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Facilities

Lee Zeidman’s top 5 Staples Center moments

Zeidman has been at the helm of the Staples Center from the beginning, so SBJ asked him to share his most memorable moments from the venue.

staples center

‘The Boss’ kicks things off

Four concerts from Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band officially opened the arena. 

“We had to load them in and load them out after each one because we had a hockey game or an event in between, which was very challenging because we didn’t have a lot of time to practice as it related to conversions.”

 

staples center

Dawn of a new Lakers dynasty

The Lakers’ 1999-2000 NBA title at Staples Center was the franchise’s first of five in the new arena, and the team’s first since the Showtime-era Lakers won their last NBA title at Inglewood’s Great Western Forum during the 1987-88 season. 

“I would probably pick the first NBA championship because I think it’s tough to open a building and then to be rewarded with one of your prime franchises winning the title.” 

staples center

2000 Democratic National Convention

Staples Center hosted the convention eight months after it opened. 

“To our horror, they actually tore up the building eight months after we built it and then we had to put it back together right after that for the first-ever Latin Grammys,” Zeidman said of the alterations needed to get the building convention-ready and then back to normal. 

staples center

2000 Grammy Awards

Arena staff hung more than 600 motors and 350,000 pounds of gear in total on the venue’s catwalk for the awards, Zeidman said. 

“No one had ever hung that much before in an arena. Now, while we designed it and built it for that, there were still some moments of, ‘Wow, is this really going to work?’ even though we had the structural engineers sign off on everything.” 

staples center

Celebrating the ‘King of Pop’

Michael Jackson was rehearsing for his comeback tour at the Staples Center just before he passed away in the summer of 2009. Instead of planning for a concert, the arena found itself planning for a memorial service.

“When we tried to plan, we had no idea how big of an event it was going to be. All we had to fall back on, as it related to these type of big large-scale memorials for pop figures, was when Elvis died, and we had heard 75,000 people lined the streets of Graceland.” 

AEG Presents, the city of Los Angeles, the Jackson family and Los Angeles Police Department worked together to pull off the memorial event. Nearly 20,000 people gathered to say farewell to the King of Pop.

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At the 2019 AXS Sports Facilities & Franchises and Ticketing Symposium earlier this month, Staples Center President Lee Zeidman and Sports Business Journal Publisher and Executive Editor Abe Madkour chatted about the growth of the venue as well as the L.A. sports scene.

 

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