AEG Makes an Olympic Movement

With an eye toward branching out into yet another area of sports, the Anschutz Entertainment Group has begun negotiations to bring the national headquarters and showcase events of several Olympic-oriented sports to its new $120-million national training center being constructed in Carson.

Tim Leiweke, president of AEG and the NHL’s Kings, said Monday AEG has talked with top executives of soccer, tennis, cycling, track and field and volleyball with a goal of bringing those sports’ operations to the complex on the Cal State Dominguez Hills campus.

He also said AEG, which is financing the project, is negotiating to build the only outdoor velodrome in North America on the site--”not only as a world-class training facility, but as a place people would come to for amateur cycling and racing,” Leiweke said.

The national training center will include soccer and tennis stadiums and will be the training base for the U.S. men’s and women’s national soccer teams. The U.S. Soccer Federation, however, is not expected to move its offices there.

Leiweke said he hopes other sports will move their operations to Carson or nearby. He has already helped bring the Women’s Tennis Assn. championships to Staples Center--another Philip Anschutz-owned venue--in November, and the WTA has talked about moving to Los Angeles.

“You’re going to see a shift,” Leiweke predicted. “The U.S. Olympic Committee is probably going to be less focused on bricks and mortar and more focused on athletes and development. That’s going to be an opportunity for us to step in and provide not only a place for athletes to train, but for these sports to bring their coaches, personnel and maybe their offices to this campus.”

Leiweke has also talked to the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals about making the training center a “festival site” for beach volleyball events--sand would be trucked in.

Even for AEG, which encompasses more than 30 divisions and companies that develop, produce, market and manage sports and entertainment events, the training center is an ambitious project. But Leiweke said it fits into the company’s strategy.

“We also see an opportunity to reestablish L.A. as one of the top cities in the country for the Olympic movement,” he said.