Flynn’s Harp: Tod Leiweke Remains Admirer of Seattle Sports Teams and Their Fans
While now far distant in terms of miles, he remains an up-close booster of the Seahawks, whose fortunes he turned around, and the MLS Seattle Sounders, whose franchise he helped create, during the seven years he set down roots in the Seattle area.
“I love the idea of the Sounders playing before more than 60,000 fans,” Leiweke enthused about the MLS team’s recent contest. “But think about the fact that in the space of five days, the Seattle area turned out 170,000 fans for the Sounders, Seahawks and the (University of Washington) Huskies. That’s unbelievable for any region.”
But Leiweke, a self-described “eternal optimist,” declined to involve himself in the controversy over the proposed new sports arena in Seattle’s SoDo District south of downtown, other than to praise Seattle-raised investor Chris Hansen who wants to build the facility on land he now owns.
I asked him, in a recent telephone conversation, whether Hansen’s dream of attracting both NHL and NBA franchises for Seattle to play in his planned but not-yet-approved arena, was realistic.
“It could work, yes,” he replied. “But for the market to absorb two teams won’t be easy.”
Almost from the day in early 2010 that Boston financier Jeffrey Vinik bought the NHL Tampa Bay Lightning and the sports and entertainment facility since renamed the Tampa Bay Times Forum and moved his family to Tampa, he went Leiweke hunting. He was rebuffed at first in his efforts to have Leiweke forsake Seattle and come to Florida as CEO the team and the entertainment arena.
But by the time Leiweke announced in July of 2010 that he had accepted the position as CEO of Vinik’s Tampa Bay Sports & Entertainment, as well as its subsidiaries the Lightning and what was then the St. Pete Times Forum, he acknowledged that an ownership stake in the parent company had closed the deal.
The Lightning needed to rebuild a brand battered by three years without a postseason appearance and two years of mismanagement by the previous owners.
Coming to Tampa and the Lightning was a return for Leiweke to his first love, hockey. He had been president of the Minnesota Wild, which he built into a major NHL success, and before that was with the Vancouver Canucks, prior to his hiring to turn around the Seahawks.
When Allen had coaxed Leiweke then 50, to Seattle to turn around the fortunes of a once-proud franchise, the team was believed losing money, but in fact, no one knew for sure because until Leiweke arrived to bring business acumen and marketing savvy, there apparently were no budgets. As Leiweke once confided, “when they ran out of funds they just asked Paul for more.”
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