Art of sports entertainment

This quarter in the UCLA Anderson School of Management, a class is being offered called “The Agony and Ecstasy of Sports Entertainment.” Although the dramatic name may seem more suited for a movie than a course, it’s all just part of the business for Professor Peter Guber.

In addition to having been a professor at UCLA for the last 44 years, Guber is a Hollywood movie producer, co-owner of the Golden State Warriors and co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

He is co-teaching the course with Brian Weinstein, head of corporate finance at the powerhouse Creative Artists Agency.

Guber said what he aims to teach the students is simple: They must be able to sell in order to succeed in the highly competitive world of sports entertainment. Beyond selling tickets or sponsorships, he said, they must be able “to sell a colleague, to sell enthusiasm, to sell trust.”

“At the end of the day, this is a business, from the owner, to the client, to the sponsors,” he said. “It is a business for everyone in the food chain. The key is putting all the pieces together.”

Key to this perspective was teaching students how to connect with the fans of teams they could work with in the future.

“(Fans) want to know that there is a commitment to excellence, a commitment to winning, there is honesty, there is patience, and they want to be invited into that process,” Weinstein said.

Although students spend part of each week’s lecture listening to Guber and Weinstein’s lectures, the highlight of the course is the star-studded list of guest speakers, enabled by the professors’ industry connections.

The lineup of speakers reaches across the sports-entertainment spectrum, ranging from director Michael Tollin to MLB player Shawn Green to Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott and NBA commissioner David Stern.

Fred Gambino, a graduate student at Anderson, said he appreciates the real-world nature of the class and is most looking forward to NBA commissioner David Stern’s visit.

“He is such a polarizing figure in the press, and we have a very free-flowing conversation which isn’t recorded either (during guest lectures), so I’m looking forward to asking a few tough questions that will stay in the room,” Gambino said.

Melanie Auguste, a teaching assistant for the class and graduate student in UCLA’s joint program at Anderson and the School of Law, said she considers the course to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“From week to week, we are spending hours with individuals that people spend their entire career trying to get 10 minutes with,” she said.

The diverse roster of accomplished speakers will serve the students well, Guber said, as they will need to have a broad skill set to make it in the ever-changing world of sports entertainment.

“At the end of the day you have to do everything reasonably well, and that takes real discipline,” Guber said.

“Call it a science, call it an art form, but that is when you will be successful.”

Email Mehrfar at [email protected].