that when he tried to sell his equity and return as a player in 1996, most of the team's front office didn't notice.
But both Lemieux's money and his ego are tied up in the Penguins. A competitor who has succeeded at most everything he has attempted, from hockey to golf to creating one of the more successful sports charity events, he has taken to business with the same verve. His occupation is franchise owner now, whether he's wearing a tailored suit or the black-and-yellow 66. "This isn't like Mickey Mantle's Restaurant, where nobody's seen Mantle in 35 years," Rooney said. "This is the real thing."
Lemieux's return to the ice is a move rooted in one of two situations. Either the Penguins are struggling financially and need the publicity that it will provide, or their recovery has proceeded so well that Lemieux feels free to give playing hockey one last reprise at 35. Though the Penguins would hardly admit to the former even if it were true, the relevant numbers point to the latter and to a Penguins franchise that is healthier financially than in recent memory.
"Look, we're two years into a five-year plan that doesn't have Mario playing at all," Rooney said. "Attendance is up 1,000 a game, and Forbes magazine just estimated that the value of the franchise has grown some 40-something percent."
Not only did Lemieux save the franchise, which was rumored to be headed to Portland and billionaire Paul Allen, but perhaps no other owner could have bolstered its sagging fortunes so swiftly. In the 60 days following Lemieux's takeover of the Penguins on Sept. 3, 1999, estimates Dave Soltesz, the vice president for corporate sponsorships, the team went from no signage, sponsorship and advertising commitments to more than $7 million in commitments, not including the Mellon naming-rights deal. "Having Mario gave us the chance to talk about the future in a way that no other owner would have," Soltesz said.
"This is a small town, and people know Mario and trust him," added Bob O'Conner, the president of Pittsburgh's City Council. "If not for him, the team would have been gone. He's the only one who could have come in and made it work, and people realize that."
Lemieux's mere presence atop the letterhead increased the credibility and value of the franchise. That was expected. But his active participation in deals has opened the doors of boardrooms that few Penguins executives penetrated. "For years, we chased business," Soltesz said, "and maybe it would be three weeks for a callback, if at all. Now we have people calling us."
The lure is time with Mario. Though he has spent half his life in another country, he's the closest this city has to a local hero. Instead of fleeing to a warm-weather spot like Orlando or Southern California as so many athletes do, Lemieux came to Pittsburgh in 1984 as a smooth-skating teen-ager who spoke no English — and he stayed, even after his retirement in 1997.
Even Rooney couldn't resist Mario's call. A former Penguins executive , Rooney was running a division of SFX Entertainment in Houston. He thought he had left Pittsburgh for good. "I never served in the Peace Corps, but I figured this was the equivalent," he said. "The team could have been sold and moved and Mario would have been made whole with the money he was owed, but he came in to save it. When he called and asked me to join him, he made me want to be part of it."
Unlike multimillionaires who are begrudged their wealth by the public, Pittsburgh saw Lemieux earn every dollar with his six NHL scoring titles, three MVP awards and 613 career goals, all amassed as a Penguin. His courageous recovery and return from Hodgkin's disease in 1993 added deeper resonance to the city's admiration. So when he calls with a proposal for lunch or a business meeting, who can say no? "I don't think at any point he has been refused a meeting that we've asked for," Soltesz said. "That's probably the most powerful part of having him here."
Added to the power of his celebrity is the power of his Rolodex, such as that pre-existing relationship with Mellon's McGuinn. As opposed to Jordan and Gretzky, Lemieux owns a franchise in the city in which he starred as a player and has lived during his entire career. "I've been here since 1984," he said. "You get to know a lot of people in all that time, and naturally that can open a lot of doors that wouldn't otherwise be open to you."
USX, a huge Pittsburgh-based industrial corporation once known as United States Steel, had wanted nothing to do with the Penguins before Lemieux. An international company that seldom advertised, it was not inclined to sponsor a local hockey team. "But I had the opportunity to know [USX CEO] Tom Usher," Lemieux said. "I had played golf with him on a few occasions, so when I called him, he agreed to talk to us." The result is USX's membership in the Chairman's Club, a novel program geared toward nontraditional sponsors who don't generally advertise — and a four-year, seven-figure commitment to the team that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
Another example is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which had spent no money on the pre-Mario Penguins. Now its investment is also in seven figures, again because of a Lemieux contact at the highest level. "I've been involved at UPMC since I came here in 1984," Lemieux said. "I've done fund-raisers, and they've been involved with my golf tournament. Now they're a major sponsor. It's never easy to raise money; there's a lot of people willing to be included until it's time to write the check, I've learned. But when you have these contacts to start with, it really helps."
A mere glimpse of Lemieux has been known to close deals that his sales staff has initiated. One of the carrots at the end of a negotiation can be the chance to meet Mario in the Mellon Arena owner's box between periods, a perk reserved for serious prospects. "There is a mystique about him, and what we have to do is not dilute it," Rooney said. "Our use of him is very selective. You put him in a position to talk to Marty McGuinn of Mellon or John Paul [CEO] of UPMC. You manage it very closely, because it's so effective. Like all athletes, Mario is a performer. When he's on stage doing this, he's just luminous."
Getting back in uniform will deepen the Mario mystique. It undoubtedly will help ticket sales, and it may bolster the fortunes of a second-place team known more for its historic concentration of Eastern Europeans than for recent successes. But the effect of his absence from the Penguins' offices shouldn't be underestimated. No longer will Lemieux be available to close a deal or attend a luncheon meeting with a prominent CEO, not if the Penguins are practicing. And when the time comes to start campaigning for a new arena, as it soon will, all that political massaging will have to take place between road trips.
Nobody in the modern era has successfully managed to own and play for a team simultaneously, or even tried to. Then again, nobody had come out of the locker room and into the executive suite to take majority ownership of a team before Lemieux did it, either. That's what makes the current situation so intriguing. "Everything he has done here has been tracking through virgin snow," said Rooney, and you can bet the current generation of pro superstars is watching where the footprints lead.
