It begins with baseball, but Dee, Sox hit to all fields
Red Sox chief operating officer Mike Dee is the man behind many of the team's big business ideas, including concerts at Fenway Park. He is also president of the Fenway Sports Group, which focuses on developing non-baseball businesses. It is owned by New England Sports Ventures, which also owns the Red Sox and NESN. (The
Q: What are some of the business ideas Fenway Sports Group looked at previously, and where might it invest in the future?
A: We've looked at a variety of professional sports activities, including arena football, major league soccer, tennis ventures, and event-related sports opportunities. Our proudest accomplishment locally is the relationship we have with Boston College.
We've also been able to establish an exclusive relationship with Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which is the company that controls all 30 websites for MLB teams, plus the MLB.com site. FSG is now the official marketing and sales agency for all its digital and online assets. This is a big, big opportunity for us.
Finally, worth noting is our home-grown company, Fanfoto. It's a digital online photo gallery of fans in the stands. You have your photo taken in the stands, and you log on to that club's website and you can buy that photo.
Q: You've also looked at investing in NASCAR, right?
A: We did, and we continue to. We think NASCAR is a great sport. Its popularity is undeniable. You see it becoming more mainstream every day. It is a national force, not just in the Southeast, but everywhere. We think that, if you're going to be in the sports business, having an interest in NASCAR is something that a company of FSG's nature should be actively looking at and monitoring.
Q: When you say you're looking at an interest, what does that mean?
A: It could be in the form of a team. We've looked at teams. We've looked at online assets. Nothing specific. I think as we go out and learn more about other sports, we see opportunities.
Q: Why are the Red Sox interested in these other sports?
A: It's the entrepreneurial nature of our partnership. A baseball team is only as good as its front office. If you look around the leagues, the best franchises that have success on the field oftentimes have the best front offices.
We've been very careful to try to build a tier one front office. We're going to be very selective.
Our core business is, and will always be, the Red Sox. To the extent we can be selective and look for those opportunities that fit the criteria we've established for diversifying our sports mix, then we're going to be aggressive in pursuing those opportunities.
Q: A while back, you talked about the possibility of ice skating at Fenway Park. What happened to that?
A: We decided to postpone our interest in doing that for at least a year while we're undergoing the most extensive renovation of Fenway Park in its history. The ballpark is largely under construction this off-season. It's just not a place where you'd want a lot of fans moving about right now. We continue to be interested in that.
Q: When fans come to opening day this year, what changes will they see to the ballpark?
A: Big changes. First and foremost, that reflection off the glass from the .406 Club is gone. The roof box sections down the first- and third-base lines have been replaced by a new structure, which has a brand new concourse behind it on each side.
We've been able to dramatically increase the number of seats, and I think it's a dramatically better looking ballpark aesthetically.
People are going to look at where the glass used to be and say, ''Do you remember that they used to have glass there?"
The other important thing is that we're really trying to use these seats we've added to reshape and rescale our pricing.
We think by incorporating some of these new club seat areas, we'll be able to take a lot of the pressure off the seats that are currently $30 or less.
Q: Are you going to lower any seat prices?
A: We have not reduced prices, but we've held prices this year, I believe, on 50 percent of the seats.
WANT TO HEAR MORE FROM MIKE DEE?
Sasha Talcott's interview with Dee will be featured on this week's BizCast on Wednesday. Go to boston.com/business/bizcast.
