LumberJax Owner Proves She Has What It Takes
It was New Year's Day 2005, and after ringing out the old, Angela Batinovich and a friend were in Denver looking for a way to ring in the new.
She couldn't have rung louder had she taken a sledgehammer to the Liberty Bell.
The then 24-year-old fashion designer and daughter of multi-millionaire Bay Area real estate mogul Robert Batinovich had seen television advertising for a professional team she had never heard of called the Colorado Mammoth, who were affiliated with a league she had never heard of called the National Lacrosse League.
Hey, there was nothing better to do, so she and her friend went to the Pepsi Center to watch the Mammoth play defending league champion Calgary. Over the next two hours, a life-altering experience occurred.
"I saw a really great product," Batinovich said. "They had a packed house, they had sponsors, they were broadcasting, I'd seen their advertising. The energy was just so passionate and the entertainment value was great. I knew this was something I could get involved in."
A dollar and a dream?
How about $1.5 million and a relentless, break-down-the-barriers entrepreneurial spirit?
Within five months of seeing that Colorado-Calgary game, Batinovich was the proud owner of an NLL expansion team, the league's first female owner in its 20-year history and the youngest owner — male or female — of a professional sports franchise.
"I just saw it as a really awesome opportunity," said Batinovich, whose Portland Lumberjax play host to the Rochester Knighthawks Saturday afternoon.
With the help of her father, her half-brother Andrew and a family friend, Wallace Krone — all of whom are shareholders — Batinovich showed NLL commissioner Jim Jennings the money, along with an impressive business plan. Not long after, she joined Georgia Frontiere (St. Louis Rams) and Denise Debartolo York (San Francisco 49ers) as trail blazing female owners of men's professional sports teams.
"This was something new and I was drawn to it," Batinovich said.
"It was a pretty fast decision," she continued. "That night (in Denver) I was on the phone with my dad, telling him that he and my brother might want to be involved."
Dad attended his first NLL game in San Jose a few weeks later, and he took the bait. Angela recalled that he didn't want to leave his seat for fear that he might miss some of the nonstop action.
She chose Portland — and it's 18,000-seat Rose Garden — on the advice of her father, who thought it was a good fit because the city has always supported the NBA Trail Blazers as well as minor league hockey and baseball.
She had never even been to the city, wasn't even sure if it was in Oregon or Washington, but when she arrived, she agreed that father knew best.
"He said Portland is a great city, you'll love it, and the market is growing huge," she said. "I came up and spent a week and I thought it was like a mini San Francisco."
Which is where Batinovich grew up as her now-retired father built his real estate empire, Glenborough Realty Trust. She attended Loyola Marymount University, where she earned a degree in business marketing, and stayed in Los Angeles to try her hand in the fashion industry.
"I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur and start my own company," she said. "That's sort of the fun for me, starting from nothing. One day I was bored and sitting at my house, didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and I started thinking about what I would do.
"I loved clothes and loved fashion, had a good eye for it, and I started researching to see what it would take to run a clothing line."
She ran the numbers, took the plunge by hiring a designer, and they produced high-end apparel — called Bat's Daughter, named in honor of her father's nickname, Bat. It proved to be one of the hottest lines at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Los Angeles for spring 2005. She sold her clothes to more than 75 boutiques nationwide, and actress Alicia Silverstone was one of her clients.
However, Batinovich realized how cutthroat the fashion business was and she concluded she didn't have enough capital to stay afloat.
"It's tough to keep your costs down and in order to break even I needed cash flow for the next 18 months and I had about five months left," she explained.
Then came that fateful day in Denver.
After researching the NLL, she spent most of the 2005 NLL season with the Anaheim Storm, seeing if it was feasible to buy that struggling franchise. She went to almost every game, home and away, and got to know the players and the executives.
In the end, she determined starting from scratch was the best option, so she met with Jennings at the league office in New York City and not long after, she was awarded an expansion team.
"I was a little taken aback when she walked into my office; she is not our typical owner," Jennings said. "But my trepidation (over her gender and her age) was gone within 10 minutes of meeting her. She's an engaging person. She acts older than she is, very mature for her age. We're very pleased with her so far."
Working with coach Derek Keenan, who won four NLL championships as an assistant coach in Toronto, the Lumberjax were built from scratch through the expansion draft. One of the Anaheim players now in Portland is Rochester Rattler Ryan Powell.
"It's been great," the 43-year-old Keenan said. "She has a tremendous passion for business and now for lacrosse.
"In terms of the on-floor lacrosse, I have carte blanche and that was important to me, and she's running the business side and doing a great job with that."
While naysayers say she is just another rich kid who was given a very expensive toy, Keenan says nothing could be further from the truth. Much of her own money is on the line, she says, and she is known as a tireless worker. The team is 3-3, drawing crowds of just under 10,000 for its first two games.
The league has reaped much-needed publicity from her arrival in the form of newspaper and magazine stories, and radio and television interviews including one on ESPN2's Cold Pizza. Batinovich is also being considered as the subject for a cable-TV reality show.
