Smith Entertainment Group, the holding company of the NBA’s Utah Jazz and the NHL’s Mammoth, has announced a joint venture with Live Nation to build a new live music venue next door to a reimagined Delta Center.
The added building, a 6,000-seat “state of the art” venue, is part of a revitalization plan for downtown Salt Lake City headlined by the $900 million multiyear renovation of the larger sports arena. Ryan and Ashley Smith, the founders of SEG and business software company Qualtrics, have previously pledged to invest $3 billion into the downtown development.
The planned Live Nation venue will host music events for mid-sized crowds between 2,000 to 6,000 fans. Live Nation and SEG hope to bring close to 200 events per year to the music hub, including 100 concerts. The Delta Center has the capacity to host events up to 19,000 people.
For Live Nation, the venue is part of a push to build multiple entertainment spots over the next 18 months in a $1 billion spending spree. The entertainment company owns 150 different music venues big and small across the country.
SEG, meanwhile, is the latest sports and entertainment holding company to invest resources into new real estate. SEG and Live Nation are selling the public on the benefits of having this joint venture in downtown Salt Lake, which they have said could produce similar results to what Live Nation has done in Boston, where it operates MGM Music Hall next to Fenway Park. Both MGM and Fenway are owned by Fenway Sports Group, which also owns the Red Sox.
“I think what’s gone on down at LA Live, because it’s actually in the city,” Ryan Smith said in a press conference on Tuesday, referring to the entertainment hub next door to the Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles. “And then obviously Fenway, where it’s literally hooked on to the ballpark and becomes this beacon. I think if you look at how many net new folks that we’re going to be bringing into downtown, it’s probably close to a billion people a year, if this thing’s fully activated the way we all want to.”
This has been a busy year for SEG. The company announced its Delta Center renovation plans in April, which will include $525 million contribution from Salt Lake City that’s being funded by a 0.5% sales tax increase approved by the city council. The city’s commitment financial toward the Delta Center is being funded over 30 years. How much public money is being used towards the music hub has not been disclosed.
Phase one of the Delta Center’s renovation began after the Jazz and Mammoth ended their respective seasons in April. This summer, the project is focused on a retractable seating system in the lower bowl, the first arrangement of its kind for an NBA or NHL arena. Around 2,000 seats— 29 rows of seats—will be placed on risers that allow the arena operators to remove seating to accommodate the Mammoth’s ice rink or add seats around the Jazz’s home court.
In May, the NHL team took on its new permanent identity as the Mammoth after a lengthy fan vote during the regular season. The team went by the Utah Hockey Club as a placeholder name for 2024-25 after the Smiths purchased the hockey assets of the former Arizona Coyotes.
Additionally, the Mammoth’s new practice facility in nearby Sandy is scheduled to open for the team’s use in September, with separate community rinks, locker rooms and a pro shop expected to debut by the end of 2025.
The Jazz rank 22nd in Sportico’s NBA franchise valuations, published in December, at $3.67 billion. The Mammoth sit 28th in the NHL valuations, published in October, at $1.2 billion.