Larry H. Miller is demanding to know why a magazine reported this week that his Delta Center arena is in financial trouble - a report he says is false and attacks his integrity.
The owner of the newly built arena, as well as of the professional basketball and hockey teams that play in it, Miller repeated Wednesday what he has told reporters ever since the Utah Jazz finished their season last month. The arena is paying for itself and doing better than expected. The Jazz attracted sellout crowds to all 50 home games this season.But Financial World magazine reported this week that the arena is in trouble. The report listed the revenue and operational costs of 102 major-league baseball, football, basketball and hockey teams. It listed the Jazz 87th overall in order of financial value and said the team had $3 million in operating income, compared with $30.1 million for the Los Angeles Lakers, the healthiest basketball franchise.
After presenting financial information on the Jazz, the magazine article included a simple statement that the team's value is relatively low because the Delta Center is in trouble.
Financial World reporter Michael Ozanian said from his New York office that he talked to several "sports consulting people" when preparing the article. He said few teams agreed to share their figures.
"We feel our numbers are about 80 percent there," he said. He did not say where he had gotten information about the health of the Delta Center.
But, in addition to angering Miller, Financial World's report also surprised members of the financial community, who reported hearing no rumors or negative reports circulating about the Delta Center.
"The rumor I heard is that the Jazz are a very successful team," said Michael Megna, senior vice president of American Appraisal Associates in Milwaukee. "I have not heard they are having any trouble with the arena."
After the story appeared, Miller said he called officials at Sumitomo Trust, the Japanese business that lent him $66 million to build the facility. He said they assured him he is up to date on loan payments.
"At best, this is irresponsible journalism," Miller said. "I want to know what produced that comment."
He said he is talking to an attorney about how to proceed.
Miller said the magazine's calculations of the team's expenses are way off. "The player costs (reported to be $12.1 million) are off by over 10 percent," he said. "I don't know how they could have missed that when they could have gotten it from a number of different sources."
Miller won't reveal what the real numbers are, just like he wouldn't reveal them to Financial World when the magazine requested the figures earlier this year.
But Miller said the numbers aren't important. The statement about his arena is.
"This is a challenge to my credibility," he said. "I don't need people in the community, whether they are customers, employees, advertisers or fans, to say: `I read last week that things are going great at the Delta Center, and now I see this. What's going on?' "
Miller isn't the first to question the magazine's credibility. Earlier this year, Columbia Journalism Review criticized Financial World after it ran a story in February rating the financial health of the nation's 30 largest cities.
The magazine then sent letters to mayors of cities that didn't make the top 10, offering them a one-day seminar by the article's authors designed to improve their ranking. The seminar cost $10,000 plus the cost of flying the authors to the city in question, according to a report in the Columbia Journalism Review.
Earlier this year the magazine also rated Utah as the second best financially managed state in the union. It ranked Utah first in 1991.