CANTLON: LAWRENCE LEAVING THE XL CENTER 

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings

HARTFORD, CT – The revolving door at the XL Center continues to turn as the General Manager of the XL Center, Chris Lawrence, is the latest to exit Asylum Street as of Friday.

When reached earlier in the week, Lawrence played it as he did when he was a defensive forward at Michigan State, keeping everything close to the vest, “I have no comment on the subject,” he would reiterate each time the question was asked regardless of how it was phrased.  Three sources confirmed Lawrence was leaving for a yet undefined position in the State of Michigan.

Whoever his successor will be, will become the fourth building GM in 23 years. MSG’s Marty Brooks was GM for 10 years. AEG’s Chuck Steadman followed during their six-year run, and now Lawrence, who was the second choice for the position after first left after a contract dispute with Global management.

Lawrence came to Hartford after a seven-year run at the Glens Falls (NY) Civic Center. He came shortly after Spectra (then known as Global) won a ten-year contract to manage the XL Center, following a CRDA open RFP proposal to select a new management team. The CRDA discarded AEG who believed they had a deal sewed up as well as a local bid from Laz Parking.

Last May, Atairos, a private equity firm created with a $4 billion dollar seed money by Spectacor, last year purchased all of Spectra’s building operations. Since then, Atairos has seemed to have a yearly staff overhaul of the Wolf Pack business office personnel as well as the building management staff.

The Wolf Pack lost a $100K last year despite finishing seventh in the AHL in average attendance, and for the first time finished under 4,000 in crowd numbers at 3,942, an all-time low. Spectra also runs Rentschler Field, the home to the moribund UCONN Division I football program. The stadium is swamped in red ink with less than a half-full building for most football games.

When asked about the future of the Spectra’s involvement at the XL Center, Lawrence cracked the door just slightly.

“That is a matter to be discussed potentially somewhere down the road. Right now, we are concentrating on the first (football) game at Rentschler at the end of the month, and the XL Center with the hockey season for the Wolf Pack and UCONN in October.”

When asked about this week’s bombshell news that Governor Ned Lamont was discussing with both of Connecticut’s Native American tribes about the possibility of them buying the distressed XL Center as part of a grand bargain on getting a casino in Bridgeport, the door was shut again.

“I have been concentrating on a concert here this past weekend. That is a question for the CRDA and the Governor’s office. I have no comment on that subject, one way or the other.”

The Atairos company has two office bases, with one in Bryn Mawr, PA, and the other in New York City.

Spectra is the stadium management services division of the overall corporate behemoth known as Comcast. Spectacor changed its corporate name from Global Spectrum to Spectra two years ago.

The equity firm was the brainchild of former Comcast CFO, Michael Angelkakis, who, with $4 billion dollars of Comcast money, started the firm that included his own investment capital, which has in over three-plus years made strong asset purchases to help diversify the Comcast investment portfolio.

Atairos, the Greek word for partnership, and Comcast seem to be joined at the hip.

Comcast pays $40 million a year in management fees to Atairos. When Angelkakis was with Comcast, he helped engineer the NBC Universal deal for $30 billion. The deal was meant to diversify Comcast revenue streams outside its cable TV business.

The filings with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) when the company was formed, state there is a 10-year contract between the two entities with a provision to extend to 12-years and it pays 87.5% of its deals to Comcast with Atairos receiving 12.5%.

In June two years ago, Paciolan was sold. Paciolan was Comcast’s ticketing business. It was sold to the Plano, Texas-based company, Learfield for $4 billion. Learfield is controlled by Atairos which manages advertising and ticketing for 100 arenas and college sports events ticketing nationwide.

In another transaction to diversify its portfolio, Atairos purchased the nationally known bowling center empire, Bowlmor AMF and it’s 295 bowling centers in the US, seven in Mexico and three in Canada. That purchase was made through the Atairos-controlled, Cerebrus Capital Management.

(Portions of info from phillynews.com were used in this stories formation)