SBJ Facilities: The Battery gives Braves media flexibility

I passed 17,000 followers on LinkedIn this past week, which is incredible to me, in part because I was always so baffled by LinkedIn when I worked in the newspaper world. But I’ve come to appreciate its focus on business/work, especially in an era where I’ve left X behind for a variety of reasons, including how distracting it was (based on the timeline I’d curated). If I have any secret to using LinkedIn, it’s that I approach it similarly to how I used X: I post news. Renderings don’t hurt either.

Thank you to all who follow me there and amplify my work.

The Braves are doing the lord’s work being a publicly traded company. So, it’s a near obligation on my reporting beat to dive into their recent 2025 full-year SEC filing and subsequent investors call for more details about the performance of their often-discussed mixed-use development, The Battery Atlanta.

The Battery’s 45% year-over-year increase in annual mixed-use development revenue ($97.4 million) certainly caught my eye in the recent filing. That means the 2.25 million-square-foot development now constitutes 13.3% of the Braves’ overall revenue of $732.5 million. In FY24, mixed-use was 10% of the revenue pie.

The jump’s main source was a $27 million increase in rent revenue, gained through new leases and the acquisition of existing leases related to the Braves buying Pennant Park for $93 million in April and expanding The Battery’s footprint to the other side of Interstate 75. A $2 million increase in sponsorship revenue also contributed to the boost, according to Braves CFO Jill Robinson. Mixed-use development-related costs also rose 45% but on a different scale than the revenue, from $9.8 million to $14.4 million.

During the investor call, Mike Plant, president and CEO of Braves Development Company, described a record year for The Battery’s tenants, in which their annual sales hit approximately $137 million across 30 locations, which, he added, “we believe ranks among the most successful mixed-use operations in the country.”

A place for big business

The Battery’s unusually high concentration of corporate HQ contributes to the retail success, acting as a straw that stirs the drink by bringing the daily activity (and spending) of its employees to the development, and in most cases, the companies signing long-term leases with premium rents.

The Battery’s HQ collection includes Papa John’s International, Truist Securities and the North American base of TK Elevator, as well as Comcast’s regional hub (overlooking Truist Park), and a handful of other smaller companies’ corporate bases. Their presence underlines the feeling that The Battery is a place where big business is happening.

Adding Pennant Park strengthened the development’s tenant portfolio. The Braves inherited a property with low 80% occupancy last April, but closed FY25 with that measure over 90%.

Plant said the development continues to command premium rents and to secure early lease extensions. In the fourth quarter alone, the Braves closed just under 50,000 square feet of new deals, with Walk On Sports Bistro and Shake Shack recently opening, while high-end chain restaurant J. Alexander’s debuts this year.

Real estate helping backstop media experiment

The Braves’ SEC filing news cycle was dominated by the announcement the team was launching an in-house TV network, BravesVision. The Battery, meanwhile, chugs along in the background.

Mixed-use development may never replace media rights money — at least not in certain sports — but it certainly strengthens a team’s business, with no better, or more public, example than the Braves.

Other MLB teams left in the cold by Main Street’s imminent collapse — the Royals, Brewers, Cardinals, Reds, Marlins, Tigers, and Rays — headed for the MLB Media umbrella. The Angels are launching their own network, too.

The decision to launch BravesVision was made easier in part because the Braves have always had a media bent, dating to their Ted Turner ownership, and their ownership and executive ranks are full of media expertise.

They have a sizable six-state territory with a large fan base and the streaming devices that could support a (new) regional network.

And they have The Battery to financially support the risk that BravesVision represents.

The 380 events hosted in The Battery and Truist Park in 2025 included 144 in the development’s common areas, with an additional 147 held at the Coca-Cola Roxy. Nearly 9 million people visited the area in 2025, close to the development’s 2024 count even though baseball attendance was down.

If (or when) the Braves lose tens of millions of RSN dollars in the near-term, they can augment that with the nine-figure revenue-generating development encompassing their ballpark. As Plant plainly stated during the investor call, The Battery “continues to expand its role as a meaningful contributor to our team and franchise value.”

The prompt that eventually spawned Poet Creator Software was simple: “What happens after the wearables?”

It was the Finnish government asking the question to researchers, including Tapio Rosenius, who later founded Poet Creator.

The thinking was the trend of humans measuring themselves would continue but that in the next wave of innovation, the tech doing the measuring would recede into the built environment. Humans would be stripped of tech, like wearables, and the architecture surrounding them would become intelligent, what the Finns were calling “nearables.”

Poet Creator Software fits that “nearables” description.

It serves as connective tissue-like software, tying building systems together to make those buildings reactive to their surroundings, creating dynamic and visually alluring experiences in the process — and interesting revenue generation potential.

Based in Madrid, the company originally pursued smart buildings and corporate office markets, but it has recently made a splash with its first two sports venue projects: Roig Arena in Valencia, and the Milano Santagiulia Arena seen during the recent Winter Olympics. Both have LED-covered facades (54,000 LED bars, in the Milan arena’s case). They’re ideal canvases for Poet Creator, and the tech works with any LED-covered surface, which could mean vomitories (like at Roig Arena), premium spaces, concessions locations or an entire concourse.

“What are the touchpoints on that fan journey or the concertgoers’ journey, and then just do something in each little touchpoint to create a very strong memory or experience,” said Rosenius. “I don’t think you need absolutely mega infrastructure like this,” he added, pointing to the image of Roig Arena behind him on the Teams call.

What is it?

Poet Creator’s potential visual impact is immense, but the software lives inside a mere server computer, perched on a rack alongside all the other computers that run a stadium or arena. The computer gets larger as more components are integrated into the Poet Creator software.

Clients pay Poet Creator a SaaS fee. Owing to the sponsorship opportunities created by a dynamic venue, Rosenius said the system can pay for itself within a year.

“It’s a cash machine for the client,” he said.

How does it work, then?

Poet Creator is an artificially intelligent system that operates on an “if this is happening, then do this” framework, as opposed to most LED content systems, which run off a programmed list.

The software is an open platform, absorbing data from all kinds of sources via a network of sensors positioned throughout a building. Potential inputs include a building’s sound, lights and projection systems, but these could also be the weather, or the presence of a person, causing a door to open. Poet Creator’s sensors can tell if a person is an adult, child, male or female, and can determine dwell time and direction of travel. Using a slew of AI, Poet Creator enables the building, or a district, to react to the input, to whatever is happening in a harmonized way. The system can render its own content, too.

Poet Creator can track players on a court or field and represent them on a building’s facade, for example, or similarly visually symbolize crowd noise. If the LED system hooked to Poet Creator was in a stadium or arena seating bowl, it could change how in-game experience is managed.

“You need to be a creative facility manager/marketing person to orchestrate experiences,” Rosenius said. “More of ‘the why’ and the outcome you are after, but there is no scripting.”

LSU’s Geaux Rewards appears to be the first sophisticated digital fan rewards program in college sports.

LSU launched the program, which is open to fans, students and alumni through the Tiger athletics app, last fall with Uptop, the company behind the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Cavs Rewards program that’s built on card-linked offers.

To join Geaux Rewards, a fan links their existing debit or credit card (for free), earning points when shopping at eligible locations, which include Tiger Stadium and the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, as well as at LSU sponsors Albertsons, Take Five, Community Coffee and Hancock Whitney. Fans can earn more points by engaging with the LSU app.

In the early going, rewards have included Fanatics discounts, commemorative ticket boxes for the 100th year of Tiger Stadium and a mix of giveaways for men’s and women’s basketball. Who wouldn’t want a Mike The Tiger bobblehead?

Gabe Merville, who is in his eighth year at LSU and his second as its executive director of analytics, strategy and revenue integration, thinks Geaux Rewards can become a regular seven-figure revenue stream by providing LSU with a multi-faceted digital sponsorship asset.

Users that sign up for card-linked offers programs consent to providing their hugely valuable shopping data. LSU can then mine that data to inform its sponsorship sales strategy (hypothetical: “look at all these LSU fans buying Sephora!” Then, LSU approaches Sephora with that information).

Geaux Rewards should drive more LSU fans to the app, which makes it a more valuable sponsorship asset and could boost other app-related revenue streams, such as ticketing.

Those assets give LSU more firepower to pursue sponsorship partners that already might be interested in one of college athletics’ unique attributes.

“Professional sports fan bases are generally concentrated in the city where the team is located, whereas college fan bases often maintain both a strong local presence and a broader regional footprint,” which is appealing to brands looking to spread their footprint across a region, or national brands looking to break into one, said Merville.

Uptop, which stablecoin-backed payments provider Rain acquired late last year, has now deployed three sports rewards programs, following the Cavs’ and Detroit Pistons’ launches. Geaux Rewards is the first in college sports and a useful test case for how fan engagement/rewards programs could work in this unique environment, because the rewards program renaissance of the last few years has largely been confined to pro sports.

“I could see it evolving similarly to streaming platforms,” said Merville. “It started with one school, and then multiple schools adopted streaming platforms — or their own versions — to promote content and generate new revenue. This type of concept could follow a similar path, serving as a way to drive additional revenue while also promoting continuous digital engagement with the fan base.”

Two weeks in a row we’re going healthy (this is not a trend, just a coincidence). This week, I’m highlighting Sam Q’s Salmon Bowl, on offer at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells Tennis Garden for $28. Sam Q is former pro tennis journeyman Sam Querrey, and he collaborated with L.A.-based poke bowl outfit Sweetfin. Sam Q’s bowl includes sustainably raised salmon, miso sesame shoyu, avocado, edamame, cucumber, pickled ginger, seaweed salad and crispy onions on a choice of greens or sushi rice.

Excellent reporting from SBJ alum (and fellow Charlotte native) Tripp Mickle for the New York Times, studying the looming crisis around the global, but especially American, over-reliance on Taiwan’s advanced chip-making.

• Populous’ Bridget Kaye talks about Utah’s new college baseball stadium, which takes full advantage of its setting.
• Chicago is getting some “cowboy cool” when the PBR and The Cordish Companies opens one of their bull riding-themed bars this summer at Wrigleyville, reports SBJ’s David Broughton in this week’s magazine. He also dissects the rise and fall of sports-concept eateries.
• Last week’s magazine saw our “Great Ideas” series look at VVIP experiences at venues, such as Churchill Downs’ Woodford Reserve Paddock Club.
• Inter Miami’s new venue has a naming rights sponsor in a multiyear deal with a Nubank, a Brazilian financial services firm. It’ll open April 4 as Nubank Stadium.
• The A’s are putting the first premium spaces in their upcoming $1.75 billion Las Vegas ballpark on sale later this month, with an eye on simplicity and comfort over the flash of technology and other trendy features.
• The Cosm dome coming to Atlanta’s Centennial Yards’ mixed-use district has an opening date, notes SBJ’s Rob Schaefer: June 10, the day of Game 4 of the 2026 NBA Finals.
• SBJ’s Irving Mejia-Hilario gave readers a look at the first TOCA Social venue in the U.S., which opened Friday at the Grandscape in The Colony, Texas.