Samsung informed customers last week that it had officially shuttered its LED display business. Samsung video boards and displays are used at Citi Field, M&T Bank Stadium, State Farm Arena, Chase Center, Allegiant Stadium and SoFi Stadium. The double-sided board at SoFi -- nicknamed “The Oculus” -- was pioneering in many ways, not least its gargantuan size. Samsung’s decision, which was originally announced late last year and doesn’t seem influenced by 2025 tariff happenings, is good news for Daktronics and ANC (which can apparently service Samsung boards).
Aloha Hālawa District Partners was selected in November as the single preferred offeror to create a new Aloha Stadium and mixed-use development. New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District
I caught Brennon Morioka by phone as he was walking to the day’s round of contract negotiations with Aloha Hālawa District Partners (AHDP), the development team that includes Cordish Cos., Populous and Legends/ASM Global -- and is closing in on the New Aloha Stadium and Entertainment District (NASED) project.
The 98-acre NASED effort would create a new 25,000-seat stadium surrounded by mixed-use development in Honolulu on the site of the 50-year-old Aloha Stadium, which is still standing but closed in 2020. The state has contributed $350 million to the design-build stadium project, which will be home to University of Hawaii football and the Hawaii Bowl, as well as millions more for infrastructure and early design concepting.
The new stadium target completion date is still late 2028, though tariffs are unsettling budgeting and construction schedules. The original self-imposed deadline for a finalized contract was extended from June 30 to Aug. 15. Lawyers from both sides are reviewing the deal.
“Just getting to where we are today is a tremendous milestone,” said Morioka, the dean of the University of Hawaii Engineering School. “We’ve never been this close to executing an actual contract.”
Quite the journey
A signed agreement would complete a kind of personal odyssey for Morioka. He just completed eight years as chair of the Aloha Stadium Authority and is still involved as the state’s representative overseeing project delivery.
The project is close to his heart. He grew up near the Aloha Stadium site when it was cleared in the 1970s to make way for the 50,000-seat, multipurpose stadium that Hawaii’s second governor, John Burns, envisioned as UH’s ticket to D-I football (it was).
Morioka has watched the starts, then stops, that have characterized the challenging, two-decade prospect of replacing Aloha Stadium. He was formerly the state’s director of transportation and was No. 2 at the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation. And yet, this project is the most complex procurement with which he’s been involved.
“It’s not just a stadium, so it’s not just an infrastructure project, and it’s not just a development project,” he said. “It’s a combination of the two and the two are very much tied together, so we have four or five different agreements that all get combined into the single contract. And when you make one change in one agreement, it has trickle-down effects in multiple agreements, so just making sure the consistency is there. That’s part of what’s taking us a little bit longer.”
Morioka called the site “the piko,” of the island, using the Hawaiian term for “belly button.” In addition to UH football games, it hosts several dozen Hawaiian high school football annually, as well as a popular swap meet and market convenes in its parking lot three times each week.
What does Hawaii need in a stadium in this era? Aloha Stadium helped connect the island to the mainland U.S. through football, especially its 36 years hosting the NFL’s Pro Bowl.
The priority needs are somewhat different now. Morioka said the new venue needs to be better capable of hosting large-scale concerts (Aloha Stadium wasn’t).
And much more importantly, there is an urgent housing shortage across Hawaii following the devastating 2023 Maui wildfires. According to a recent UH housing survey, rents for larger units (three or more bedrooms) are nearly double pre-fire levels, and “permanent housing availability remains a bottleneck.” Converting Aloha Stadium’s parking lots into real estate including 4,500 housing units, the majority of which will be affordably priced, is a step toward easing that shortage.
Proof of the Pudding is bringing butler-style service to a handful of its college football food and beverage service clients this fall. Proof, which has eight college clients, will roll out the service style in the best premium areas of stadiums at Auburn (two different spaces), Alabama (Founders Suites) and Georgia (1929 Club).
“This is a differentiator for us,” said Proof CEO Adam Noyes. “These areas are already super premium areas. We’re very fortunate to have a business that’s growing rapidly, and a lot of that is driven by our premium experiences. How can we make it better? It doesn’t necessarily have to come with a higher price tag from the client.”
The service style hinges on two key aspects: training and service standards and learning guests’ preferences and needs.
Proof has a dedicated HR team recruiting experienced hospitality veterans in the three locations, then trains them at the company’s HQ in Atlanta with in-person, hands-on practice -- not just binders of information or watching a video.
“It’s a different approach from just finding people to come work on game day,” Noyes said. “It takes a special person to be in the VIP areas, someone that understands great service and has the desire to go above and beyond.”
Additionally, Proof is having season-ticket members in the various premium spaces fill out “getting to know you” forms, detailing, for example, favorite drinks, birthdays and food allergies.
The premium teams will use earpieces to communicate a particular guest’s arrival, alerting the kitchen to fire their food or the bartender to begin mixing their preferred drink. Some fans may enter the club two hours before the game; others just minutes before kickoff.
Having dedicated, consistent staffing in those premium areas will allow employees to learn their guests, “and in a perfect world,” said Noyes, “proactively anticipate what they might want.”
The Club World Cup was a testing ground in numerous aspects of event staging for FIFA ahead of next summer’s Men’s World Cup. As FIFA’s senior manager/accessibility and safeguarding, Linda Mastandrea’s purview was no exception.
Five of the venues that hosted CWC games this summer and have World Cup matches next year -- Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Hard Rock Stadium, MetLife Stadium, Lincoln Financial Field and Lumen Field -- were part of a pilot effort in which sign language interpreters sat in the stands or in suites with groups of deaf and hard-of-hearing fans. They translated any player introductions, match commentary and stadium announcements those fans would have otherwise missed.
“There is this feeling that deaf people can see the action, but they miss out on that commentary when a foul is called or a red card is given,” said Mastandrea.
FIFA reached out to deaf fans and accessibility advisory groups in the various cities ahead of the CWC matches, then worked with an interpreter services agency to hire local interpreters.
“We discovered there is an interest [and] we got a lot of positive feedback,” Mastandrea said. “So, we want to make sure we’re adding that to the mix of services.”
Ideally, FIFA and the venues could incorporate tech that would allow deaf fans to receive sign language interpretation regardless of where they were seated in the stadium. Equally, they’re looking at audio description for fans with vision issues.
“There is so much happening in the tech universe with OneCourt and other haptic devices,” Mastandrea said. “We had a chance to demo them in the office for people to see and understand them, so I think there will continue to be innovations in the tech space with accessibility. The experience for people with sensory, visual, auditory issues will continue to improve.”
Mastandrea, who joined FIFA in 2024 on a contract basis through Aug. 2026, is deeply qualified for this role. She’s a former Paralympian who represented the U.S. in the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics before becoming a lawyer focused on disability law.
Mastandrea’s work during the last year-plus included site visits to all the stadiums and determining whether accessibility features that FIFA requires were present or needed to be enhanced. She’s met with host cities to discuss the accessibility of transit systems, rideshares, hotels, public services and is working internally on making the ticket-buying process as easy as possible.
Fulham's Riverside Stand features a restaurant run by a Michelin-starred chef, open 7 days a week. FULHAM FC
In this week’s SBJ in-depth, I took on “Great Ideas in Premium Seating,” which was created to showcase a variety of premium spaces in sports venues that represent at least one -- and more often, several -- of the many modern trends influencing these spaces.
Whether it’s a great example of a group premium space, or a conversion of an existing part of a stadium or arena into a space that generates more revenue and meets the desires of modern fans, or a collaboration with a celebrity chef, these spaces are worth knowing. They represent the major changes occurring in the businesses of college athletics, car and horse racing, and European football, as well as increasingly rising premium expectations in North America’s top sports leagues.
May inspiration find you as you flick through these.
The Legends Hospitality Summer Burger Road Trip included this Oklahoma Onion Burger. LEGENDS
While scrolling through LinkedIn at some point last week, the Legends Hospitality Summer Burger Road Trip stopped me in my tracks. I love burgers, and the eight included in Legends’ slideshow all looked unusual and delicious (two of my ideal food characteristics).
My pick of the group would be the Oklahoma Onion Burger, primarily because I want to evangelize for onion burgers (check out this recipe from the New York Times; they’re very easy to make).
Here, I normally try to share a story that has some kind of transferrable information for the sports industry. That’s not the case this week.
Instead, I bring you a story from Ars Technica about the beauty of peacock feathers, which can also, apparently, emit laser beams (insert your best Dr. Evil voice here).
The Astroturf field used for the rained-soaked MLB Speedway Classic had 4,000 linear-feet of drainpipe installed, and it appeared that much was required on Saturday night, with the tarp also getting plenty of use, notes SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo. MLB will have approximately 200 crew members focused on dismantling the event. Simultaneously, Bristol will have 90-100 team members focused on preparations for the NASCAR event in town Sept. 11-13.
When Shannon Kelly oversees the Vikings’ preseason home opener on Saturday, she’ll still have the same walkie-talkie she’s used during events at U.S. Bank Stadium since 2018. But now she’ll be using that walkie-talkie as just the fifth woman running an NFL stadium.
The latest enhancement at Comerica Park this season has been the Priority Club, which leads out to 350 high-end, climate-controlled seats behind home plate, notes Mazzeo. Members can pay upward of six figures for full-season ticket packages with multiple seats, and they also receive all-inclusive food and beverage, VIP parking and a private entrance at Tigers games.
My colleague Ben Fischer and I talked to execs from around the industry for a ticketing roundtable that looked at the biggest challenges, “blue sky” ideas and more for live sports.
Elevate will lead premium hospitality efforts at Estadio Banorte (formerly Estadio Azteca), the largest and most historic stadium in Mexico, under a 10-year operating agreement, reports SBJ’s Alex Silverman. The Mexico City stadium is undergoing more than $200 million in renovations in advance of the 2026 FIFA World Cup and is set to reopen for Liga MX’s Apertura season in the fall of 2026.
