Inside the rapid rise of Utah’s new pro sports empire

Since bursting onto the professional sports scene with the purchase of the Utah Jazz four years ago — with big plans to expand its reach, as NBA commissioner Adam Silver recounted — Ryan Smith had a lot to back up.

Following that $1.6 billion deal in 2020, Smith Entertainment Group principals Ryan and Ashley Smith have found themselves cruising in opportunity’s fast lane, joining in the $400 million acquisition of MLS soccer team Real Salt Lake in 2022 along with a $2 million revival of the NWSL’s Utah Royals and adding a National Hockey League franchise earlier this year in a $1.2 billion deal to take over the Arizona Coyotes.

League stalwarts like Silver, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and others have been left slack-jawed by the pace at which the upstart SEG has built a multisport operation and, as Front Office Sports put it, is “already starting to stack up nicely against rival heavyweights in the industry,” including Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (L.A. Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Rapids) and Fenway Sports Group (Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Penguins, Liverpool FC).

Bettman calls the ascension “nothing short of remarkable.”

Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the Smiths are “people you can trust” and doing business with them always leads to “a good place.”

While top-tier pro sports have had a presence in the Beehive State for decades, the Smiths bring a fresh perspective, extensive resources, vibrant professional networks and a deep love of their home state into a formula that is set to fundamentally remake and elevate Utah’s status on the national and international stages.

And like the “Mailman” of a bygone era, they intend to deliver.

Pro sports in Utah: Where it all began

“Big Four” sports made its Utah debut all the way back in 1979 when the owners of the hapless New Orleans Jazz announced the team would be moving to the Beehive State.

While the news drew a joyous response from local fans, it was more than a bit of a head-scratcher for pro sports insiders who struggled to see the wisdom of dragging a struggling team to a market most believed was too small to support an NBA franchise.

Six years later, Utah business titan Larry H. Miller made it a decidedly local — and family — affair when he scraped together $8 million to buy a 50% interest in the Jazz in an 11th-hour deal that kept the owners from moving the franchise yet again. Just over a year later, Miller bought the rest of the team. And a few years after that, construction on a brand new Jazz venue was completed in a project that helped remake and recharge the west side of downtown Salt Lake City.

Echoes of the Jazz’s Utah entrée and the team’s early days in its new home ring throughout the tale behind the latest addition to Utah’s pro sports portfolio, the NHL’s Utah Hockey Club. Peel back another layer and you’ll find the new owners of the former Arizona Coyotes are on a journey that parallels the Miller family’s path in myriad ways, with perhaps the biggest nexus points being that it all started with buying the Jazz and championing the state of Utah.

Ryan and Ashley Smith sat down with the Deseret News at their gleaming facility in Provo’s Riverwoods district, a building that houses SEG offices on the upper floors and the Smash Dance Academy on the main floor, the business that Ashley Smith started from her basement in 2007. Smash has since grown into a mainstay in this Utah County community, boasting some 600 students.

On the day of the interview, the parking lot was bustling with parents dropping off their aspiring dance students. SEG’s headquarters is chock full of sports memorabilia and an indoor putting green. An interior staircase connecting the levels is lined with mementos from past concerts at the Delta Center — dozens of new guitars signed by musicians that have made tour stops in Salt Lake City including bands like Depeche Mode, Bon Jovi and the Arctic Monkeys. Looking west through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the SEG office’s kitchen and lounge area, the campus of the Utah tech business that started the juggernaut, Qualtrics, can be glimpsed through the trees.

The Smiths talked about their roles as owners — though they prefer the term stewards — of a growing portfolio of sports and entertainment interests that now include the Jazz and NBA G-League Salt Lake City Stars teams; the Utah Hockey Club; minority interests in Major League Soccer’s Real Salt Lake and National Women’s Soccer League Utah Royals; the Delta Center; America First Field; SEG Media and more. Bookings at Delta Center have also grown under SEG’s management, including the major coup of hosting the first-ever UFC pay-per-view events that draw viewership measured in the millions. The second UFC fight in Utah is Saturday night.

The road to SEG

Business success fueled SEG’s drive into professional sports. Ryan Smith co-founded Qualtrics in 2002 then built and ran the customer experience platform through a multibillion-dollar takeover by European software giant SAP in 2018. He was still the single biggest individual shareholder when the company was spun off in a public stock offering in 2021 and two years later, Qualtrics was purchased in a $12.5 billion deal led by Silicon Valley tech investment firm Silver Lake.

But the Smiths say their love of and commitment to the state of Utah underpins the decision-making throughout their endeavors, including at a critical stage in Qualtrics’ growth, where a move to Silicon Valley would have placed the company proximate to a rich talent pool and the epicenter of U.S. venture capital firms known for writing huge checks to emerging tech companies.

“I think with Qualtrics it was such a creative workforce … the people, the connections,” Ashley Smith said. “It was exciting and empowering and fun. Moving the company, that was never even in the cards.

“We love it here. It’s a place with an amazing work ethic and kindness across the community and not to mention the outdoor beauty. That fits really nicely with the passion we have now with the Jazz and Utah Hockey Club and the opportunity to showcase what we love about Utah.”

SEG’s growth arc has been on a sizzling trajectory and along the way it also launched SEG Media, built a platform for streaming Jazz games directly to fans and has taken the first steps in leading out on an expansive redevelopment plan aiming to revitalize the neighborhood around the Delta Center. Those plans include renovating — with taxpayer help — the venue itself to optimize its new dual purpose as both home court for the Jazz and home ice for the Utah Hockey Club.

Ryan Smith said while SEG’s rate of expansion wasn’t really part of the plan at the outset, being ready to take advantage of growth opportunities as they presented themselves definitely was.

“We knew that if we were going to go into sports, we weren’t going to dabble,” Ryan Smith said.

Move fast and build things

While the Smiths may have turned Mark Zuckerberg’s famous “move fast and break things” adage on its head with their own version that tracks more closely to “move fast and build things,” there’s a deeper idea, an abundance mindset perhaps, driving SEG’s rise as a sports and entertainment powerhouse.

“We have a broad group of individuals we work with and they all want a career path and the opportunity to advance, to reach up and grab more,” Ryan Smith said. “Single entity organizations can get siloed. With the formation of SEG it’s allowed us to do a lot of things … to build a portfolio, create broader career paths. We hoped when we created it that we’d be able to use the platform to attract another great team to Utah. And that’s what’s happened.”

Creating value, and opportunity, is part of what drew Silicon Valley venture capital group Accel to Qualtrics back in 2012, when the firm led the first outside investment in the Utah company. Accel is a tech sector heavyweight, among the pioneers of early-stage technology investment firms and one with an accumulation of mega wins that include prescient early bets on companies like Facebook, Dropbox, Spotify and Slack, to name a few.

Qualtrics famously shunned venture money for its first 10 years in business, taking pride in self-financing or “bootstrapping” growth. In a Deseret News interview, Accel partner Ryan Sweeney recalled his early failed attempts to connect with Ryan Smith, leaving messages that went unanswered and generally being ignored.

“Qualtrics was a name that kept coming up over and over again from our portfolio companies that were using the product,” Sweeney said. “And everyone had the same report, they’re up to something real. We started calling on Ryan, hoping to take a meeting and get to know him. Over the course of the first year of calling, we really got no response.

“But in our world, that’s a good sign. We were being kept at bay but that just kept the chase alive.”

A connection would eventually be made and that led to a series of funding rounds for Qualtrics headed by Accel, and represented the firm’s first financial foray involving a business from Utah, an area that was being mostly passed over by the Bay Area titans of tech finance.

Qualtrics’ eventual acquisition by SAP — an $8 billion liquidity event that was the biggest deal ever for an enterprise software company at the time — became yet another big win for Accel. But the two Ryans both scored something else through the business connection that’s much harder to pin a valuation on: a lasting friendship. Sweeney would also continue his business connections with the Smiths, joining the SEG principals via personal investments to become a minority owner of the Jazz, RSL and Utah Hockey Club.

Bullish on the Beehive State

The seeds of the idea to pursue an NBA opportunity were planted, Sweeney said, amid the “what do we do next” conversations that followed the Qualtrics buyout. Sports was an obvious path to pursue for the super fans, but both Ryans were interested in taking an approach that embraced the stewardship model.

“If you want to build an expansive community asset, bring joy to a lot of people, the best path to that is build a great company,” Sweeney said. “Stepping into basketball we wanted to do that very well. Put a great team on the floor for sure, but also the opportunity to go do other things for the people of Utah. That’s how we’re going to tackle this. Let’s build a great company.”

While Sweeney and his family remain Bay Area residents, he considers himself an honorary Utahn and said his optimism about the state has only grown since a company named Qualtrics popped up on his radar.

“I’m more bullish on Utah now than I was 15 years ago,” Sweeney said. “As an investor and a person. Impressed by the people, the place, the community. I’d bet on Utah all day long … and I feel like it’s still in its infancy.”

Sweeney notes that while all successful businesses have a laser-sharp focus on their customers, sports fans are a category unto themselves.

“What’s different about sports and entertainment is there’s that passion and loyalty on the fan side,” Sweeney said. “Your constituents, your customers, are some of the most passionate people in the world. For us, it’s important to never forget that.”

“Some sports ownership groups become numb to the product and the fans’ side of it,” Sweeney added. “Ryan is a lifelong Jazz fan. He is that individual. He gets that. He’s listening to the same talk radio that every other fan is.”

What league execs are saying

NBA commissioner Silver told the Deseret News he counts himself among those who have been awed by the pace at which SEG has grown its sports and entertainment assets.

“In the case of Ryan and Ashley, I’m not surprised but still somewhat amazed at the speed of which they are developing their operations, both in the NBA and more broadly speaking,” Silver said. “Ryan was certainly talking a big game when he came into the league, but I wouldn’t have expected them to find a way for expanding their reach in such a short period of time (through Jazz+) to a much broader base of fans. We’ve marveled at how quickly they move in their own organization, personalizing fan technology, building direct-to-consumer applications and more.”

Silver became acquainted with the Smiths well before they became NBA owners via the league’s use of Qualtrics’ analytics tools. He said having a customer experience expert join the NBA owners group is a move that will pay dividends beyond the legion of Jazz fanatics.

“I love the way Ryan thinks about the game, the sport itself and how we can increase fan engagement,” Silver said. “Once the acquisition happened, not only did we know each other and consider each other friends, I was then preaching to the 29 other partners the benefits of Ryan joining. He had a fantastic base to build off of, thanks to the excellent leadership of the Miller family, but also because of his background as an innovator and inventor of modern tools to measure and enhance the fan experience.”

Bettman, the NHL commissioner, said he only met the Smiths a couple of years ago but noted the way the deal for the Coyotes played out, and what was required of SEG to make it all happen in time for the 2024-25 season after the group went public in January about its interest in acquiring the franchise, was astounding.

“Based on what was going on in Arizona, in March I went to them and suggested the possibility of a team for the upcoming season,” Bettman said. “I knew it would take a Herculean effort but if anyone could get their arms around it, Ryan and Ashley could.

“What they have accomplished is nothing short of remarkable. This whole process was unique. The transaction itself, the time frame, what they needed to get everything up and running. They deserve every kudo for it. It wasn’t an expansion, it wasn’t a relocation, it was a hybrid transaction put together in weeks … really unheard of.”

Utah’s No. 1 sports fan weighs in

Gov. Spencer Cox is another Jazz lifer who said he is loving how SEG is driving a new era for sports fans in Utah and across the region while remembering the humble beginnings of pro sports in the Beehive State.

“The Jazz have historically had an outside position as the first, and for a long time only, major sports franchise here in Utah,” he said. “We’re a smaller state that probably shouldn’t have had a franchise, but Larry and Gail (Miller) made that happen.”

Cox counts himself among the growing group of people caught off guard by the speed at which SEG has moved in just its few years of existence.

“I didn’t think or imagine that we would see so much growth in the company and business,” the governor said. “First the Jazz, then RSL, getting hockey so quickly … the work they’re doing to revitalize our capital city, it’s historical.”

SEG is spearheading a plan to put $3 billion into redeveloping a three-block area east of the Delta Center, which includes renovating the venue to better accommodate fans for both hockey and basketball as well as reconfiguring the arena entrance to face east, adding new pedestrian plazas, building a residential tower and a hotel and providing retail and restaurant space.

Cox said he appreciates that the same drive that helped turn Qualtrics into a global success story is now being applied to building out a Utah sports scene that every fan feels ownership in.

“I think one of the most important parts of this is that Ryan and Ashley have not forgotten where they’re from,” he said. “Following up the high level of success with an equally high level of giving back … that’s an incredible combination.”

Flying with Delta — redux

Delta Air Lines can track its association with the Jazz all the way back to the grand opening of the Delta Center in 1991. Up until that time, the Jazz hosted home games at the Salt Palace arena. Amid an industrywide downturn in the airlines business in the mid-2000s, Delta was in the throes of bankruptcy, fighting off takeover attempts and forced to rescind its sponsorship. The venue naming rights were assumed first in 2006 by nuclear waste handler EnergySolutions and later by Utah tech startup Vivint. In 2023, Delta reclaimed the sponsorship, a move Delta CEO Bastian said was a cause for celebration.

“Our footprint in Salt Lake City dates back to the ‘80s when we acquired Western Airlines,” he said. “We didn’t have much of an operation then, but here we are now 40-plus years later, and Salt Lake is easily our biggest and most important location in the western half of the country.”

Delta has over 5,000 Utah employees and was a primary partner in the expansive, $5.2 billion renovation of the Salt Lake City International Airport, where the airline is far and away the busiest carrier.

Bastian, on a personal level, is a fan of Utah and has owned a home in Deer Valley for over a decade. He said he got connected to Ryan Smith through business channels when Delta began using Qualtrics services and he even delivered a client testimonial at a Qualtrics user summit in 2023.

Even though Vivint was in the midst of a long-term naming rights contract when SEG acquired the Jazz, Bastian said he and Ryan Smith worked together to figure out how to get Delta’s moniker back up on the building, a move that required, and earned, Vivint’s blessing. It was, Bastian said, a pretty big deal for the company.

“The day we announced it, ahead of the Martin Luther King holiday in 2023, things were just buzzing and the press conference was fabulous,” he said. “I know that many people in the community never really stopped calling it the Delta Center, which was always hard to hear. There are few times in life where you can go back and undo things and cut a deal that feels this good.”

Bastian said he loves what’s been happening with SEG and noted Delta has also thrown its sponsorship support behind the Utah Hockey Club. Bastian is excited about the prospect of the downtown revitalization plan but noted that Delta is “attached to it, but we’re not driving it.”

Bastian said he has enjoyed getting to know the Smiths and is particularly impressed with the strength of their family connections and commitment to “just being great parents.”

“They’re people you can trust, that are fun to be with and fun to do business with because you know you’re going to come out in a good place,” Bastian said.

Tech expertise in the pro sports world

SEG’s tech-centric bonafides have not only borne fruit in extending relationships established during the Qualtrics days into its sports and entertainment undertakings; they’re also being applied to innovating the business itself.

One of SEG’s hallmark moves has been to assert ownership and control of its content, launching the Jazz+ streaming service and negotiating its own over-the-air contract with Sinclair Broadcasting. David Carter, University of Southern California Marshall School of Business professor and principal with The Sports Business Group, told the Deseret News that SEG’s approach is one that could create advantages in a market largely driven by content distribution.

“Sports is all about creating content that fans seek and then delivering it to them on their terms,” Carter said. “Teams and leagues that efficiently accomplish this have a huge advantage that then enables them to then increase revenue not only from fans, but media partners and sponsors as well. Plus, when further penetrating a new market, the importance associated with providing compelling, accessible content is magnified.”

Carter also notes that tech-savvy owners, like the Smiths and other NBA team principals such as the Los Angeles Clippers’ Steve Ballmer and, formerly, the Dallas Mavericks’ Mark Cuban, bring out-of-the-box takes and a penchant for positive disruption to the professional sports leagues they’ve joined.

“Including other accomplished tech executives — and innovators more broadly — serves to not only bolster the team’s ability to identify and then take advantage of emerging business opportunities, but also delivers a benefit to the leagues as they want owners — and those with credibility surrounding them — to assist with uncovering new and better ways to reach all those that do business with the league,” Carter said.

The product of Utah

Seizing and making the most of opportunities is high on the list of SEG’s business strategies, but talking with the Smiths about what excites them most about the future of the organization reveals the most powerful factor may be their faith in the endeavor’s transformative potential.

“If you look at what we’re doing with SEG, its focus stands out from other sports and entertainment groups because we’re hyper focused on Utah,” Ryan Smith said. “Running tech for 20 years is crazy. Most founders are done, burnt out in like seven or 10 years. Us deciding to go have a second career after going through tech and exiting is a unique decision. A lot of people ask why are you even doing this? Shouldn’t you be off enjoying it?”

“I think it shows a little bit where our passions are and it’s authentic to our love of Utah.”

“The product of Utah is a great thing to be focused on,” Ashley Smith said. “The Jazz, and all we’re doing with SEG, is an opportunity to lift and highlight this great place. A great, bigger vision of a really, really phenomenal state.”