The Houston Rocket

TILMAN FERTITTA talks to MAXIM about building his business empire, his commitment to customers and his most recent acquisition — a star-studded NBA team with stratospheric ambitions...

- Bill Saporito

Tilman Fertitta is a relentlessly civic-minded businessman and TV celebrity who could probably win the mayor’s job in Houston if he wanted it. But why downgrade? Fertitta owns the new Post Oak tower going up and the luxury hotel and Rolls-Royce showroom that will reside there. He owns the city’s aquarium. He owns the Kemah Boardwalk amusement park south of Houston. He’s chairman of the University of Houston System Board of Regents. His company, Fertitta Entertainment, owns more than 500 restaurants both locally and nationally, including Landry’s, Mastro’s, Rainforest Café, Morton’s the Steakhouse, and Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. And in his spare time he stars in his own reality TV show on CNBC, Billion Dollar Buyer.

The show’s title became even more fitting when Fertitta wrote a check for a reported US$2.2 billion to buy the Houston Rockets of the NBA, the highest price ever paid for a basketball team. He bought the Rockets because he’s a lifelong fan. And because, well, he really wanted to own them. “I knew where the ballpark [was],” he says, referring to the other bidders. “And I knew this is what it was going to take to buy it. I was going to buy this basketball team and that’s it, period.”