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The question comes about the succession plan. Ilitch is in good health for an 86-year-old, but that’s still well past retirement age. His wife and children will inherit the Red Wings and Tigers, but will they keep them?The pizza-company naming rights might be a clue. If the team is sold by the Ilitch heirs, their legacy will remain on the façade of Little Caesar’s Arena.
Who would succeed the Ilitches? That’s where the soccer announcement comes in.
As a sports owner, Gilbert is best known as the brash brains behind the Cleveland Cavaliers, but he’s also a major player in the rebirth of Detroit. A native of the city, Gilbert has spent billions buying up huge chunks of the city. He’s announced plans for much of it, including an enormous renovation of Brush Park, a historic area just north of Comerica Park and Ford Field, and only a short walk from Little Caesar’s Arena.
Also nearby? The most controversial site in the city – the place where Wayne County has wasted hundreds of millions trying to build a new county jail. Gilbert badly craves the land, which is located on a freeway entrance to downtown, in order to build an entertainment complex.
Along with Gores, the owner of the Detroit Pistons, he’s now proposing to put a 20,000-seat MLS stadium in the heart of that complex.
It isn’t hard to see where Gilbert is looking next. He’s never made a secret of the fact he’d love to own the Tigers, but he could do a lot more if he strikes a deal with the Ilitch empire for all of Olympia Entertainment.
He’d get the Tigers and the Red Wings, plus a 40,000-seat baseball stadium that only opened in 2000 and a 20,000-seat hockey arena that will open in 2017. He’d also get the Fox Theater – the crown jewel of Detroit concert venues, located a couple hundred yards from both Comerica Park and Little Caesar’s Stadium.
Gilbert has positioned himself to be the biggest landowner in Detroit 2.0, and owning three stadiums and multiple concert venues in the heart of the city would make him an enormous power broker.
The Ilitch family can’t match that, but they could walk away with a gigantic payday and their company’s name still flying high on a state-of-the-art arena.
Anyone remember this rumor from from two years ago? It came from the same guy that predicted Babcock would end up in Toronto.
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McGown said, “There are some issues — I’m hearing repeatedly that the Red Wings and the Tigers and Little Caesars are all for sale. The Ilitches are in the process of doing estate planning and have let it be known that somebody could buy the whole kit and kaboodle.
“If I know that, I’m quite sure Mike Babcock knows that. I can’t speak to his relationship with the ownership, but maybe he sees a culture change, a seat change happening at a larger level in Detroit.”
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, but from what I'm hearing Chris Ilitch is in charge and he's not into the sports business like his dad. If Mike was running the show, there's no doubt he would have jumped at the MLS opportunity with Gilbert. This latest rumor confirms that not only the Tigers, but the entire Olympia Entertainment could be up for sale. Little Caesars and the Casino would be the only thing he keeps, which is why it makes perfect sense to name the arena after LC. That way he has his business' name on the arena long after the sports teams are sold.