Jeff Vinik branching out into online sports, entertainment and lifestyle community publishing
TAMPA — Add a new category to Jeff Vinik’s ballooning portfolio of business interests: online community publishing.
Tampa Bay Entertainment Properties, a Vinik company that manages the University of South Florida Sun Dome, announced Tuesday that it is creating TheIdentityTB.com, which is meant to “act as a sports and lifestyle hub for all things Tampa Bay.”
“While surveying the digital landscape of the Tampa Bay region, we believed the market lacked a hub for sports and lifestyle content,” Tampa Bay Entertainment Properties chief executive officer (and CEO of the Lighting) Steve Griggs said in announcing the venture. “It is our goal for The Identity Tampa Bay to fill that void, becoming the authentic voice for the future of Tampa Bay sports and lifestyle content.”
The initial launch will include an emailed newsletter. While sports-centric, the web site also will include written and video content on local entertainment and lifestyle topics. Postings will include both original and third-party content from around the region.
“It will be driven by the community, providing a voice for all things Tampa Bay,” said former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Derrick Brooks, who will be an “ambassador” for the site.
The full launch, with short videos and live event coverage, is months away.
Formed in 2017, Tampa Bay Entertainment Properties specializes in partnership sales, consulting, marketing and operations in the sports and entertainment. The company has a 10-year partnership with USF last year to operate the Sun Dome.
Since buying the Tampa Bay Lightning in March 2010 and moving to Tampa, Vinik, a former mutual fund and hedge fund manager, Vinik, 58, has branched into:
• Real estate investment and development through Water Street Tampa, a $3 billion mixed-use project he is planning in partnership with Cascade Investment, the personal wealth fund created by billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
• Arena football, with the Tampa Bay Storm, which in December announced that it was going on hiatus for the 2018 season.
• Investments in gamma radiation protection technology for first responders and astronauts, an innovative migraine headache treatment, and the startup accelerator DreamIt and an innovation hub that Vinik plans at Channelside Bay Plaza.
• Charitable contributions through the Vinik Family Foundation and support for the Museum of Science and Industry, the Bryan Glazer Family Jewish Community Center, the USF Muma College of Business, which created the USF Vinik Sport and Entertainment Management Program after Vinik and his wife Penny contributed more than $5 million and the USF medical school , through the donation of an acre at Water Street Tampa for a new medical school building.
• A loan to the Tampa Bay Times through FBN Partners, a group of local investors who loaned the newspaper $12 million last year.
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Contact Richard Danielson at [email protected] or (813) 226-3403. Follow @Danielson_Times
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