Utah Business proudly presents this year’s cohort of our Leaders of the Year award. These 12 honorees represent accomplishments of Utah’s business community in 2024 and were selected by the Utah Business editorial team.
Ashley Smith
Co-Founder | Smith Entertainment Group
Ryan Smith
Co-Founder & CEO | Smith Entertainment Group
On Oct. 25, 2023, Ryan Smith stood blinking into the sun at a press conference commemorating the first Utah Jazz game since the Delta Center’s naming rights were restored. He would later say that, on that day, bringing hockey to the arena was “a foreign thought.”
Just a few months later, Ryan and his wife, Ashley, walked into a hotel room in Scottsdale, Arizona and announced to every Arizona Coyotes player and staff member, “Hey, we’re Ryan and Ashley, and you’ve all been traded to Utah.” The NHL franchise agreement closed in June.
“There’s not really a playbook there,” Ryan admitted at a Utah Hockey Club pre-season press conference, reflecting on those whirlwind months. But the Smiths have never been ones to shy away from a challenge.
Within just 172 days after the initial announcement, Smith Entertainment Group (SEG) accomplished what National Hockey League (NHL) Commissioner Gary Bettman called “unprecedented — not just in sports but probably in any industry.” They’d relocated the NHL team and their families to Utah, established inaugural season branding, executed Phase 1 of construction at the Delta Center, renovated the Utah Olympic Oval to create a practice facility for the inaugural season, launched a streaming service to bring live Utah Hockey Club games to seven states, and sold out season ticket inventory for year one.
“None of this happens without Ryan and Ashley Smith,” Bettman said at the Utah Hockey Club opening day press conference in October. “We had extremely high expectations ... and Ryan, Ashley and SEG managed to exceed them on every level.”
The move represented a second major investment in Utah sports by the power couple, who purchased the Utah Jazz for $1.66 billion in 2020. The NHL acquisition came with a $1.2 billion price tag, but for the Smiths, it’s about more than money — it’s about community.
“There’s not an anchor tenant like sports,” Ryan said in a CNBC segment, “Cities of Success,” which aired in December 2024. “It can make a whole city. If we plop a sports team in a vacant lot somewhere, it will thrive. This is why it’s so important that [sports] stay in the capital city downtown.”
Proof of that commitment can be seen in SEG’s recently unveiled plans to re-imagine Salt Lake’s downtown with a $3 billion sports and entertainment district. With the acquisition of The Shops at South Town for the Utah Hockey Club’s permanent training facility and Ashley’s declaration during several press conferences that they hope to “bring a Stanley Cup to Utah,” it’s clear the Smiths are just getting started.
“This state is different, and it’s special,” Ryan told CNBC. “I think we’re at a moment in time — and you don’t get many of these — where you get a chance to look forward at the infrastructure and say, ‘OK, this is a 30-year-old arena. Do we have enough parking for multiple events on the same night? What is the hotel room flow that we’re going to need for the Olympics in 2034? OK, we’re 1,500 hotel rooms short.’ Who’s doing this? Is it the state? Is it the city? In reality, it’s all of us. It’s our generation’s responsibility to go and help. And we’re committed — we’re putting in everything.”