After selling SFX Entertainment, Mr. Sillerman pursued various entertainment projects. The transaction renamed the company to Function (X), Inc. and changing its listing on the stock exchange to FNCX. Investor Robert Sillerman, who bought Elvis Presley Enterprises, photographed with Elvis impersonators, 2005. 1 show on television, drawing some 30 million viewers, which is great, but it means that fewer than one out of ten people in America watch it, Sillerman says. Bob is like a Clint Eastwood character in an old Western movie, says Dennis Arfa, a business associate of Sillerman. Which would seem to be a naturalElvis and Vegas go together like peanut butter and bananas. Read the original story on The New York . Before 157 West 57th Street became One57, that glassy billionaire's priapism which has come to stand for a whole battery of class . In her ruling, McMahon said the buyout offer was likely made to distract attention from the companys poor quarterly financial reports, which showed that SFX was bleeding money and attendance at its events dropping. Sillerman, Self: 60 Minutes. Sillerman was the owner of a range of television and radio stations during the 1970s and 1980s, In 1993 he formed SFX Broadcasting, and then built SFX Entertainmenta concert and stage performance promoter that was sold to Clear Channel in 2000 for $4.4 billion. But stars still do get born. Thats $4.3 millionlessthat what Sillerman and his wife Laura had paid for the residence at 151 E. 72nd St. when they bought it for $12 million in 2013. His father, Michael McKinley Sillerman, was a radio executive who went bankrupt when his son was 13. Steve Hicks left to join another radio venture after a few years, and in 1997, Sillerman sold SFX, which then owned some 70 radio stations, to Hicks Muse for $75 a share, or $2.1 billion. We thought there were only three rock groups worth owning, says a source in Sillermans camp, Elvis, the Beatles, and the Stones. It was a very good, good combination, says Morrow. He graduated from Brandeis in 1969 and, three years later, sold Youth Marketing Consultants to Ingalls, an advertising firm in Boston. Connecting the show to phones, through the Internet, through merchandising, and ways I cant talk about yet.. In the years following that tragic 2012 event, he was often treated as a cartoon villain in the media, trying for a third, fourth and even fifth act in business, and some say the death of his daughter hardened him to any criticism. SFX Entertainment was the largest presenter, promoter and producer of live events in the world. But then to discount the price the way that it did was a self-fulfilling prophecy in that discouraged other bidders, which was unfortunate and had an implication on me and my financing., Established SFX festival events like Tomorrowland in Belgium attract thousands every year, but it's [+] unclear if newer events will have the same kind of draw. Robert Sillerman and Laura Baudo Sillerman attend NEW YORKERS FOR CHILDREN 2007 Fall Gala at 583 Park Avenue on September 18, 2007 in New York City. In June 2007, Sillerman told investors of CKX--a Nasdaq vehicle hed created with intellectual property rights to American Idol, Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali--that hed pay $13.75 a share to take the company private. Just ask the makers of the smash-hit movie Lilo and Stitch, who used an Elvis soundtrack to great success. [39], On November 24, 2019, Sillerman died at the age of 71 after a respiratory illness.[40]. 2023 Fortune Media IP Limited. The top contestants on the show are signed to Sony BMG, and 19 gets 10% of their recording revenue. The CK stands for content is king, while the X is a reference to one of his middle initials (they are F.X., and he wont tell anyone what they stand for). He sold the company in 1971, and then launched I P+E, a sales marketing and promotion company. In characteristic form, Sillerman wont give investors any firm commitments. He. Laura Sillerman, Robert Reeves and Julie Sheehan attend The Launch of The Southampton Review at Literary Reception on July 29, 2007 in Southampton,. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Sillerman with Rod Stewart and Dick Grasso at the NYSE. No question we could build a convention-sized hotel here, says Soden. They acquired additional radio and TV stations, including WALL and WKGL (Middletown, New York); WJJB; (Hyde Park, New York); WHMP (Northampton, Massachusetts); WLOM (Orleans, Massachusetts); WRAN (Randolph, New Jersey); WPLR (New Haven, Connecticut) and the television station WATL (Atlanta). When presented to the public--and later, Wall Street--the plan for SFX Entertainment seemed simple enough: roll up local EDM event organizers under one umbrella organization that could drive profits by providing structure and efficiency. FORBES first started charting DJ earnings in 2012; a year later, the collective income of the top ten acts had doubled. FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. In 2011, he sold that company for $512 million and tried his hand at commercial real estate with decidely less luck, defaulting on a loan from Credit Suisse equalling $21.4 million. Clear Channel, which had already purchased many of Sillermans radio stations from Hicks Muse, agreed to buy SFX Entertainment for a reported $3 billion. In February 2014, a lawsuit was filed against Sillerman, for allegedly having defrauded a trio of business partners. Sillerman, a triathlete who loves vigorous games of volleyball and basketball, has recovered and now sports a yellow Livestrong bracelet. At Fridays price of 91 cents, SFXs shares are down 93% from its IPO price. His brother, Michael, confirmed his death but gave no other details. Try A Different OS, Get Vaccinated? Robert F.X. Elviss legendary manager, Colonel Tom Parker (a.k.a. He made a lot of people wealthy, and he made himself even wealthier., Visit with Sillerman for an hour or two in his Manhattan office, and you are likely to get a rapid-fire discourse on politics from the 1960s to today, or rock & roll radio, or Thoreau, or education in America, or all of the above. Now, after lying in the weeds for a few years and fighting and beating cancer, Sillerman is at it again, pulling together another media empire, whichthough Sillerman wont acknowledge that he has an endgame in mindhell ultimately look to sell for another big score. He likes to jump out of the bushes or hide in hotel rooms and scare people, says Cousin Brucie. Though the Elvis business isnt that big yet, it gives us a window into how Sillerman operates. Sitting kitty-corner from Graceland across Elvis Presley Boulevard, it is a 128-room boutique property with a small pool and a tiny bar, perennially packed to the gills with Elvis fans. He also carried heavy personal pain after the suicide of his 18-year-old daughter Mackinley in 2012, losing his only child in the home he shared with his wife Laura Baudo Sillerman. A serial media-industry entrepreneur, Sillerman was best-known at the time for buying up concert promoters under the rubric of SFX Entertainment and, in 2000, selling them to the radio giant. Attracting funds, at least at this point, wont be a limitation. (Photo: Robin Marchant/Getty Images). Beyond the lawsuit, questions have also been raised about the fundamentals of a business that some analysts said relied on what they deemed a cultural fad. and attractions such as Memphis' Graceland to Robert Sillerman, . Their daughter, Mackinley, died in 2012. Thats not the basis of CKX. It Takes a Lot of People to Create All This AI Music. By day he majored in political science, while by night in 1966 he launched Youth Market Consultants, offering fellow students discount magazine subscriptions while advising marketers on how to target the teen set. He wa ), Sillerman, who had extensive exposure to the rock & roll business as a radio executive and concert promoter, realized that owning the rights to a rock act could be a great business. Im not very knowledgeable about real estate, he reportedly told the New York Post at the time. This year, he agreed to pay a $179,000 fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission for defrauding investors of another of his companies, Function(x). Revenues at the company that manages his affairs, Elvis Presley Enterprises, have been flat at $40 million for five years. While Sillermans buying spree made sense to few of the sellers in the later 90s, the dots quickly connected by the time he sold the business. CKX Inc. has been flying under the radar despite owning stakes in some of the biggest pop culture icons of our time, including "American Idol," Elvis Presley . [35] For thirteen years, Sillerman served as the Chancellor of Southampton College and is the founder of The Tomorrow Foundation. When things were going bad, he was looking for ways to try and make it work, Finkel said. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Michael Sillerman died in 1980, just when his sons career was taking off. What about a world champion Idol drawn from all the different nations? The show venue may be moved from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to save money (and perhaps to fill a certain 2,000-seat theater). (A hip-hop-style remix of A Little Less Conversation was a No. He was 71. This year, there are 88 festivals that we anticipate doing, said Sillerman. Once on the Forbes 400 list, . It wasnt a plan too dissimilar to Sillermans moves with the original SFX where he spent more than $1.2 billion to gobble up regional rock promoters, venues and management companies in the late 90s. [14] That greatly reduces the number of viewers who DVR it and skip the commercials. In some ways, thats good news for Sillerman and SFX: the cost of talent is no longer skyrocketing. Some $20 million. It runs in the family: Lisa Marie Presley signs autographs for NASCAR fans at Daytona Speedway this past July.Jeff Gross Getty Images, Sillermans latest publicly traded corporate incarnation is called CKX. In 2011, Apollo Management purchased CKX in 2011 for $512 million. Unable to eat solid foods, he was prone to horrible coughing fits and had to eat through a feeding tube. Sillerman worth at the age of 71 years old? In 2001, Britains ITV put Fullers baby, Pop Idol, on the air. Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk), sold the rights to RCAnow part of Sony BMGdecades ago. (A spokesman for Lisa Presley declined to comment. And Fuller is looking to bring a gritty nighttime soap opera that is popular in Britain to America next summer. Another $25 million from CKX went to pay off EPE debt. With Finkel by his side and Estopinal giving the pair needed credibility, Sillerman set out to once again consolidate the dance music business by buying up dance promoters in Europe, Asia and North America. Brucie and Bob bought more stations and worked their magic on operations. Capstar applied for and received permission to operate more than one class of radio station in the same market. But when I took it to America, almost everyone rejected it, Fuller recalls. He wants to do what we want to do. Like what? He managed Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics, and then created the Spice Girls. Young Sillerman graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis in 1969 after becoming immersed in counterculture politics and rock & roll. As a business, though, Elvis has been stagnating. He seems to have a knack for selling just when markets are at their peak, which has given some buyers severe indigestion. We want to make money both by selling tickets and by putting a live audience in front of Madison Avenue, he said in an interview in 1998. In September 2016, U.S. district court judge Colleen McMahon ruled there was evidence that Sillerman likely misrepresented the go-private plan to inflate the companys price and allowed a lawsuit by investors with the Guevoura Fund to move forward. around. As for Sillermans take on Lisa: I was impressed with how real and grounded she was. I suppose there are all kinds of gratifying lines of work, he says. He just didnt a fabout anything, said one former business partner who did not want to share their name. Sillerman's net worth , money, salary, income, and . 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