THIS IS MICHAEL MARION’S STORY
Shortly thereafter, in 1991, the Tupelo Coliseum was built, and Marion had a new gig in his hometown. After much wrangling con- vincing Mike Piranian, one of Rod Stewart’s representatives, that Tu- pelo was a player, Marion got the popular rocker into the 9,000-seat venue in 1992. “I tell them we have 35,000 people in Tupelo and will sell every seat. Mike comes back, ‘You’re telling me a third of people in that town are coming to the show?’ Yeah, Mike, that’s what I’m telling you! This is going to be great and we’re going to go on sale, and it’s I’ve been in the design and construction of two arenas, and you don’t know how one is going to work until you get people in it. I was hoping.” The good news was that the next morning Marion and his wife, Meg Goldenberg Marion, who was an agent at Triad and therefore understands her husband’s demeanor when he comes home from work, drove by and saw a parking lot full of cars. “We sold out Rod Stewart in one day,” Marion said. “This was before email, and we were faxing everybody. I sent Piranian a fax and said, ‘You’re going to have to put us on your map. We sold out!”
The Man
Marion ran the venue until 1997, the same year he became a father to a son, Jonah. It was that year that Marion received a call from in- dustry icon Mike McGee, who ran Leisure Management International (LMI) and knew Marion from the agency days when Marion helped book The Summit, an arena in Houston that McGee oversaw at the time. With LMI in place to build a much-needed arena in North Lit-
“When I heard they were building a new building, I called Mike and said I would be interested,” Marion said. “I got the job and came here for two years before it opened. I was in Tupelo nine months before it opened and here two years. I learned in the design and construction of during our weekly construction meetings and thought, who is going to be here the day after we open? Oh, just me, because everybody else is building operates.” - pointed by the county and comprised of “businesspeople with common sense. There are no bonds on this building, which is really nice. There is no debt to pay. It was paid for the day it opened.” LMI eventually sold the venue to SMG, and after two or
three years the arena board elected not to renew the contract, so Marion was hired to work for the arena board. “LMI was the perfect company to help get this place opened,” Marion said. “They started having regional VPs, and mine was Russ Simons, who was running the Nashville Arena. Russ was a great help. We continue to book big shows. We have had an NCAA tournament, big concerts, and family shows. We have to get out and market ourselves.” Marion is proud of the fact that he has been with the facil-
ity even before it opened and remains there today. “Some of my brothers and sisters I tease about being Methodist minis- years,” Marion said. He also proudly displays a 25-year pin from IAVM, and
credits Gaddis Hunt for introducing him to the Association. Gaddis ran the coliseum at Mississippi State and is the father of Todd, who was Marion’s assistant in Tupelo and now runs that venue. Marion recalls exhibiting at IAVM’s annual conference during his agency days, and that it was Beth Wade, when she ran the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, who urged Marion onto the Arenas Committee in the early 1980s. Later, after his agency days were in the rearview mirror and Marion attended a Region 5 meeting and now on the venue side, he decided to extend an olive branch. “I remember standing up at the meet- ing and said, ‘I’m Michael Marion with the Tupelo Coliseum and I would like to apologize to everybody. I have probably screwed you all at one time as an agent. I’m sorry whatever I did to you!’ They all laughed and got a good chuckle.” Marion became more involved and attended the Venue Management School at Oglebay in 1991 and 1992. By 2009, he was ready to teach and ran successfully through the gaunt-
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