Legends Acquiring ASM Global, Manager of Hundreds of Venues
Premium experiences company Legends is buying ASM Global, manager of sports and entertainment venues around the world. Legends later confirmed the announcement in a press release Tuesday.
“ASM Global is a venue management business that also does content and event booking to activate content with the venues and ultimately help deliver experiences to the customers of the arena, theater, stadium or convention center,” Legends CEO Shervin Mirhashemi said on a phone call. “That capability, coupled with our premium, holistic suite of services that we have built at Legends, is not only going to help our clients but also help the fans themselves have more enhanced and enlightened experiences.”
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The pending acquisition adds significant capabilities to the Legends portfolio. Legends, founded in 2008, has built itself from the joint concessions business for original co-owners, the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees, into a global services business. It offers premium hospitality, venue planning, sponsorship valuation and naming rights consulting plus sales, ticketing, fundraising and ecommerce solutions, among other businesses.
Legends is now majority owned by private equity firm Sixth Street, with the team-owning Steinbrenner and Jones families holding 49% of the business. Recently, Legends has struck deals to revamp Real Madrid’s stadium, invest in and manage some business lines for upstart hockey league 3ICE and secure a uniform patch partner for the Yankees.
ASM Global manages more than 300 venues, a business that Legends largely hasn’t been involved in, including NRG Stadium in Houston, Ovo Arena Wembley in London and Accor Stadium in Sydney. The portfolio also includes arenas, theaters, convention centers and equestrian centers.
ASM is being sold by co-owners AEG and Onex Group, a Toronto-based private equity firm. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, though finance industry publication Private Equity Insights reported in September that a consortium of lenders including Ares Management and KKR were seeking to provide Legends $1.85 billion in financing for the acquisition.
While the deal came together in recent weeks, it won’t be official until a regulatory review is concluded, likely pushing the close into the first quarter of 2024. Until then, ASM Global will continue to be run as an independent business. After the close, ASM Global will continue to service properties owned by AEG, the venue arm of billionaire LA Kings owner Philip Anschutz.
Including the Anschutz properties, ASM serves some 164 million customers annually through its management services across five continents. Moelis & Company and BofA Securities advised Legends on the deal, with Ropes & Gray as legal counsel. ASM worked with Goldman Sachs and Jeffries on the financial side with legal services from Latham & Watkins, Hogan Lovells and Arnold & Porter.
“If you look at the complementary capabilities, Legends is going to be able to support our clients down the road, from project conception and planning all the way to venue development,” Mirhashemi said. “We can then do the management content, event booking, revenue strategies and sales execution, and then merchandising and hospitality services. It really will be a well-rounded platform. Obviously there are some very formidable competitors in this collective space, but we really believe that we are going to be best in class.”
(This story has been updated in the first paragraph with news of Legends’ press announcement.)
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