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February
2006
Charlie’s Challenge
Can Charlie Jacobs save the Boston Bruins?
He might be the B’s only chance.
By David Scott
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From 
The temptation is to remind the reader that this is not your father's
Bruins. It's tempting on all sorts of levels, really — because
your father's Bruins were not only winners but beloved Bostonians.
The reminder can be both an accurate analogy and a complete lie.
And what's not to like about a sports conundrum like that?
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Charlie Jacobs
Brian Babineau/Boston Bruins |
Because, you see, these are very much not your
father's Bruins.
Unless, of course, you are one Charlie Jacobs,
the youngest of the six East Aurora, N.Y., Jacobs children. Then,
not only are the Bruins your father's Bruins — they're merely
a few of your father's 30,000 international employees, a small molecule
in the privately held Delaware North universe.
What's more, the cubs are such a small part of
that conglomerate that the skating members of Bruins Nation are
listed fifth on the depth chart of the company's $1.5 — give
or take a tenth of a — billion dollar, core business (as identified
on its Web site). The pecking order goes like this: hospitality,
food service, retail, gaming, entertainment.
The Bruins do, for the most part, entertain, but
it's the “hospitalitizing,” the food servicing, the
retailing and the gaming that make the Jacobs family wealthy beyond
belief. The Bruins, on the other hand, are a part of a legacy in
which Jacobs men supported other sports teams — toys in their
grown-up toy chest — while growing the real business into
a more diversified entity.
As such, Jeremy "Jerry" Jacobs, Charlie's
dad, began as the head of the company's SportService branch at the
age of 21 and was head of the entire company at 28. For more than
35 years, he has helmed the Delaware North Company to a point where
Forbes, Fortune and the Wall Street Journal follow its every move
with robust interest.
Jacobs' son, Charlie, 34, the man who says he
will, in due time, be one of "the faces of the Bruins,"
banged around the Silicon Valley during the early years of his own
business life.
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| Brian Babineau/Boston
Bruins |
He struck out on his own and even worked for a
different NHL franchise than his dad's (the dysfunctional Los Angeles
Kings, where Charlie says, "I went through three different
ownership groups in three years.")
After that he got into the dot-com boom, fed his
inner "techie" and saw what "content and marketing"
can mean for companies. "(If I had been advising) the clients
I had then (who he built Web sites for), I would have told them
to invest in the content — hire a writer — and the marketing."
Now, as the executive vice president of papa's
puck pushers, he focuses on exactly those two elements: the content
and the marketing. His office houses huge posters of alternate uniforms
and a laptop filled with "incentive programs" and team
initiatives.
Visitors to Bruins headquarters can now see not
only the blue sky above (thanks to the disassembly of the old central
artery) but also the clear vision for a team that has slowly, over
the last decade, become mostly an afterthought in Boston's sports
landscape.
Make no mistake about this: Like his father before
him, Charlie is a hockey guy with hockey passion and hockey heart.
But while his dad needs to focus on everything from hot dog steamers
to gaming machines, the youngest of six Jacobs children can focus
on filling seats and assembling a playoff contender.
Please save the silver spoon jokes and the equestrian
rider stereotyping (one national equestrian observer says Charlie
and his brother, Louis, were both Olympic-caliber equestrians had
they chosen that route). Did Charlie have some opportunities that
accompany great wealth? Yep.
But this isn't another "Thanks Dad"
Gaston son of the Celtics immediate past. In his fourth year, Charlie
Jacobs, the kid who has traveled from the Silicon Valley to the
Valley of the Lockout, is starting to look an awful lot like a guy
his father and uncles once funded long ago: the incomparable P.T.
Barnum of sports, Bill Veeck.
Charlie's not starting any disco demolition nights
per se, but he is getting good numbers at the gate with a less-than-top-tier
product.
What's more, there is some spunk being shown —
no matter what your feelings are on trading away Joe Thornton in
December, it did send a message to the thinking hockey fan: We're
not going to be afraid to make moves, mistakes or major shakeups.
Of course, before the general public can comprehend
that, Charlie needs to get people to understand these two tenets:
1) His dad is human, and 2) Hockey can rule this town again.
If he were to accomplish either, he should be
showered with nothing less than Theo Epstein-like adulation; and
if Charlie were ever to do both, he would be nothing short of Red
Auerbach in Bauers.
As Charlie sees it now — or as he saw it
in early November a few hours before the Bruins would take on the
Ottawa Senators in the team's 18th game of the season — there
are two couplings of faces that are currently at the fore of the
Bruins organization: the first, and most prominent duo is made up
of Harry Sinden, the longtime president and "red" of the
Black and Gold, and his dad, Jerry, the longtime owner who has been
a lightning rod for every thing wrong in Bruins Town.
Not yet as important, but still closer to No.1
than No.3, according to Charlie, are Mike O'Connell, the team's
general manager, and Charlie, himself. "We're not there yet,
but I think it will be pretty obvious in a few years," Jacobs
said in an extended interview with Boston Sports Review at the family-owned
TD Banknorth Garden. "I think I am comfortable in that role.
"In terms of a player being the face, we
made that statement this past summer when we signed Joe Thornton
(to a three-year deal)."
That statement became a question mark a month
later when the Bruins — under the cover of darkness and a
veil of secrecy that would just never be allowed in Red Sox Nation
— fed their "face" to the Sharks of San Jose in
exchange for three players who were both nameless and faceless.
But Jacobs and the hovering-at-.500 B's proved,
through the first half of this season anyway, that mediocrity and
marvelous marketing can not only fill up a building, it can fill
the appetite of beer-guzzling, soda-slurping, hot dog-eating, pizza-scarfing
fans.
According to a Jan.10 Boston Globe business section
story, attendance at the team's first 15 home games (a bit more
than one-third of the team's complete home slate) was 20 percent
higher than the last season of hockey (2003-04). With the building
seeing 15,000 fans fill the 17,565 available seats, the New Garden
concessions' profits would logically rise as well. Meaning that
Charlie is doin' the old man proud even if the product is somewhat
below standard from a pure results standpoint (the team hasn't advanced
past the second round of the playoffs since 1992).
That too, could be changing — because the
B's are talking the talk.
As Charlie says, at least "we're now saying
that we want the Cup. That hadn't been said before around here —
not for a while. That's something that needed to be said."
So the Bruins said it. And kept saying it. They
called it "Bruins," and they tugged on the emotional skate
laces of the diehards, the kiddies and the college crowd ($10-seats)
in a well-executed marketing plan. "We moved the needle a little
a bit," Charlie said, "in terms of people taking notice."
The numbers suggest the kid knows of what he speaks.
Even NESN's hockey coverage has seen a significant bump at a time
when most sports properties on television have been experiencing
steady declines.
"I think the only way to turn perception
is by winning," Charlie said. "And by having my father
repeat his commitment and convey that commitment."
Ah, yes — the conveyance of the commitment.
Charlie is referring to the three-decade belief by many Bruins devotees
that Jeremy Jacobs spends just enough to put his team in a position
where it can be competitive and compelling, but spends too little
to bring Boston its first Stanley Cup in almost 35 years. "When
I say restore, I mean to the 1988 and 1990 Bruins," Charlie
said, noting, "the really true measure is 1972 — the
last Cup team. I think that's where we need to be."
OK — want to know the truth? The bylined
author of this piece, a few months back, wrote an opinion piece
at the back of this magazine about how the Bruins brass didn't care
about its fan base. It suggested that maybe the ice product wasn't
the sole product that mattered to the beancounters at DNC. It maybe
even took a few cheap shots that rankled some of the more ardent
and connected Bruins boosters.
And we heard about it — from people we respect
and consider knowledgeable on such matters. So we decided maybe
we should look further into this Bruins thing and maybe, ya know,
get some balance into our diet.
We can't say the game we went to in mid-November
made us want to immediately pursue any particular ticket package,
but it did give us a glimpse into what Charlie is trying to do at
one of his father's factories. The building may not buzz quite yet,
but it does bustle.
Did you know there are some ice shavings girls
at the Garden who skate out frequently in tight, black, stretchy
pants and hold buckets in place while the ice shavings guys dump
their ice into their Rubbermaids? True story.
Or how about the fact that Crown Royal brings
you an icing call moments after the time the puck crosses the Reebok
blue line?
True that, as well.
In fact, despite a reported dearth of corporate
sponsorships, the Bruins have managed to find enough presenting
partners to even convince Ford that black and blue hockey is "Built
Ford Tough." And let's not forget that Smokey The (Bruin) Bear
has found a role in all this hockey hoopla by urging on the crowd
with a "Here we go" every now and again.
Remember that thing about "content and marketing?"
This is what Charlie is talking about. He's not just the pretty
face who married the model (Kim) and spawned the Kodak-ready family.
He's also the guy who cut his teeth on some high-level Internet
genesis projects at both TRW Systems Integration Group and later,
Total Media Group in San Francisco. "It was brilliant stuff,"
he said with a hint of longing in his voice. "(TRW) had technology
10, 15 years ago that would blow you away, still, today. Cutting-edge
technology." Later he "had a couple of guys hacking HTML
in a garage, and by 2000, Total Media had a staff of 30 working
on cutting-edge HTML sites."
He adds, sounding more like his dad's 65 than
his own 34, "It was a hell of a ride."
Now, he's on another "hell of a ride."
One that he hopes will end atop a duck boat near City Hall Plaza,
as the region's champs.
David Scott can be reached at feedback@hockeyjournal.com.
This article appeared in the February
2006 issue of Boston Sports Review.
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