And they said they would synergize their content. Improved top-line growth did little to stave off a panic from investors, who were troubled to see the company once again fall short of the profits it had promised. He followed the 1998 sale with a Feb. 29, 2000, deal that Playbill called a quantum leap on the first Leap Day of the century, selling his concert and theatrical production firm SFX Entertainment to Clear Channel for $3.2billion. I suppose if you were a psychiatrist you could say I wanted to do well, where my father had had a lack of success, Sillerman says. Which suggests that Sillerman is either very confident in his ability to create more value with these two companies, or believes he can sell them to someone who has even more confidence, or both. This stands out as unique. And dont even think about asking him what his middle initials, F.X., stand for. Some people loved Bob and some people hated him, there was no middle ground, said James Disco Donnie Estopinal, a New Orleansdance promoter now living in Puerto Ricowho served as Sillermans deal maker and helped bring in the dance promoters that would come to form the new SFX Entertainment. With Finkel by his side and Estopinal giving the pair needed credibility, Sillerman set out to once again consolidate the dance music business by buying up dance promoters in Europe, Asia and North America. I could tell you, but Id have to kill you, he says. Mr. Sillerman had recently been living in Hinsdale, N.H. For decades, Mr. Sillerman was a regular in the headlines of the financial press, buying and selling numerous media and entertainment businesses, often at a huge profit, and presenting a brash public persona that sometimes rivaled those of the celebrities he dealt with. Sillerman has a $1 billion plan to conquer the world of dance music, read the publications cover line. This year, he agreed to pay a $179,000 fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission for defrauding investors of another of his companies, Function(x). Robert F.X. And the King is content! [12], In May 2009, Credit Suisse filed a request for summary judgment in New York State Supreme Court, alleging Sillerman had failed to pay the outstanding balance due under a credit agreement with Flag Luxury Properties LLC and that Sillerman defaulted on a series of payments due since April 2008, totaling $21.4 million. (Photo credit: Jonas Roosens/AFP/Getty Images). Today about 600,000 visitors make the pilgrimage to Graceland each year (30% from abroad), paying between $22 and $55 apiece. At the time, Sillerman said he expected to deliver equity and debt financing on the billion-dollar deal when a 60-day sale process was completed. Contestants on the new Fox hit So You Think You Can Dance.. Sillerman told Estopinal he had $1billion to spend on the rollup on an S-1 form announcing the IPO of SFX, Sillerman listed holdings that included online marketplace Beatport, the American-arm of Dutch company ID&T that produced festivals Tomorrowland and Sensation, Electric Zoo founders Made Events, German promoteri-Motion and Australias Stereosonic festival producer Totem Onelove Group. Another show with legs? Mr. Sillerman largely withdrew in recent years, moving to New Hampshire and dealing with the fallout from the collapse of several businesses. Man in the middle: Simon Fuller (in back) with Idol stars Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, and Fantasia Barrino. He rides into town and leaves with all the money and the women. Obviously the market had spoken loud and clear that it believed the five-and-a-quarter deal was never coming, said Sillerman in one of his first interviews since announcing the privatization plan. On the subject of corporate partnerships, Sillerman said he underestimated the time it would take to sign up sponsors for SFXs events. CKX also gets the publishing rights to 650 songs, but owns the more valuable royalty rights to only the few songs Elvis recorded after 1973. The show is also being franchised in 100 countries. Even when he was being sued in the end and was broke, hacking and wheezing with a hole in his throat and eating through a feeding tube, he was cracking blowjob jokes and talking about how he was going to f this guy and how this other guy was a scumbag.. [21], In 2012, Sillerman rebooted SFX Entertainment, this time with a focus on the electronic dance music industry. Moreover, those familiar with the live events industry know that festivals can lose millions of dollars in their early years as they try to build their fan bases. Bob had his own way of doing things and it wasnt good in the end.. Sillerman. Robert F.X. Almost immediately after Sillerman closed on the Elvis deal, he opened his wallet again and purchased 19 Entertainment, a business with even more moving parts than Elvis. In other words, distribution companies are falling all over each other to reach customers through new, competing outlets. In characteristic form, Sillerman wont give investors any firm commitments. The founder of SFX Entertainment rarely spoke about the impact of his daughter's death but his friends say it weighed on him and changed his outlook. At Fridays price of 91 cents, SFXs shares are down 93% from its IPO price. Thats $4.3 millionlessthat what Sillerman and his wife Laura had paid for the residence at 151 E. 72nd St. when they bought it for $12 million in 2013. S&P Index data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. [32], From 1993 Sillerman served as the Chancellor of the Southampton College of Long Island University, replacing Angier Biddle Duke. Former employees also interviewed by Billboard felt that the company did not do enough to leverage its scale, and that the company did not engage in centralization, leading to a lack of coordination between its collection of subsidiaries. He made a lot of people wealthy, and he made himself even wealthier., Visit with Sillerman for an hour or two in his Manhattan office, and you are likely to get a rapid-fire discourse on politics from the 1960s to today, or rock & roll radio, or Thoreau, or education in America, or all of the above. In 2017, he almost lost the home after defaulting on a $12.5 million loan, The Post reported at the time. and attractions such as Memphis' Graceland to Robert Sillerman, . Sillerman, Transform Television? The company acquired various promoters and electronic music festivals, as well as related companies in digital (including Beatportan electronic music store, online ticketing provider Paylogic, and web development agency Fame House). With a market value of $1.1 billion, is CKX overvalued? [6], In 1978 Sillerman and disc jockey Bruce Morrow bought two radio stations in upstate New York for $1.875 million. Meet the Women in Music Honoree Who Escaped the IronCurtain, Manson Accusers Recantation Cant Be Used for Now in Case Against Evan Rachel Wood, JudgeSays, Fadia Kader Joins Venice Music as EVP &GM. On Friday, the stock closed at 91 cents a share. 2023 Fortune Media IP Limited. The transaction renamed the company to Function (X), Inc. and changing its listing on the stock exchange to FNCX. Sillerman already has 18 acres on the Strip through MJX, a real estate company he controls. I should get a waterproof one for the shower., At this particular sit-down, when Sillerman gets around to talking about CKX, he says, Technology is breaking down the old lines of distribution. But the companys performance was weak, and its stock price eventually plunged by more than 95 percent. In the mid-1970s he scraped together $600,000 and enlisted Cousin Brucie Morrow, then one of the top deejays in the country, to become his partner and buy a rock & roll radio station in Middletown, N.Y. Bob can sell igloos, says Morrow. This year, there are 88 festivals that we anticipate doing, said Sillerman. Anyone can read what you share. On August 14, Sillerman tabled his bid, saying that the markets made the ability to complete a deal virtually impossible., The fact the market said--which its entitled to--We dont believe that this deal is going to close is one thing, he said. He often named his companies using some combination of those initials. Sillermans personal take was a reported $219 million. Sillerman, 57, a Wall Street operator with a long history of minting money in the media business. Sillerman, the entertainment. In short order Sillerman went on a billion-dollar shopping spree, buying dozens of concert hallslike Roseland in New York and the Fillmore West in San Franciscoin major cities across the country. FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. Sillerman, 57, a Wall Street operator with a long history of minting money in the . CKX raised $251 million at its IPO earlier this year, which it used to pay back $150 million in loans from Bear Stearnsthe rest it paid directly to 19 Entertainment or kept as capital. Since then, revenues have grown but profits have vanished. Over a few years in the late 1990s, Mr. Sillerman and his new company, SFX Entertainment, spent more than $2 billion acquiring dozens of promoters and venues, creating the concert worlds first truly national force. Sillerman, the founder of SFX Entertainment, has died at the age of 71 due to respiratory illness. Bob can sell anythingit doesnt matterhe has that kind of head. (Morrow says it was he who enlisted Sillerman, not the other way around. There are so many ways to exploit that level of awareness. The man who bought Elvis is Robert F.X. Once on the Forbes 400 list, he also briefly owned the WLAF's New York/New Jersey Knights. [37], In May 2012, Sillerman was accused of sexual harassment by an employee of Function X. By day he majored in political science, while by night in 1966 he launched Youth Market Consultants, offering fellow students discount magazine subscriptions while advising marketers on how to target the teen set. What kind of person would grow up to have business dreams like these? Besides buying Elvis Presley Enterprises from Lisa Marie Presley last February, Sillerman and his lieutenants have purchased the smash-hit TV show American Idol and other properties from a company called 19 Entertainment, which was owned by British pop impresario Simon Fuller. Some $20 million. And there are between 105 and 110 scheduled for next year.. Sillerman was looking to become the single big fish in this business so that when acts like Eric Clapton went on tour, his manager would deal with SFX and SFX only when booking venues. How big will CKX become? Maglan Capital, an owner of roughly 1.5% of SFX Entertainment's outstanding stock, called Sillerman's $4.75 a share go private offer "a way low-ball bid." But an informed source says that Lisa Presleys spending habits were also an issue: She had been running through $5 million to $7 million a year, amounts that closely matched the annual net income of EPE. He was never really at 100%.. Its different, Sillerman says. Despite this, the 67-year-old CEO said that he is the right man to run the troubled business and that he still wants to own the company even though he reneged on a plan to take it private earlier this month. Hes been known to sneak up on people and scare them. Backstage at The Ed Sullivan Show, 1956: Elvis with the host and manager Parker (left).CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images. [7] The company was merged at the end of 1989 with a unit of Westinghouse Broadcasting in a then record-setting transaction worth $727 million. It wasnt a plan too dissimilar to Sillermans moves with the original SFX where he spent more than $1.2 billion to gobble up regional rock promoters, venues and management companies in the late 90s. His cost basis on these shares? Just ask the makers of the smash-hit movie Lilo and Stitch, who used an Elvis soundtrack to great success. When asked what exactly went wrong with SFX, Sillerman offered two explanations: mistakes in management and a misunderstanding of the complexity and time of marketing partnerships. He did not name any specific people with regards to personnel issues, though music industry sources pointed to the fact that many of the people who sold their businesses to SFX did not stay long after closing their deals. And I haven't a fucking clue what they do or what they're talking about. Todays star- making machinery is half-a-century and light years away from that process. On Jun 7, 2012, Function (X), Inc. was renamed Viggle, which changed the company stock listing to VGGL. The company has teased burned investors with an "indication of interest" from an unnamed bidder. Young Sillerman graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis in 1969 after becoming immersed in counterculture politics and rock & roll. We have to be careful to not deprecate Elviss legacy or to damage our authorized and official Elvis shows.. The company also acquired 80% in Muhammad Ali Enterprises. Not bad for a years work. Read the original story on The New York . Over half a million tourists from all over the world stream into the shrine called Graceland each year. Eight years later he unloaded a bunch of stations to Hicks Muse for $2.1 billion. Billboard is a part of Penske Media Corporation. Mr. Sillerman gained control of the Presley estate. [35] For thirteen years, Sillerman served as the Chancellor of Southampton College and is the founder of The Tomorrow Foundation. That greatly reduces the number of viewers who DVR it and skip the commercials. Robert F.X. The company was sold to Clear Channel in 2000 and became the basis for Live Nation five years later. A serial media-industry entrepreneur, Sillerman was best-known at the time for buying up concert promoters under the rubric of SFX Entertainment and, in 2000, selling them to the radio giant. It Takes a Lot of People to Create All This AI Music. Estopinal says he last saw Sillerman at a deposition, but he remembers sending Sillerman a note after the bankruptcy, acknowledging the failures of SFX while also thanking him for the opportunity to be part of the company. Several managers and big-name acts from Ozzy Osborne to Shania Twain reportedly bristled over having to negotiate with such a corporate gorilla. Sillerman was born on April 12, 1948 in Manhattan, New York, USA. We bought companies based on what we anticipated that we could bring in incremental sources of revenue.. Because American Idol is whats known as event programming, meaning that because its a contest, you almost have to watch it live. (Photo by PATRICK McMULLAN/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images) Embed. Sillerman became one of the most intriguing and wealthiest men in the media business but died in bankruptcy, pursued by the government and suffering the painful complications of a decade. He. That suit, led by dance promoter Paolo Moreno, alleges that Sillerman, who was completely unfamiliar with dance music, took the idea to acquire and combine global EDM companies from him and his associates after they had agreed to work with the businessman and Finkel. Thats not the way I view the entertainment businessI view it as an art not as a science.". (Photo credit: Jonas Roosens/AFP/Getty Images), Increase Website Performance With Three Metrics, Europe Is Lagging Behind In Developing Large AI Models, Deepfakes - The Danger Of Artificial Intelligence That We Will Learn To Manage Better, Overview Of How To Create Deepfakes - Its Scarily Simple, Ukrainian Startups Showing Resilience In A Time Of War, Worried That Your Phone Is Spying On You? By the time Mr. Sillerman began buying radio stations in the late 1970s, he was using a new name: Robert F.X. This is a long-term perspective, [but] a 10% return on equity from our perspective would be insufficient.. 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