Update II: New Gladiators’ owner Dan Gilbert was unavailable to speak to the media during the press conference earlier this week announcing the acquisition of the arena team, but he shared a few thoughts with Scene today prior to the tipoff of the Cavs game.
“We’re excited about it,” Gilbert says. “To keep it here, and build on what they did before.”
“We liked having them in the arena, and it was a good run,” he says. “I think they were going to sort of potentially not be here this year [if this didn’t happen]. It was a pretty easy transaction, not a long, complicated negotiation. We wanted to keep the team here. It’s not going to be a massive money maker, you know, but we don’t really care about that. We wanted to fill up as many dates [in the arena] as we could, and give fans the best experience we can.”
“The thing is, we already had the infrastructure here already,” he says. “We have the marketing, the people. So it’s kind of easy in that regard, you don’t have to hire a bunch of additional people. We can deploy ours.”
***
Update: It’s official today: Dan Gilbert purchased the Gladiators, just like we told you ten days ago when we broke the news. Press conference in the early afternoon for the announcement.
***
A little birdie tells Scene that Dan Gilbert is buying the Cleveland Gladiators, the arena football team that already plays its games at The Q. (We tweeted erroneously last night that Dan Gilbert “bought” the team, which implied it was done. We definitely should have said “is buying.” Our mistake. Blame it on the Jameson. The source, however, said it’s happening.)
Crain’s posted a report this morning that the talks are in the “early stages” and that nothing is “imminent.” Fox 8’s John Telich tweeted that nothing is done, but that the Gilbert has interest and is doing his “due diligence.”
The Gladiators are currently owned by Jim Ferraro, a man with a long history of success and controversy, both here and in Florida.
Either way, it looks like Dan Gilbert will pick up the deed to yet another Cleveland organization. It’s only a matter of time before he owns the gas station down the street from your house, too.
This article appears in Jan 18-24, 2012.
Now if he would only buy the Indians. He should be able to get it cheap
Writing on the clevescene blog is like writing and then putting what you write into a drawer somewhere and forgetting about it..or burying it in a time capsule for someone to read in five hundred years or so. Unlike the PD which is reads every word and hates everything which their reporters did not write to be edited by their new right wing censors and blog trolls. I think that anything written in the PD goes through the same idiots which the Dispatch has in control. Bought and paid for by the republican party and a ladies underwear company who sends soft porn out to every young girl in America to look at and feel like a looser. VS, the main underwear company from central Ohio has children in Africa pick cotton for the underwear factories in places other than the USA. I would rather have a rich guy like Dan Gilbert getting richer from our fine city than the crew of creeps down south. Just about all rich guys are republicans and use their money to lever things which they want, but the guys in Columbus want to continue to control the media, which after all is supposed to be free speech in America. I like to write this stuff on clevescene because no one reads anything I write here, and most likely does not understand it if they do. It serves as kind of a draft file which may have a message and a messenger, but no receiver. I am banking on the clevescene to not zap all of the work I have done on this site because I have not printed it all and have no electronic backup. The PD has a whole bunch of my work and they banned me from their whole network of censorship rags and blogs. I like clevescene better because you can say anything and not worry about it being read or censored. Only joe1750 or some name like that has left me any responses and his have been demands to quit writing anything on the clevescene site. He said he hates people who write on blogs even if no one reads them…makes sense in some circles I am sure.