Wednesday, February 24, 1999
Who is Larry Dolan? And why does he want the Reds?
BY JOHN ERARDI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Larry Dolan
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The man who wants to buy the Reds is a sports lover, a multimillionaire and the brother of the 312th-richest person on the Forbes list.
Cleveland attorney Larry Dolan, 68, is the brother of Charles Dolan, chairman of Cablevision Systems Corp., the nation's sixth-largest cable television provider.
Larry was involved with Charles on bids for the New York Yankees, Washington Redskins and Cleveland Browns.
None of those deals ever got done.
Now Larry Dolan heads an investment group that is trying to buy controlling interest of the Reds from Marge Schott. Sources indicate the group has already executed a purchase agreement with Mrs. Schott that would pay her $65 million for 5.5 of her 6.5 shares.
Among Larry's six children are two sons — Paul, 41, and Matthew, 34 — who are both lawyers in his firm and would have had active roles in running the Browns had their father's bid been successful.
According to newspaper accounts, Larry is a multimillionaire whose wealth was largely built upon his ownership of stock in Cablevision, which Charles founded.
Cablevision owns and operates cable television sys tems and serves about 3.5 million customers in five states, with major operations primarily in the New York, Cleveland and Boston metropolitan areas.
The Bethpage, N.Y.-based company also manages entertainment, news and sports programming. That includes 50 percent ownership of Fox Sports Net, a national sports programming network that feeds most of the country's sports networks, including Fox Sports Ohio. The latter affiliate serves Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus.
Larry brought Cablevision to the Cleveland area in the early 1980s. He negotiated and bought the first cable TV franchises in Geauga County. He later sold them to Cablevision, which added other franchises to become the area's largest cable TV operator.
Until the 1980s, he spent most of his time as a lawyer trying cases. He represented developers, defended insurance companies and took on white-collar crime cases. He also advised companies in contract negotiations and union organizing drives.
He owns a 14-screen movie theater and an adjacent indoor golf-driving range and miniature golf course.
In the case of the Browns, the NFL was bothered that Larry would control 30 percent of the team, but ante up only $2 million of the $500 million sales price. Published reports were that Cablevision was behind Larry's 30 percent control; the league didn't like that arrangement.
Why?
Because under NFL rules, a corporation like Cablevision can't own a football team. But Charles had insisted the company had nothing to do with the brothers' bid for the team.
Charles' money did, however.
“But for my uncle's money,” Paul had said, “we wouldn't be doing this (trying to buy the Browns).”
If Larry winds up with the Reds, it wouldn't be the first time he has tried to buy a baseball club. He and Charles once talked to the late F.J. “Steve” O'Neill about buying the Cleveland Indians.
“But he wanted too much money,” Charles had said.
Larry is president and managing partner of Thrasher, Dinsmore & Dolan, a law firm based in Chardon, Ohio. He has been described in newspaper stories as a “sports lover who built his law firm winning zoning cases for developers and serving as solicitor for municipalities in Geauga County.”
Had the Dolans bought the Browns, Larry would have had majority voting control and complete management authority.
Also involved in the Dolans' group were comedian Bill Cosby, football coaching legend Don Shula and six Cleveland-area CEOs.
“If you want to be psychological about it, these (the Dolan brothers) are two 5-foot-8 guys who want to win the championship,” Cosby said.
They have both been described as low-key and unassuming.
“If nothing else happens with this application (to buy the Browns), I've had dinner with Bill Cosby,” Larry had said.
But the Dolans' $500 million offer for the Browns was thwarted early in September when MBNA Corp. Chairman Alfred Lerner outbid the Dolans by $30 million.
Cleveland Mayor Michael White endorsed the bid of the Dolan brothers, but, in the end, the number of local connections didn't matter as much as the amount of the bid.
The Dolans' extended family is a group that believes in doing things together and having fun. Larry and his sons stage a family golf tournament each year. In one, patterned after the Masters, the winner gets a jacket. Larry is an avid golfer and plays doubles tennis every week.
Charles takes each of his three brothers' families to the Caribbean on annual winter vacation trips; every night, there is a slide show of family photos.
Larry and Charles' father, Daniel J., was the son of an Irish immigrant. Daniel J. was involved in businesses, including operating a car-delivery business. But his true love was inventing. He sold a device to Ford Motor Co. that would lock the wheels of a Model T if one turned the device far enough when the car was parked.
Back in the 1930s, when Larry and Charles were growing up in Cleveland, they assembled a good-sized stash of baseball cards that increased their standing among the youths of the neighborhood.
Charles had the money to buy the cards — he had a newspaper delivery route — but it was Larry, four years younger, who increased the size of the stash most rapidly. He had what Charles referred to as “an amazing talent” for flipping cards and calling them heads or tails. This talent meant acquiring more cards, quickly, at no cost.
Larry was the jock in the family.
He played halfback on the St. Ignatius High School football team. In the 1949 Cleveland Plain Dealer Charity Game for the city championship, Larry set up one touchdown and passed for another in a 13-0 victory.
He played on the freshman team at Notre Dame, but then decided to concentrate on earning his bachelor's and law degrees. After college, he served in the Marines. He worked in the legal department at a naval air station. His most satisfying case was defending a Marine corporal charged with brutality toward Navy prisoners.
Larry unearthed mounds of character evidence on the enlisted men and discredited their testimony. He won the corporal's acquittal.
“What it taught me was the value of preparation,” he told a Plain Dealer reporter in a profile last July.
Like his brother, Charles, Larry is a diligent supporter of charitable causes. He runs in the annual 5-mile American Red Cross race at the Geauga County Fair.
More about Cablevision
Although Cablevision isn't involved in the proposed deal for the Reds, it's interesting to know some facts about it because it has been such a cash cow for the Dolan family.
Cablevision owns a controlling stake in Madison Square Garden and owns the New York Knicks professional basketball team and New York Rangers professional hockey team. It also manages the operations of Radio City Music Hall and owns “Nobody Beats the Wiz” electronics stores.
The company also owns many national programming services, including American Movie Classics, Bravo, the Independent Film Channel and Romance Classics.
In terms of financials, Cablevision had revenues of $2.2 billion during the first nine months of 1998, up from $1.3 billion during the same period in 1997. The company is expected to report its profits for 1998 today.
John Fay and Jeff McKinney contributed to this story.
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