Look for Sacramento Kings owners Joe and Gavin Maloof to include sports programming as part of their budding television entertainment enterprise.
Its a natural, said Joe Maloof, who with Gavin runs the Kings as part of the Maloof family business empire. The latest addition to the familys business interests is Maloof Television, created last month out of a production deal with MGM Television Entertainment. The exclusive deal with MGM gives the entertainment giant the first look at television projects proposed by Maloof Television.
We are pitching [MGM] a couple of shows right now, but its too soon to talk about them, Joe Maloof said. All I can say is that one project will involve young people and partying. We will do sports eventually, but weve only been doing this for a month so its too early.
Dont expect to see Joe and his brother, Gavin, lose focus on the Kings. The familys television efforts will be run largely by Phil Maloff, Gavin and Joes younger brother.
Gavin and I will continue with the Kings, Joe Maloof said. Thats what we do. But there are some synergies. We can do some shows from the [Maloof-owned Las Vegas casino] Palms and we can do some from Arco Arena.
Besides generating television shows, the Kings owners are trying to win support for a new arena to replace the 17,317-seat Arco Arena, which opened in 1988. While the Maloofs operate the Palms Casino and other business interests from Las Vegas, Joe Maloof said there are no threats to relocate the Kings despite the difficulties of winning support for a new facility.
Someday there will be a professional sports team in Las Vegas, but we are staying in Sacramento, where we have a great fan base, he said.