By the time Mr. Sillerman began buying radio stations in the late 1970s, he was using a new name — Robert F.X. Sillerman. He often named his companies using some combination of those initials.
After selling SFX Entertainment, Mr. Sillerman pursued various entertainment projects. He was one of the producers of “The Producers,” the Broadway hit, by his friend Mel Brooks, that ran for six years and pushed the limits of ticket prices on Broadway. He also acquired a majority of the Presley estate, with the right to operate Graceland, the Presley home in Memphis; took over the company behind the long-running television hit “American Idol”; and acquired the rights to Muhammad Ali’s name and likeness.
But Mr. Sillerman’s success ran out in recent years when he tried to repeat his concert model with a new version of SFX Entertainment, this time going after electronic dance music, or EDM, a bull market in 2012, when Mr. Sillerman opened the company with a $1 billion war chest.
At first, advertisers and investors flocked to the new SFX. But the company’s performance was weak, and its stock price eventually plunged by more than 95 percent. It declared bankruptcy in 2016, and many of the assets it had amassed were sold off.
Mr. Sillerman largely withdrew in recent years, moving to New Hampshire and dealing with the fallout from the collapse of several businesses. This year, he agreed to pay a $179,000 fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission for defrauding investors of another of his companies, Function(x).
But in making his push for the new version of SFX in 2012, he spoke with boundless optimism about the potential for his new company.
“I’m also confident that we will create a better experience for the fans,” Mr. Sillerman said in an interview with The New York Times. “Can we monetize that? If we can, this will dwarf the first SFX. That’s the whole game.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/28/arts/music/robert-fx-sillerman-dead.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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