He uprooted his family - his wife, Penny, and four children - to Tampa, made the Lightning his full-time job and has become one of the city’s biggest philanthropists. He hired the perfect people - Leiweke on the business side and Steve Yzerman on the hockey side, two people Vinik called “slam dunks” - to guide the ship. Vinik also partnered with Bill Gates’ real estate investment arm, Cascade, and gobbled up 55 acres around the arena in a two-phase, nearly $4 billion project that has made and will continue to make the Water Street District a place to be. “I don’t think that’s happened in the history of organized sports,” laughs Tod Leiweke, who Vinik hired to be CEO months after buying the team. He sunk $40 million of his own money into a county-owned arena with no recourse. “If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have bought the team,” Vinik says with a chuckle and wry grin.īut Vinik vowed to make the Lightning a first-class organization and rescue a brand that was in the gutter.
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