Sorry to be of topic but:
Broadcom CEO more than a fan?
SPORTS: He finds the idea of owning a team 'intriguing' but declines comment about Disney's possible sale of Angels and Ducks.
August 21, 1999
By BARBARA KINGSLEY
The Orange County Register
He's a billionaire high-tech CEO. He loves sports. And he finds the idea of owning a pro sports team "intriguing."
That's as far as Henry Nicholas III, co-founder of Irvine-based Broadcom, will go.
Nicholas has emerged as a potential buyer for the Anaheim Angels and the Mighty Ducks. This week Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly said representatives of the Walt Disney Co. had informed the city of plans to explore selling all or part of both teams.
Nicholas said Friday that he would not comment about Disney's potential sale of the baseball and hockey teams, nor would he say whether he has had any discussions with Disney about team ownership.
Nicholas, however, spoke passionately about the losing records of Orange County's biggest professional teams.
"Maybe a change of ownership could help that," he said.
Nicholas said that "hypothetically, I could conceive of a situation where (my ownership of a team) would make sense. A limited number of scenarios would make sense."
Should the team be local, "that would be a tiebreaker. But it's not a prerequisite," Nicholas said.
He added that he would consider buying a team only if it "would not affect my position at Broadcom."
In eight years, Nicholas and Co-chairman Henry Samueli built Broadcom, a maker of high-speed communications chips, into a company valued at $12.2 billion.
The hard-charging CEO calls his company's work ethic "a cross between the Chicago Bulls and the Green Berets."
"In anything I do, there's no separation between work and personal life," Nicholas said. "Broadcom is my life. Any type of ownership would somehow have to advance Broadcom."
He added that any pro-sports involvement "would have to have synergies" with his company.
The 6-foot-6-inch Nicholas, 39, rowed at the University of California, Los Angeles, and credits the experience with doing more for his career than the doctorate he earned in 1997 in electrical engineering. The entrepreneur, who's worth more than $2 billion, peppers his conversation with sports metaphors and readily acknowledges he loves sports. He said basketball is his favorite sport but added, "I love baseball; I love hockey."
Nicholas isn't reluctant to pull out his wallet to support some of his favorite sports. He recently gave $1.28 million in stock options to the University of California, Irvine, crew and is a "major" investor in the Gotcha Glacier indoor snowboard park to be built next to Edison International Field in Anaheim.
Gavin Maloof, an owner of the Sacramento Kings, said he recently met Nicholas and knows he is "definitely interested in being a sports owner."
Maloof added that Nicholas might be a logical candidate for owning an Orange County sports team. "He likes sports, he lives there, and he's wealthy enough. He can buy whatever he wants."
Nicholas — speaking as a businessman and sports observer and not as a potential Disney partner — talked at length about how sports are "important to this community."
If he were an owner, he said, he would instill his own intense work ethic — something he sees lacking in Anaheim's teams.
"I think people deserve to have professional teams that work as hard for them as they work," Nicholas said. "The average fan works hard for their money, and they go spend it on their team. It's the fans who pay.
"What you want to see is a team that doesn't have anything left on the field after the game. Maybe they didn't have the talent in the end, but the loss hurts them as much as the average fan.
"If we lose a (chip) design ... we don't take it professionally, we take it personally. I believe losing should be painful, and we should use it to win the next time. I don't think the teams we have in Orange County today ... really exhibit that."
Nicholas said he thought "Disney as a corporate owner is probably the best professional sports owner out there," but he doesn't believe corporate ownership is necessarily the best way to run a sports team. Nicholas said his own company is an example of a tightly held, tightly focused operation. Broadcom went public in 1998, but Nicholas and Samueli together control 45 percent of the company.
Nicholas spoke admiringly of both legendary hands-on New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Angels owner Disney Co.
"Steinbrenner hired outstanding talent; he would not accept mediocrity," he said. "Disney is a well-run company, but with all the politics and complications ...
"With a corporation, it's difficult to instill the right spirit and culture. It's not just the team. It's the athletes, the support personnel and the trainers."
Nicholas said he would not personally oversee a potential franchise.
"Any endeavor I get involved in, it's not me, it's who I choose," Nicholas said.
"As far as pro-sports involvement, my objective is not to be a high-profile guy," Nicholas said. "I get involved in things because I enjoy it. I have a fairly thick skin. When you're running a public company, you read your own press and realize it's all bull." |
