Brice Wallace
Taking over a well-known, established entity provides an opportunity for innovation, but also presents challenges, including determining “what do you give up versus what do you double-down on?”
That was the theme for a recent on-stage chat between Ryan Smith, owner of the Utah Jazz and co-founder and chairman of the Smith Entertainment Group, and Reed Hastings, co-founder and executive chairman of Netflix Inc. During the eighth annual Silicon Slopes Summit, Smith, the relatively new owner of the Utah Jazz, and Hastings, the new majority owner of the Powder Mountain ski resort, talked about the new phases of their lives.
Smith, founder and executive chairman of tech company Qualtrics, spoke of retaining elements of the past for the Jazz, including bringing back the Delta Center name of the team’s arena, while also being unconventional in attempting to win an NBA championship in Utah.
Smith said he has found that some things considered sacred were, upon further review, not sacred. “And I think that I’ve encouraged the people taking over Qualtrics, like, ‘There’s nothing sacred here,’” he said.
Hastings, who also served as Netflix CEO until 2020 and for the next three years was co-CEO, said Powder Mountain has “incredible potential” but will see several infrastructure changes related to lifts and parking. Detailed plans for “the next version of Powder” will be announced next summer, he said.
While retaining the thrills of the ski experience, Powder Mountain will try to advance beyond that, he said. It is difficult to compete with Alta and Snowbird for “adrenaline,” so Powder Mountain will also offer a place for reflection, beauty, stillness, peacefulness and spirituality, he said.
It likely will take a couple of years for it to happen, but Hastings said the goal for Powder Mountain is to become “the premium place in the world for being and doing.”
Hastings said that both attending Jazz games and skiing Powder Mountain are ways for people to gather and enjoy emotional connections with others.
For the Jazz, those emotional connections will be built not just at the Delta Center but via television, with games back on over-the-air TV via local station KJZZ, and on other electronic devices with Jazz+, a new direct-to-consumer streaming service offering live games and exclusive content.
“Your entry ticket is streaming. I’m glad you’re streaming, but it’s like you’ve barely begun,” Hastings told Smith, adding that now comes the challenge of building and strengthening relationships with 3 million fans in Utah and 30 million outside the state.
People like Netflix because its focus has been on having good shows and movies, and with that strong underlying product, the emotion of making connections to the programming becomes a relationship between Netflix and its customers, he said.
“Think of streaming as electricity. It’s not going to be novel,” he cautioned Smith. “Streaming fades into the background, just kind of like, ‘Oh, you’ve got electricity now; that’s great.’ … It’s just going to be the default, the fabric.”
However, Hastings promised, “Once you have electricity, the amount of innovation is phenomenal.”