Utah Jazz: Questions for Greg Miller

A troubled economy, player injuries, an

ailing father: It's been an interesting year for Greg Miller, CEO of

the Larry H. Miller Group of Companies. The Deseret News' Jody Genessy

sat down with Miller prior to last week's Jazz-Spurs game to see how

the new CEO is settling in.

Question: What do you foresee the biggest challenge being for the Jazz in the next one to five years?

Answer: Well, the biggest challenge is going to be finding ways to generate enough revenue to

pay as much money as we can — you know, just to pay up to the cap or

probably up to the luxury tax threshold, so that we can put the most

competitive team on the floor, and spreading that load over the

broadest footings possible so that no one entity or one segment of the

market has to bear the brunt of that. Obviously the primary channels of

revenue are ticket sales, sponsorship, TV revenue and sponsorship

advertising. As you know the salary cap and the luxury tax threshold

increase every year. Salaries never really go down, and so we're

continually looking for new revenue streams or looking for ways to

maximize our existing revenues without pricing ourselves out of the

market, and it's a very delicate balance. So that's without question

the biggest challenge that we're going to have. As long as this

community is willing to support us to the level that they have it's

going to work out. I've got to think at some point we're going to cross

a line where there's enough pushback from the market and from our fans

that they say, 'Hey we helped you as much as we could, but we just