By Paul Kennedy
Tim Leiweke’s success with AEG was part-sports, part-entertainment, part-facilities. Heboils down his goal with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which he joined Friday as president and CEO, as “trophies.”
“If you look at the run we had [with AEG], what made theStaples Center phenomenal was the content,” he said on a conference call with reporters. “You had the Lakers winning six championships during that time. You go open up the Home Depot Center and theGalaxy have won four championships and you convince David Beckham to come over. And then the Kings win the Stanley Cup. It makes you look a lot brighter and itmakes the building look a lot better when you are hanging those kinds of banners.”
Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment owns the NBA Raptors, NHL Maple Leafs and MLS’s Toronto FC, whichhas yet to make the playoffs in its six seasons.
In soccer circles, Leiweke is best known for bringing Beckham to the Galaxy in 2007. He said he had talked with Beckham, now at Paris St.Germain, in recent weeks, but he cautioned against making a Beckham-like signing with Toronto in the short term,
“If there is something out there that means that we can make theteam better and find a personality that we ultimately ingrain within that football club, we’ll do it,” Leiweke said. “If we don’t do it this summer, we will work on doing it at year’send.”
Leiweke will be reunited in Toronto with Kevin Payne, who joined Toronto FC as its president in late November. AEG had previously ownedD.C. United, and Payne worked as senior vice president and managing director of AEG Soccer.
INDY ELEVEN. The NASL team that will begin play inIndianapolis in 2014 will be called Indy Eleven. Besides the soccer reference, Indy Eleven pays homage to Indiana’s 11th Regiment that served in the Union Army in the Civil War under Colonel
KINO GROUNDBREAKING. Groundbreaking was held Thursday on the new stadium in the Kino Sports Complex in Tucson Ariz. Work is expected to be completed on the $2.8 million project in late October onthe stadium that will be home to matches for the PDL’s FC Tucson and MLS spring training. FC Tucson expects more than 100,000 people to visit the complex each year.
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