SBJ Facilities: What's next for Evolv?

Evolv, the frictionless security tech company whose systems are deployed in 40 sports venues and was named SBJ’s Fan Experience Technology of the Year, has made some undesirable headlines during the past year.

The latest came last week when Evolv announced CFO Mark Donohue and four other employees resigned or were terminated because of an internal investigation into the publicly traded company’s financial reporting practices. Evolv fired former CEO Peter George on Halloween and replaced him with company co-founder Michael Ellenbogen, a move it said was months in the works and likely influenced by:

• The SEC's Division of Enforcement issuing Evolv a subpoena in February requesting certain documents and informing the Massachusetts-based company that it was initiating a “non-public, fact-finding inquiry.”

• The FTC beginning an investigation in October 2023 into Evolv potentially overstating claims about its AI-backed technology’s capabilities, according to Bloomberg.

• The company facing lawsuits from a New York high school student who was stabbed during a fight at their school, which used Evolv tech, as well as a suit from shareholders claiming the company misled them about financial performance and corporate governance controls. 

Evolv will hope the post-internal investigation clear-out assuages clients and shareholders’ concerns (and actually has an impact). In a video released last week, Ellenbogen mentioned that the company is actively searching for a new full-time CEO and that his immediate priorities are “anchored in building back trust.”

What’s next for Evolv?

Evolv's quarterly filing in August indicated that the FTC and SEC investigations remain active. The company probably said it best in that same filing: “We can offer no assurances as to the outcome of these investigations or their potential effect, if any, on us or our results of operations.”

I spoke to several influential and experienced operators in the sports venue world about Evolv’s issues, and as a group those operators seemed to view the issues as corporate governance and financial reporting problems and not immediately indicative of some wider rot. They’re also not giving up on the tech (Xtract One, CEIA and some other companies are in the frictionless, AI-powered screening world, too), which needs to improve its detection of small knives but otherwise performs to a level that venue security experts demand.

Evolv is just part of a venue’s security posture, not a magic wall singlehandedly preventing mass casualty incidents inside sports venues. There haven’t been any publicized violent incidents at live sporting events connected to Evolv system failings. And as one source said, “the throughput is intoxicating,” creating a superior ingress experience for fans compared to metal detectors.

As I’m writing this, Evolv announced another sports venue deployment, at Target Center in Minneapolis.  

BSE Global's Jen Cortellini might have the most interesting job title in the sports industry -- VP/wine operations, strategy and experiences.

Since her hiring in April, Cortellini has worked with Chief Hospitality Officer Shanon Ferguson to create a program that launched just last week called Brooklyn Wine Club. The tiered membership effort, born in part from the influence of BSE Global’s oenophile owners Joe and Clara Tsai, is intended to promote interest in and enjoyment of wine, regardless of members’ experience or economic strata.

“Wine is intimidating. It’s scary. ‘How do you pronounce this?’” Ferguson said. “We’ll bring them along the journey as they increase their education and wine experience.”

Wine Club membership costs $1,500. Both Nets and Liberty season-ticket members can get discounted access. Ferguson said the goal is to have a few hundred members in the first year and up to four events per month, with somewhere between 24 and 36 events annually.

Some Brooklyn Wine Club gatherings will be as intimate as a dozen people -- the Tsais’ involvement means the club will have access to some of the finest and rarest wines in the world -- and other events as large as a festival with several thousand attendees. The first event is Dec. 12 at Barclays Center.

The Wine Club is a natural extension for BSE Global, which has courtside sommeliers at Barclays Center. It’s also the first step in the launch of the wider Brooklyn Hospitality Group, a separate business under the BSE Global umbrella that will explore more niche and exclusive forms of entertainment, including, according to Ferguson, topics such as magic, comedy, circus concepts and even potentially a marketplace (they recently acquired retail space a block and a half from Barclays Center for that purpose).

With all of this going on, Cortellini might not have the most unusual BSE Global job title for long. 

Architecture firm LaBella is launching a racquet sports-specific design studio.

Based out of Charlotte and led by Bryan Fike, LaBella wants to become the national leader in designing facilities for tennis, pickleball and padel.

Despite those three sports’ substantial growth since the pandemic, there still isn’t a clear national architecture firm to turn to for those kinds of facilities, especially one as large as LaBella (more than 2,000 employees and 40 offices globally), which has expertise in sports venues, mixed-use development and higher education design, as well as other construction project staples like engineering and fire safety.

“If this is just about courts, court space, why would I want to do that? This is a lot more than just building courts,” LaBella’s National Play studio leader Mike Woollen told me during a recent visit to SBJ’s Charlotte HQ. “This is about building places for people to have fun, to gather, to socialize. We can parlay this into doing not just racquet sports courts, but create communities -- whether it’s a sports-anchored mixed-use development or a private club that has restaurants and clubhouses or a collegiate facility that for the first time starts to have real fan experience.” 

Check out my story in Morning Buzz for more on LaBella’s interesting new vertical.

Two finalists remain in the Oakland Ballers’ search for a fan to join the Pioneer League baseball club's five-person board of directors. The team, formed in response to the A’s exit from Oakland, crowdfunded $1.235 million over the summer, then committed a board seat to one of the 2,200 fan investors. There were 76 applications submitted, with videos explaining why they should be picked.

The quality of applicants ranged greatly and included a former Pfizer CEO.

Through online fan voting, the group was whittled down to 11, and then to two -- Jade Le and Jorge Leon. Both will present to a fan town hall in early December that’ll determine the winner. Le or Leon will join a five-person board that includes Ballers co-founder Paul Freedman and other investors and will dictate the team’s business decisions, like ticket pricing or whether to invest in facilities.

“This is meaningful in terms of their participation and in ensuring that our fans believe that we’ve centered the team around them,” Freedman said. “We wanted to do that from the beginning and it’s a big part of the level of fan engagement that we’ve gotten for a new baseball team.”

Ballers fans not only have put skin in the game, but at least one of them will have decision-making power -- a rare combination in a sports world that’s mostly avoided involving fans so deeply in the running of a team. The Ballers’ first board meeting with a fan representative is in early January.

“It’s a source of investment that then creates fan engagement and fans who are incentivized to be deeply connected to the team, really fundamentally part of it,” said Freedman. “They become owners and decision-makers.”

Chef Molly DeMers recently represented Climate Pledge Arena and Delaware North during the James Beard Foundation’s Taste America stop in Seattle. DeMers made a dish called “Carrot Jerky with Carrot Top Bubbles and Carrot Skin Fog.”

Yes, I would eat this, largely because I’d like to say that I’ve eaten something that included jerky, bubbles and fog.

In 2011, Delta Airlines sold just 14% of its first-class fares for cash (as opposed to flyers paying for them in loyalty points or miles). By 2023, that figure had reached 74%. What does that mean for the experience in the rest of the plane?  

This Bloomberg Businessweek piece looks into why “premiumization” has made flying so much better -- and worse.

• Check out some of the latest sports venue renderings in SBJ's Building Blocks feature.

• Player 15 Group and Major Food Group (MFG) partnered on a new members-only private dining space within the Footprint Center called the Ra Ra Room that will open in late November. 

• My colleague Mike Mazzeo went inside MLB and Tickets.com's new office space in L.A.

• The 2025 Masters is still more than four months away, but Augusta National is already prepping patrons for an expanded Year 2 experience at the club’s off-course hospitality offering, Map & Flag, reports SBJ's Josh Carpenter.

• Fresh off a second straight League of Legends Worlds title, T1 Entertainment & Sports wants to raise $35 million in capital to expand its gaming cafes and other operations, notes SBJ's Jason Wilson.

• The Blue Jackets recently unveiled the renovated Diamond Cellar Club and Lexus Lounge at Nationwide Arena.