T H E
C O N V E R S AT I O N LO R E N ZO F E R T I T TA ( M B A ’ 9 3 )
C H A I R M A N O F F E R T I T TA C A P I TA L A N D D I R E C TO R OF RED ROCK RESORTS INC.
BRAND CREATOR
LORENZO FERTITTA WAS BORN AND RAISED IN LAS VEGAS, where in 1976 his father founded a casino business. Lorenzo and his older brother, Frank Fertitta III, assumed leadership of Station Casinos in 1993. They expanded the company into a broader gaming and hospitality business with revenue of about $1.5 billion. In 2001, they acquired the nearly bankrupt Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) for $2 million, and in an incredible turn-around story, built an empire that sold for $4 billion in 2016. The sale was considered to be the largest transaction in professional sports history. Now, the brothers have turned their attention to Fertitta Capital, a private investment firm they launched in 2017, which invests in consumer-facing companies in the technology, media, and entertainment sectors. The Fertitta brothers created and funded the Fertitta Veterans Program in 2016 at NYU Stern with a gift of $15 million.
BIO BOX M BA from NYU Stern in 1993 Expanded Ultimate Fighting Championship, a mixed martial arts promoter, and gained worldwide TV distribution STERN BUSINESS FALL 2018
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Chairman of Fertitta Capital and director, Red Rock Resorts
Edited by M A R I LY N HARRIS
Believed to be the only program of its kind at a US business school, the Fertitta Veterans Program includes scholarships, career programming, access to corporations and alumni, engagement with veteran alumni mentors, and social activities for military veteran and active-duty students entering the Full-time MBA program. Q: What was it like growing up in Las Vegas and in that environment, working with your dad and your brother? LORENZO FERTITTA: The casino
business was our family business. My dad had borrowed 400 bucks to get out to Las Vegas from Galveston, Texas. He worked on the strip in various roles, starting as a bellman and then he became a dealer and
worked his way up—the perfect American story. But he was an entrepreneur at heart, and he had this idea that all the casinos at the time were either located on the Las Vegas strip or in downtown Las Vegas. When he and his buddies would get off work, they wanted to grab a drink, maybe even go gamble, but they didn’t want to intermix with the tourists. He wanted to create a place for locals, so he built a 5,000-square-foot casino. It had 100 slot machines, four table games, and 90 employees, and that’s how it started. Growing up in that environment, my dad let me sit in on meetings, so I got a chance to learn from a true entrepreneur how you think about the business, how you’re passionate about every single level of detail that’s involved.
Q: What drew you to invest in Ultimate Fighting Championship? LF: My brother and I were
closet fans of the UFC. Dana White, who ended up being our partner in the UFC and now runs it, started managing a lot of these guys. Dana called me one day and said, “I’ve been talking to the owner of the UFC. He’s looking to raise some capital or to sell the company. You should call him.” I started talking to him and he wanted a million dollars for half the business, so I offered him two million for the whole thing. Within about 60 days we owned the UFC. We had no experience with the business side of sports or combat sports, but we were passionate about it. We thought we could brand combat sports, so we took a branded approach. We put in a
