He additionally performed a key position in bringing Formulation One racing to Austin by investing within the Circuit of the Americas, the Austin observe the place the annual U.S. Grand Prix race has been held since 2012.
In an announcement on Monday, the Dallas Cowboys proprietor, Jerry Jones, referred to as Mr. McCombs “a real Texas titan throughout sports activities, media, enterprise and philanthropy” who had “adopted his goals.”
Mr. McCombs’s most profitable enterprise was Clear Channel, which he co-founded with Lowry Mays in 1972, after they bought an area radio station in San Antonio, KEEZ-FM, for $125,000. (Mr. Mays died in September at 87.)
The 2 males continued to accumulate radio stations, then tv stations and billboards across the nation. Aided by the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act, which allowed media conglomerates to personal a vast variety of stations, they constructed the corporate into the world’s largest proprietor of radio stations; by 2000, Clear Channel owned greater than 1,200.
The corporate finally expanded into occasion promotion, stay music and sports activities administration. Mr. Lowry oversaw the enterprise, however Mr. McCombs was instrumental in seizing alternatives to increase, in accordance with John Hogan, the corporate’s former chairman and chief govt.
“He was steadfast in help of the notion that when the telecommunications rules modified in 1996, we needed to transfer shortly and aggressively, and that those that have been gradual and hesitant would get left behind,” Mr. Hogan stated in an interview for this obituary.
Although the corporate was usually criticized for homogenizing radio programming in a method that eradicated a lot of the native taste of impartial radio stations, the system was extraordinarily worthwhile. When Mr. Lowry started to see indicators that the web would disrupt its well-oiled technique, he and Mr. McCombs bought the corporate in 2006 for $17.9 billion to a personal fairness group led by Bain Capital Companions and Thomas H. Lee Companions. As a part of the deal, the group agreed to tackle greater than $8 billion within the firm’s debt.
