From his 29th floor office in a tower on West Georgia, beaming about his latest acquisition, there seems no one happier alive than industrialist Amar Doman.
Yet he has our sympathies.
Doman is the new owner of the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League. He bought the team from the estate of the late David Braley for an unspecified amount of money and, in the process, bought into a sumptuous amount of challenges.
When he was introduced at BC Place on opening night in the curtailed, delayed season, he got the warmest, most hopeful ovation. The hard-core fans recognized the local boy-done-good as the Lions’ last line of defence.
But where does one start with his complications?
A cavernous stadium rarely quarter-filled.
A terrible deal on concessions and parking.
A fan base aging out.
A franchise stationed in the city instead of the surrounding, more football-friendly communities.
A league that lost all of its 2020 season to the pandemic and could not get the federal government to help.
A team that still cannot fill the stands because of the coronavirus.
A sport in an uncertain spot with youth and with parents fearful of concussions and other injuries.
A Canadian brand that, no matter how engaging, will be overrun in the ratings when the game to the south resumes next weekend.
One might expect Doman, with these and possibly other poxes on his house, to be running around like he had just fielded a kick and was fleeing tacklers for safety. Instead, serenity. The executive known as a long-term value investor possesses the assurance of someone with time still well on his side.
“Let’s get through this shortened season,” he says, by way of signalling a lengthy listening period that will follow in order to right the ship.
No question, he will want PavCo to renegotiate his stadium deal, in what he calls the “push to profitability.”
No question, he will want to bolster youth programs to build a generation of fans.
No question, the team’s players will need to redouble their visibility to connect in the community.
No question, he will want to work with other owners to fix what ails the league, particularly the crucial but perennially imperilled Toronto franchise, one he believes would be better vested with a football-only ownership than nested in Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment (MLSE).
But those are tasks for another day. Today, his self-described “honeymoon period” is for breathing and bathing in the beauty of a business that is more about its identity statement than its income statement.
“This isn’t about a massive profit-and-loss situation,” he says. “This asset is for the people of British Columbia.”
Doman’s Futura Corp. is the product of more than three decades in building – lumber, wire, nails, real estate. Yet, for reasons that might escape many British Columbians, he has yearned for two decades for a quite different building project.
While Doman won’t have two more decades to fix what ails the squad, he has studied the situation long enough to see a different kind of return on investment.
“It’s been a ship out at sea,” he says of his new acquisition, cautious to praise his predecessor, given that Braley bailed water out of the hull for years here, in Hamilton and even at one point in Toronto.
“It’s going to take listening, it’s going to take learning, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take investment.”
When they last played in 2019, the Lions were hardly kings of the jungle. Their 5-13 record matched their worst in 23 years. Their new coach, DeVone Claybrooks, was one and done and is now out of football after working his way up the ranks, running a Calgary franchise of the Coffee News that rests on restaurant tables to amuse.
In came a new regime under Rick Campbell, then the coronavirus killed off an entire season. In the early going of the 2021 Lions there is a clearer coherence on the field. But Doman knows that bringing fans back requires more than years of winning.
“It’s going to take listening, it’s going to take learning, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take investment.”
It also takes emotionally driven ingredients to discern the style of stewardship necessary for success. Sports franchises are trophies but they commingle with disparate social purposes that help define their communities and even regulate their moods in ways most other businesses don’t.
An owner has to read the room, and while no owner could be so granular as to design the pass patterns for quarterback Michael Reilly’s receivers, he has to bring that reading into leading actively and protractively through his skill set that brought his own success.
“I’ll make sure I find the time and the money to put into it.” Pay particular attention to that m-word.
He envisions a team that spends a lot of time in schools, at community rallies, in all sorts of venues to “get this whole province excited about a team that I think has been lacking in that department for awhile.”
Few might wish to have his responsibilities, but no one would wish his failure.
A clue in how Doman will function likely comes from how he was brought into adulthood by a father and uncle in business to buy his first enterprise at age 18. With his own young family now – children 11, 9 and 7 – he turns the conversation over to the importance of sport in a young person’s life filled with options that are not always positive.
“Putting children on the right path is very important to me,” he says. “If you’ve helped one kid, or a hundred kids, go in the right direction, I’ve done my job.” •
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
