The Protégé by Stephen Frey Read Free Book Online

wants,” Tom O’Brien said in a professorial tone, “is to see how we do it.” O’Brien was the fourth managing partner. He was forty-one but looked older. His hair was snow white, and he had a ruddy complexion. From Boston, he had a prickly New England accent. “She wants to go to school. She wants the keys to the castle.”
    “Of course she does,” Gillette agreed. “But so what? Nigel and I planned on adding two more managing partners anyway. We’ll need six of you to put twenty double-large to work in three years. At
least
six. This way we get one free, and we get an extra five billion to invest, plus the annual fee. It’s like she’s paying us fifty million a year to work here,” he reasoned, liking the way it sounded. “It’s a good deal, and it’s not like she’s going to be able to duplicate what we have when she goes back to her family office in Chicago.” Gillette could see that people were apprehensive. “Another update,” he said, switching subjects, not wanting to dwell on something that made people feel insecure. He’d made the decision about Allison Wallace, and it was final. “We got the Las Vegas NFL franchise.”
    “Hot damn!” yelled O’Brien, banging the table. He was a sports nut and had helped Gillette and Faraday during the bid process.
    “Next week I’m meeting with Kurt Landry, the NFL commissioner, to work out a few things,” Gillette continued, “but basically it’s a done deal.”
    “And we’re sure we’ve got the zoning to build the stadium?” Maggie wanted to know.
    “Absolutely.”
    “Wait a minute,” David Wright broke in. Typically, he was the only managing director that spoke without being asked a question by a managing partner first. “We’re building the stadium?”
    “I want to build it so we keep the extra revenue,” Gillette explained. “Concessions, advertising rights, naming it. This way we have total control of everything.”
    “How much did we offer for the franchise?” Maggie asked. “I can’t remember.”
    “Four hundred and fifty million.”
    “What’s the strategy with this?” she continued. “I don’t know much about sports teams, but four hundred fifty million seems like a lot,
and
you’ve got the cost of building the stadium. Which is what?”
    “Three hundred million.”
    “So we’re in for seven hundred and fifty million. Can we really get a decent return on that, Christian?”
    Maggie was suspicious that this was just a “boys gone wild” investment, Gillette could tell. An excuse to jet to Las Vegas every few weeks and hang out with movie stars, corporate bigwigs, sports figures, politicians, and friends in a plush skybox. “The stadium will be finished in a year and a half, and it’ll seat eighty thousand,” Gillette answered, giving a quick overview of the numbers. “We’ll charge an average of a hundred dollars a ticket. That’s eight million dollars for each of the eight home games, sixty-four million a season. And that doesn’t include a couple of preseason games we can probably get fifty bucks a ticket for. Plus, we get concessions, our share of the NFL TV contracts, and ad dollars. One of the big computer store chains already offered us ten million a year to put their name on the stadium. Nigel and Tom,” he said, “figure we can generate at least three hundred million a year in revenues. Based on where other major league sports teams sell, that would make the franchise worth somewhere between two and three billion. That would be a hell of a return.”
    “But can you really fill up eighty thousand seats at a hundred bucks a pop in that city?” Maggie pushed. “Vegas isn’t that big, it’s probably only got around a million permanent residents. I don’t think eight percent of the population is going to a football game eight times a year for that kind of money.”
    “The population is closer to a million five,” Gillette corrected, “but I hear what you’re saying. Which is why we’re already