Thirty minutes before the Utah Jazz tipped off against the Toronto Raptors on March 23, Ryan Smith entered the Delta Center’s Toyota Club. Dressed in a black hoodie and Smith Entertainment Group-branded hat, the Jazz and Utah Mammoth owner walked over to greet his soon-to-be-99-year-old guest.
Venice Bitton started to stand, but Smith asked her to sit. He sat down next to her, placing his hand on the back of Bitton’s chair. “How are you?” he asked.
The two chatted as Bitton’s granddaughter smiled and watched her grandmother get the Jazz owner’s full attention.
“We’re so glad you could come,” Smith told Bitton, who was attending just her third Jazz game.
Bitton, of Ogden, Utah, was one of 15 Jazz fans in their 90s invited to the team’s third-annual 90s Night, a tradition recognizing some of the team’s oldest fans. They were treated to a pregame dinner and custom Jazz jerseys.
Following his conversation with Bitton, Smith spoke with the rest of the night’s special guests, including Joe Hatch.
“You’ll feel like a champ once this thing is on,” Smith told Hatch as he helped him put on the custom jersey.
The owner then began to tell Hatch about the decade-long run the Jazz are about to go on when Hatch matter-of-factly said, “Depends on how good they are.”
Smith defended his team. “We’re young,” he said. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Smith has made big headlines over the years. The company he co-founded was acquired for $8 billion in 2018. He and his wife, Ashley, purchased the Utah Jazz and later brought an NHL franchise to the state. Smith Entertainment group is investing $3 billion in a new entertainment district around the Delta Center, backed by $900 million of public funds. And while Utah Mammoth had a breakthrough season, the Jazz have been criticized for “tanking” to secure a better draft pick — with the NBA even fining the team in February for benching key players.
But if you’re paying attention to social media, you may have noticed Ryan Smith finding smaller — and sometimes unorthodox — ways to connect with Jazz and Mammoth fans, from choosing a team name to jersey swaps to giving away seats in his own Delta Center suite.
“We talk about this being a little bit of a stewardship,” Smith told the Deseret News that night at the Delta Center. “We just want the community to enjoy this, and we can never do enough. But I think part of having this platform is to do as much as we can with what we’re given.”
It’s a few minutes before the Jazz tipoff. Now in another room leading to the Delta Center’s court, Smith sits on a cushioned bench and tells the Deseret News that he doesn’t think of himself as a typical owner.
“I look at myself probably a little different,” he said. “Like, I was a Jazz fan before all of this. I grew up a Jazz fan.”
As a kid, Smith watched his first Jazz game with his late grandfather. He had posters of Adrian Dantley and Rickey Green on his wall. The owner admits that he still gets star-struck meeting the two Jazz greats.
“To be able to share that with these people is — it’s just the right thing to do,” he said.
In October 2020, the Smiths purchased the Jazz from the Larry H. Miller family, who had owned the team for 35 years and saved it from relocation in the 1980s.
Three and a half years later, the Smiths acquired the players, coaches and staff of the Arizona Coyotes and established a new NHL franchise in Utah. Smith Entertainment Group had six months to put a product on the ice — a process Ryan Smith anticipated would be “pretty gnarly.” It happened, and the team competed under the name Utah Hockey Club.
On Friday, the Utah Mammoth will host the franchise’s first home game in the Stanley Cup playoffs — three days after securing the franchise’s first-ever playoff win, a 3-2 victory over the Las Vegas Golden Knights.
The Coyotes last made the playoffs in 2020 during the pandemic’s expanded 24-team playoffs — eight years after their previous playoff appearance in 2012.