343 - Room to Grow

If it weren't for that resemblance to Vivien Leigh, Nolan might have forgotten her by now.

"It's a long story." Layla glanced at the women with him, then gave a small, awkward smile. "Yours seems to have gotten pretty complicated too."

She was trying not to stare at this unusual family. Until now, she'd only encountered arrangements like it in stories about eccentric religious leaders.

"It's not exactly common," Nolan said. "But I thought we were booked with someone else."

Their usual doctor was a friend of Lisa's. Nolan preferred dealing with people he knew.

"Something came up for her today. She asked me to cover rather than cancel your appointments. These are routine checks. I can handle them."

Layla added, "I left Alabama and came back to Los Angeles a while ago. I work here now."

She'd first been the school physician at BHHS. Nolan had helped her get a position at Alabama, and she'd welcomed the experience. During the year he was injured, she'd returned to Los Angeles and used that experience to secure a job at this private center. The pay was better, the workload lighter, and home closer. She'd stayed.

After a little more conversation, she carried out the examinations. Everything looked normal.

"Have you ever considered working with an NFL team?" Katherine asked as they were finishing. "We need a medical director."

The Angels needed more than a director. They needed an entire network of physicians: specialists in ophthalmology, orthopedics, and neurosurgery, along with three medical consultants and a pharmacist. So far, a private hospital had handled their examinations. It was expensive and slow.

Katherine wasn't proposing that Layla or the other specialists sit at the facility twenty-four hours a day. They would keep their own practices and work with the team as needed. Plenty of established doctors operated that way.

Dealing with the physicians directly would also spare the club the hospital's markup.

It sounded like extra income with little reason to turn it down, but Layla shook her head. "My contract here doesn't allow it. I do have another suggestion. Why not buy the center? The founder is looking for a buyer. You'd have access to the staff through the business, and the center earns money in its own right."

With enough cash to spare, Nolan might have considered it.

The hospital acquisitions he'd read about involved hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes more than a billion. Columbia/HCA and the other big hospital chains played with amounts he could hardly contemplate spending.

This center had fewer departments and only a handful of beds, but it catered to wealthy patients in an excellent setting. It wouldn't be cheap either.

Even a price in the tens of millions was more than he could spare right now. He still needed a house.

"Maybe down the road," he said.

For now, he'd have to ask around for younger physicians who'd recently finished their training and were building their practices.

They left in the stretched Escalade. As the household grew, Nolan had asked Peter to find a shop that could extend the vehicle. The conversion created more room and replaced the forward-facing rows with seats along the sides. It also added an entertainment system, a refrigerator, sofas, and a large television. Reinforced structural components, bodywork, and glass followed the standard he'd set with Ground Force One. He'd named this one Ground Force Two.

Peter drove home to collect Mia, then headed for Beverly Hills. This was the day's main event. Lisa had arranged viewings with several high-end agents.

"Just under three acres, seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a tennis court, and a pool. We're near the Bel Air boundary. You can see across Los Angeles, and the terrace is spectacular at night."

"That's Oprah's place to the west, Mr. Callahan. Spielberg's isn't far to the east."

"Stallone was here with his wife and daughter last week. They liked it very much. If you're interested, I wouldn't wait too long."

By the end of the afternoon, Mia, Katherine, and Kelsey were dazzled. Lisa, who already owned a home in Beverly Hills, remained clearheaded enough to steer them around several expensive mistakes.

"Don't buy that one," she murmured as they left a property in Benedict Canyon. "It's been rebuilt, but that's the old Polanski place."

Nolan had liked it until then. Once he understood its connection to the murders, he lost interest.

Their last stop was another secluded hillside estate in the Beverly Hills area, within easy reach of Wilshire Boulevard.

"A little over four acres," the agent began. "The drive winds up through the trees. Infrared sensors cover the perimeter; even a stray cat will trip them. English country landscaping, a Mediterranean main house. Richard Landry designed the house and interiors. Twelve bedrooms, fourteen bathrooms, a separate wine cellar, an entertainment room with a bar, a twenty-five-seat theater, a sauna, and a gym with a hot tub."

The grounds were just as elaborate: a broad lawn and garden, a heated pool with a waterfall and slide, a terrace for grilling and outdoor dining, and stables with a small riding ring. There was still undeveloped land beyond them. They could add an indoor basketball court or a separate game room later.

Everyone with him could picture living there.

The asking price was over fifty million dollars. That was supposedly a concession to the location, which wasn't Beverly Hills' most prestigious, and to the seller's need to move quickly. Otherwise, the agent said, it would be worth at least seventy million, more than Spielberg's nearby purchase.

Nolan had expected thirty million to be enough.

Fifty million was roughly two years of his salary, before any share of the club's profits.

"If I sell my house and put a little more with it, I can contribute about fifteen million," Lisa told him privately. "I'll transfer it when you need it."

She'd made a similar offer before. She wasn't joking now either.

He declined. Her house still had room to appreciate. This purchase would stretch him, but he could manage it himself.

"Well, if everyone likes it... go pick your rooms."

They wouldn't have to renovate before moving in, which helped justify the price. And there was the future value. If the market ran toward the 2007 peak he remembered, he could imagine the estate selling for several hundred million. It might be a very good investment.

The expectant mothers hurried upstairs, Susan included. After they'd chosen, he set aside rooms for McKenna and Penny. Add Charlize, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Sarah Michelle Gellar, and he was running out of bedrooms. That was before Gisele. Work would keep several of them away much of the time, so not everyone needed a room held empty year-round. Even then, the house would barely be large enough.

And this was already one of the area's bigger homes.

He'd build on the vacant land. Apparently, the answer to buying a huge house was to add another one.

The seller wanted a quick deal too. They reached an agreement in principle that evening, with the sale expected to close later in the week.

"A little pressure gives you something to work toward," Katherine said. "Look how fast merchandise sales are growing. And we still have this season's ticket revenue..."

Not owning a stadium limited the Angels' sponsorship opportunities. As for individual endorsements, Nolan was the only player bringing in substantial money. Most of his teammates weren't famous enough to attract much yet.

The club had three main sources of revenue this year: licensed merchandise, ticket receipts, and its share of league income.

Grace oversaw merchandise through Prospect Group, the company Nolan had acquired. Her staff handled design and manufacturing; William was building out the online store that sold it.

The best-selling cheerleading outfit wasn't a copy of the performers' actual uniform. It was a two-piece set that borrowed elements of the design. The price was seventy-nine dollars before tax. Making it cost only a fraction of that.

Nolan's replica jersey also sold for seventy-nine dollars, with similarly low production costs. Standard team merchandise, though, fell under the league's licensing arrangements: jerseys, pins, backpacks, beer koozies, towels. Selling it through the Angels' website didn't mean they kept all the proceeds. Much of that revenue went into the shared pool.

From his perspective, selling more of the cheerleading line was a much better deal.

The principle wasn't so different from Jerry Jones's approach to stadium business: find a way to keep more income with the club.

Nolan had simply chosen a different route.

Ticket prices in the club's market survey ran from thirty to two hundred dollars. The averages varied widely. The figures Katherine was working with put the Giants at $55.80, Denver at $46.20, and Dallas at $83.20. The Jets led the list at $120.85.

For a new franchise, the Angels couldn't charge nearly as much. Their average was $39.70, toward the bottom of the list but still above clubs such as Cleveland and Atlanta.

That wasn't bad for an expansion team. The bigger problem was how little of the suite revenue they kept.

Luxury suites could produce enormous income. Hospitality companies leased them for the season, then sold access to clients game by game. Depending on the suite and stadium, an annual lease could run from fifty thousand to half a million dollars.

The Rose Bowl already had its own suite customers. Their contracts were with the stadium's operators, not the Angels. The operators kept most of the money and passed along a smaller share. Nolan didn't have a clear view of the underlying accounts, or much leverage to demand one.

It all came back to the same problem: they didn't have their own stadium.

For months, Michael Ovitz had been saying the money was coming together and construction would begin soon. Now he was saying there were financing problems and they probably wouldn't break ground this year.

They'd held a ceremonial groundbreaking and done little else. Nolan no longer expected that project to rescue them. He needed another option.

Gate receipts weren't entirely theirs either. Forty percent went into the visiting-team share under the league's revenue arrangements.

The league distribution was the real foundation of the business. Beyond licensing and gate sharing, there was television. Katherine's accounts put the previous year's television pool at $1.76 billion. Split among thirty clubs, that came to roughly fifty-eight million each.

That alone came close to covering this year's salary cap.

Then came shared sponsorship revenue. The figures for 1998 included major agreements across beer, soft drinks, shipping, automobiles, and payment services, worth some $350 million in all. Equipment and apparel suppliers added their own deals.

Together with merchandise income, those other distributions worked out to about twenty million dollars per club last year.

That brought the shared income to roughly seventy-eight million before a team added its own gate and other business. A club could clear a hundred million in annual revenue. Teams with large fan bases and more developed commercial operations, such as the Jets and Cowboys, could bring in considerably more.

"His income isn't all football, either," Lisa said with a smile. "He's signed several advertising deals this year. Those pay well. Fifty million isn't out of reach."

"And there are the other investments," Susan added. "The movie, for one. Happy Death Day has finished shooting. It's being edited now, and Lisa's been talking to distributors."