The Cleveland Cavaliers just completed one of the most successful regular seasons in franchise history. They topped 60 wins for just the third time ever and finished the year with the best record in the Eastern Conference for just the fourth time in team history. For as much success as they’ve had on the court, success has followed them off the court, too. Community Leader caught up with Bill Fagan, team president of business operations, to learn more about the mix of sports and performance that fuels Rock Entertainment.
Community Leader: What’s the latest with Rock Entertainment?
Bill Fagan: A lot of people don’t know it, because we haven’t necessarily shouted it from the mountaintops, but Rock Entertainment Group was formed in 2021, and it’s really the umbrella of Dan [Gilbert]’s family of companies for sports and entertainment, specifically. So, you’ve got the Charge, the Monsters and the Cavs under that umbrella, and then you have all the related services that we provide. We support properties like Tennis in The Land and Pickle in The Land. We’re supporting mostly with commercial services. Whether that’s sponsorship, corporate partnership support or ticketing support.
RELATED: Austin Love is Changing the Cleveland Real Estate SceneCL: In what areas do you see the company growing in the next five to 10 years?
BF: Really stick to our knitting. When you think about what our strengths are in commercializing assets in sports and entertainment, particularly in our geographic region of focus, which is really that Great Lakes area, call it from as high as Buffalo all the way down to Cleveland and over to Detroit. If it fits that geographic profile, we’ll be listening. We have one of the biggest and best business intelligence groups in the NBA. We are now at roughly 550 full-time team members, and you layer on our part-time team members. We’re well over a thousand.
CL: Recently, the name of the venue the Cleveland Cavaliers play in changed its name from Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse to Rocket Arena. What went into that change?
BF: We’re celebrating our 30th year of the arena being open and the arena has seen so many great things. From hosting many Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [induction ceremonies] to the Women’s Final Four last year, and we host upwards of 150 to 175 events per year. There’s just a lot of traffic that’s going through here, and going from Gund Arena to Quicken Loans Arena to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and now Rocket Arena. Our fans have already told us this is the easiest and ask why didn’t you do this sooner? The reality is because our naming rights partner Rocket has rebranded. We’re aligning with that rebrand and have gone through a monumental effort to take every single piece of signage. This will be a months-long process to get us realigned with Rocket.
