Staples Center packs its schedule after NBA lockout ends
What lockout?
AEG, the owner of Staples Center, said that in the first four months of this year, the arena will make up for most of the events lost in the previous four months, when contract disputes between the National Basketball Assn. and its players left many venues, including Staples, dark for much of the fall.
Now that the NBA is back in full swing, the 20,000-seat arena in downtown Los Angeles is booked nearly to capacity with games and concerts through April 26, the end of the NBA’s season.
In the 124 days of the shortened NBA season — which started on Christmas — Staples is scheduled to host 127 events, said Lee Zeidman, general manager of Staples as well as Nokia Theatre and the L.A. Live complex adjacent to the venues.
“From a financial standpoint, the arena has a good chance of hitting its original budget” before the lockout, Zeidman said Thursday. “The restaurants at L.A. Live also will get close to hitting their original projections.”
Because some days have more than one event, the arena still has nine empty days, but many of them are likely to be filled as the Los Angeles company continues to reach out to concert promoters and event managers, Zeidman said.
It wasn’t easy to endure the uncertainty of the lockout, with the NBA canceling only two weeks of games at a time as it negotiated with players, Zeidman said. Staples, which is home to both the Lakers and the Clippers, had little time to book events to replace the missing games.
“You just can’t pick up the phone and call Lady Gaga and say, ‘Hey, you want to play here?’ It doesn’t work that way. Tours are booked months in advance,” Zeidman said. “We looked at everything from roller derby to action sports to tribute concerts.”
Staples managed to fill four of the empty dates with a boxing match in October, an additional concert from Katy Perry in November and two additional performances from Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne tour in December.
That helped make Staples the No. 1 concert venue in 2011 in number of tickets sold, beating out New York’s Madison Square Garden, according to a report released Thursday by Pollstar, a firm that tracks the live event business.
More than just empty seats were at stake. AEG employs between 2,000 and 4,000 part-time workers for each event, in staff security, concessions, parking and other jobs. L.A. Live’s 19 restaurants tightened their belts during the lockout as well.
