This is Buying Sideline — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of sports hospitality.
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In the email today:
🦅 Eagles Fans Learn Hospitality the Hard Way
Eagles fans are outraged not because of the Monday night’s game, but over the new tailgating rules outside Lincoln Financial Field.
Hand parking will begin this Sunday, parking attendants will assign spaces rather than allowing fans to choose and save their traditional spots. Oversized vehicles are also being directed to specific lots, with limits on how much space groups can occupy.
The Sports Complex Parking Venture said their goal is smoother traffic flow, clearer lanes, and better parking availability.
Eagles fans, one even with a green beard, called a press conference at a South Philly boxing gym to condemn the new rules. They’ve since hired legal representation.
Our Take: Living in the Philly area you don’t have to tell us how important tailgating is. That’s why the new regulations and the reaction to them aren’t the least bit shocking, but they present an interesting hospitality trend we’re seeing around stadiums. The Eagles are pushing back and they should be.
They sublease the parking lots on gameday from the city and they should be allowed to maximize revenue.
There are multiple private companies running lucrative hospitality businesses - again on private property.
The Phillies and Comcast Spectacor have a long-term plan for their own multi-use district at the Sports Complex (the Eagles have yet to join the pact as they weigh their next stadium location). The recent Flyers and Sixers stadium designs featured fan plazas and F&B areas outside the venue.
The ingress and egress down at the Sports Complex has become such a headache the Governor of Pennsylvania had to step in. Combine that with the lack of tailgating rules and the fact many treat the parking lot like their own personal property; creating bottlenecks and dangerous driving scenarios. You can foresee these teams are tired of looking at under-utilized real estate and will be figuring out more ways to maximize sellable premium inventory from segmentation of arrival/departure like VIP parking and hospitality zones to restaurants, retail, and even livable spaces.
And instead of people down there eight Sundays a year it’ll be 300+ days.
🎙️ 5 Takeaways From Our Interview with DLR Group
The first(!) Buying Sideline podcast ever and I (Kyle) was happy to welcome on Jordan Krug and Ryan Freeland from DLR Group.
DLR recently designed Missouri’s $250M Memorial Stadium Centennial Project renovation that included 14 new field suites, 20 outdoor heated suites called “Tiger Dens,” 140 loge boxes, the 1926 Club, multiple event spaces with access all year, and plenty more. Oh, and if that isn’t enough, they’re also busy with the $400M Camping World Stadium renovation, where the Jaguars will play next season.
Here are our takeaways from the interview:
Teams are building more and more of a premium ladder. “It’s almost a choose-your-own-journey.” Teams are creating more and more premium products for all wallet sizes. A Playfly report found fans making <$100k annually spend more on premium experiences than those making >$100k. The Missouri project shows why that segmentation matters and as Ryan mentioned, “There's seven or eight different premium experiences.” Plenty price points for recent grads, affluent fans, and corporate clients.
Stadiums are competing against the living room. Jordan asked, “If fans can watch every game at home why should they come to the stadium?” Products like COSM, the Apple Vision Pro, and Meta’s recently announced VR glasses all put you courtside for relatively cheaper - threatening stadiums premium inventory. That’s why you increasingly see hospitality spaces pulling design trends from luxury hotels, restaurants, and residential. Premium cocktails, better cuisine, comfy seating, and natural finishes are table stakes with a gameday atmosphere you can’t replicate on a couch.
DLR is getting more requests for spaces that can change configurations and accommodate temporary activations. Teams, especially in older stadiums, are playing large games of Tetris when introducing new hospitality concepts to accommodate different events and consumer tastes. We’ve written about the and Leeds’ temporary hospitality structure in past newsletters. Ryan was careful to distinguish flexible/modular thinking from purely temporary structures, but we can see consumers preferences for hospitality product starting to change.
Camping World Stadium presents a different hospitality business problem. CWS doesn’t typically have a primary tenant like an NFL or college football team. The 60,000+ seat stadium hosts a rotating calendar of events from international soccer to concerts. That means the building has to work for different fan bases, products, and events. With the North Bowl expansion, DLR is focused on premium arrival experience, hospitality, and funneling members around concourses for a multitude of events. Designing hospitality for a single-event customer rather than a recurring home-team one.
You can listen to this episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get podcasts here.
BUYING SIDELINE: THE BUSINESS OF SPORTS HOSPITALITY
The Future of Premium Sports Hospitality: Inside Mizzou & Camping World's Renovations with DLR Group
FC Barcelona is changing their premium hospitality sales strategy for their remaining 2,000 VIP seats.
The plan, in partnership with Legends Global, is to essentially create their own PSL market for VIP hospitality. The club is offering 15 and 30-year individual licenses paid upfront and initial forecasts expect “to generate approx. €700 million in committed revenue” over the life of the contracts.
The first phase of commercialization has seen nearly 5,000 VIP seats sold and more than €380 million in committed revenue. Those contract durations vary while premium suites and boxes are currently full.
⚽️ Bournemouth’s Hospitality Generates 40% of Matchday Revenue
The continuing redevelopment of AFC Bournemouth’s Vitality Stadium is providing key insights into the outsized revenue impact of premium inventory despite a relatively small seating footprint.
While the project will nearly double the venue’s seating capacity, upgrades to its hospitality offering is especially noteworthy. Bournemouth is upgrading lounges such as the 2:21 Lounge, which features street-food-style F&B, large screens and an emphasis on social atmosphere. The investment makes sense given the economics.
Per Bournemouth President of Business Operations, Jim Frevola, hospitality generates roughly 40% of matchday revenue despite accounting for just 6% of the stadium’s capacity.
Our Take: Despite that disproportionate contribution, Bournemouth plans to keep premium around the 6% mark, which is reportedly the lowest allocation among Premier League clubs. That doesn’t mean they aren’t adding inventory. As the stadium expands beyond 20,000 seats, premium allocation will increase at a similar rate to the overall growth. It’s an interesting approach to premium monetization as they grow the inventory without flooding the market. By maintaining a small footprint, the club will attempt to capture additional demand while preserving the scarcity of of its highest-yielding assets.
Trane Technologies is not only upgrading the HVAC for the Panthers stadium, but also inking a naming rights deal to become the presenting sponsor for Bank of America Stadium’s 300-level Silver Club starting in 2029. The club will feature 50k sq. ft. of premium hospitality four adjacent club destinations.
The Hurricanes unveiled new premium hospitality at the Lenovo Center: the Lenovo Legend Club and Bunker Suites. The Bunker Suites are particularly interesting because they are private hospitality rooms beneath the seating bowl that don’t have a direct view of the ice. Fans instead get separate seats in the first few rows of the lower bowl, while the private lounge serves as an entertaining space during pregame and intermission. The suites though have monitors showing footage of the game in 8k.
Virginia Tech announced the next phase of their “Invest to Win” campaign, which has a goal of building a stronger athletics financial model to compete on a national stage with the help of their fans. The strategy includes new enhanced premium-seating options for basketball and broader gameday-experience enhancements.
The Nashville Predators released updated renderings for the $750M Smashville’s Next Stage: Broadway 2030 renovation. A previously reported rooftop bar will be the largest on Broadway.
🔗 Sports Hospitality Links
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