On Friday afternoon inside Thomas & Mach Center in Las Vegas, Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez held their first press conference since fully taking over the team, along with a more informal roundtable discussion with local Minnesota media.

The discussions ranged from what the team might look like on the court moving forward, what the future might hold for the business side of the organization, and some of the changes to the arena and branding that might be coming in the near future.

If there was one thing that was clear after listening to Lore and Rodriguez speak for over an hour, it's that the Timberwolves will not be the same old, same old moving forward. Especially on the business side of the organization, the changes are going to come, and they are going to come fast.

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One of the largest pieces of news is that the Timberwolves have signed a partnership with Jump, a company co-founded by Lore and Rodriguez, along with Jordy Leiser, to be their exclusive ticketing provider. Gone are the days of Flash Seats or AXS, and in comes Jump, which promises to completely overturn how the Timberwolves do tickets and the fan experience.

The main advantage of Jump is that they integrate their ticketing platform right into the Wolves website and app, so you no longer need to click away to a different website to purchase tickets. Leiser, who is the company’s CEO, explained how this is beneficial for fans.

“You typically have to click out of the Timberwolves environment. You have to go to, it was historically AXS. And so as a fan, that’s not great. You’re no longer doing business with the Timberwolves. You’re now on a ticketing website, right? So this is the first time an NBA team has ever had this kind of a system.”

The Wolves' previous ticketing platform was an absolute mess. It was difficult to purchase tickets as the user interface made it nearly impossible to find the tickets you were looking for, on top of huge fees for purchasing tickets that other fans were trying to sell.

The new ticketing platform with Jump will still have those fees, with the amount being determined by the Timberwolves, but they likely will not be as steep as they were in the past. The Wolves and Jump have made firm decisions in this area yet, but Lore said they did expect fees to be less on the new exchange than they currently are with AXS.

The new ticketing app also promises some cool new fan experience features that fans will be able to enjoy. Lore described one where fans can easily upgrade their seats during the game by purchasing open seats from either unsold tickets or fans who may have left the game early.

“You can dynamically move to any seat in the arena in real time. So if somebody leaves in the fourth quarter, that seat opens up in a reverse auction and somebody can just buy that seat for five or ten bucks. The arena will always be filled at bottom as people leave. And that’s just one aspect of it, but it’s filled with little nuggets like that.”

The new ticketing platform will roll out soon for fans to see and set up as the first large change to the business side of the Wolves and Lynx. The bar isn’t high to clear when compared to the way ticketing has been handled in the past, but putting forth a successful product for fans to easily buy and sell tickets will be an easy way for this new ownership group to endear themselves to fans.

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Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

It’s not a secret that Target Center is one of the worst arenas in the NBA. The fans do their best to make the place rock during big games, but the building is lacking in many areas compared to other NBA arenas, including limited premium seating, more upper deck seats than lower ones, and small concourses that often make it hard to get around the arena.

During the presser, Rodriguez made it very clear how important he believes having a top-notch arena is in the current sports landscape.

“Back in the day, you could probably say it was a vanity. It was a nice little treat to have. Today is a necessity. If you want to compete at the level we want to compete year in and year out, a new arena is what our fans deserve. We’re in the very, early stages. We’ve done a great deal of work over the last three years. But an arena in Minneapolis for our fans would be absolutely awesome.

When asked about what they are potentially looking for with a new stadium, Rodriguez laid out the discussions he and Lore have had, along with the general timeline fans can expect.

“Marc and I have thoughts on this that we go back and forth on, where they’re building kind of like an LA Live 2.0, where you have a mixed-use project, and you have buildings and hotels and all kind of, you know, maybe a smaller theater, four or five thousand, which is very much in vogue right now for entertainers. Or do you do it like downtown where it’s more kind of an urban, know, you know, there’s some, you know, like Target [Center] and like US Bank [Stadium] and both are great options but we have to get educated, we have a lot of work to do and this, you know, a five, seven, ten year project is not just something that’s gonna happen overnight.”

While the new stadium will take time, upgrades to Target Center are already in the works. One change fans will see either next season or the one after that will be to the lighting inside the arena. Lore and Rogriguez specifically mentioned Madison Square Garden, whose lights give more of a theater feel to the game, greatly adding to the atmosphere.

Since Target Center is owned by the city of Minneapolis, the changes are not as simple as the Wolves simply purchasing and installing new lights themselves. They need to get approval from the city, even if they want to pay for the upgrades themselves. Wolves officials plan to meet with the Mayor of Minneapolis soon to try to get the project approved for either this upcoming season or next.

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Photo by David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images

One point Lore and Rogriguez kept mentioning was that their priority was to the fans and trying to win basketball games. They said multiple times that if an issue was important to the fans that will be importnat to them.

One of those issues involves Timberwolves franchise legend Kevin Garnett and a potential rebrand of the team, something fans have been calling for as their standard jerseys have gone stale while their throwback uniforms have thrived. Rodriguez spoke on the potential of a rebrand in the future.

“We’ve done a lot of work in the background. I think our fan base is going to be very, very excited. Bringing back some of the history of the KG days is something we’re very aware is important to our fan base.”

Multiple times throughout the press conference and with local media members, Lore and Rodriguez seemed to understand that while they are notable people in the community and with the franchise, fans ultimately don’t really care about them as much as they care about their favorite team, seeing them win, and enjoying a night at the arena.

Rodriguez said as much to the local Minnesota reporters when asked about the importance of not letting themselves as owners negatively affect anything on the court, especially before they were controlling owners of the team.

“I mean, this is the thing we all agree on this. mean, nobody cares about owners. It’s about the team, about the fans, it’s about the experience, it’s about the customer service, it’s what we do in the community and the ripple effect of winning.”

At the end of the roundtable discussion, Lore and Rodriguez earnestly asked what we, the media that covers the Timberwolves on a daily basis, think they should do if we were in their shoes. Answers ranged from making the TV product more accessible to being more transparent as a whole.

One answer noted that, through no fault of theirs, there is a stigma associated with the Timberwolves. Through years of bad business and even worse basketball, there aren’t a ton of fans who are proud to be associated with the Timberwolves. Whether fair or not, there is a skepticism with almost everything the organization does due to past trauma.

There’s skepticism that they might try gouging the fans through ticket and concession prices, that they could go cheap on the roster, or that they could straight up move the team away from Minnesota.

Lore, Rodriguez, and the rest of the Wolves organization have a chance to change the entire perception of the Timberwolves franchise locally and nationally. If their actions can match their words, the team keeps winning like it has, and the fan experience grows like they project, the Wolves can ingrain themselves in the Twins community like the other local teams across the street, across town, and the river already have.

It’s now up to them to match their actions with their words and give Minnesota the well-run basketball franchise many have so long craved.