SBJ Facilities: Chasing Goldilocks for all-inclusive venues

I’ve found almost nothing as exhilarating in sports as watching European soccer’s promotion/relegation battles. I know any system involving relegation is the worst nightmare of the North American sports business community, but merit-based promotion (and relegation) keeps me hooked when I could have otherwise checked out (my club finished 12th in its table this season).

And guess what? No tanking issues in England. Watching Hull’s 96th-minute winner send it to the Premier League last weekend, followed by the West Ham/Tottenham relegation drama the next day, reminded me of one of global soccer’s biggest advantages over North American sports: the stakes. Yes, there are rewards for winning, but seeing the punishment for sustained failure coldly meted out is just as hard to take your eyes off.

When I asked sports industry executives about the hypothetical all-inclusive food and beverage venue, it prompted a lot of feedback. I only had so much room in the magazine story that ran this week, so here are some interesting leftovers that didn’t make the initial cut.

What’s the Goldilocks situation?

If you’ve read my story, you might be wondering about the ideal situation in which to launch an all-inclusive program. I did, too, and asked nearly everyone I talked to that question.

The most common view was expressed by Aramark Sports + Entertainment President and CEO Alison Birdwell, who said the concept could theoretically work in any sport or venue type, but the most important factor was whether the venue was new.

Everything from design, especially for back-of-house aspects, to ticket pricing could be arranged to make all-inclusive work, regardless of the sport or venue type. Fitting the model into an existing building would be difficult, especially on the infrastructure side (this factor alone would rule out most college sports facilities).

From there, opinions differed. Levy Chief Commercial Officer Sandeep Satish thought all-inclusive would work best in a venue with a finite type of event and that an arena would be tricky for the opposite reason — too much event variety. Through that lens, an NFL or MLS stadium might make the most sense.

Baseball venues also fit those parameters — at least they used to. Petco Park’s varied event calendar helped it recently win SBA Facility of the Year. Given an MLB ballpark hosts 81 home games, fans, especially season ticket members, would probably want more variety. But all-inclusive could seemingly be structured in a way that addressed that issue. And baseball is probably the most family-friendly sport when it comes to prices, so all-inclusive venue-wide might be of particular interest to single-game ticket-buyers.

After all this research, where did I land? I think the Rays — who could use a fanbase jolt, some good PR and appear to be building a new stadium — might be justtttt right.

What about alcohol?

Alcohol, and how to address it in an all-inclusive model, also came up repeatedly.

In most settings, it doesn’t make sense to include alcohol in the cost of a ticket. It’s illegal in some locales (and states), and many live sports attendees are children.

That’s not the case with the Kentucky Derby, whose typical crowd includes a low number of kids. Since going to all-inclusive tickets on the front side of Churchill Downs, Sarah Contardo (SVP/sales and strategy and a 2024 SBJ Game Changer) said the event has had far fewer issues of overserving and public intoxication since 2021, when the all-inclusive program was broadened.

The reasons are counterintuitive: Churchill Downs learned that many of its attendees were binge-drinking before entering the venue so that they wouldn’t need to buy as many expensive drinks once inside. They got drunk beforehand to keep their costs down.

Less of that is happening since alcohol was included in the ticket price. For some fans, the financial pressure disappeared. Plus, people ate more food and drank more water (included with their ticket), helping diffuse their alcohol intake.

“We had ramped up all our safe-serve and trainings and checkpoints,” said Contardo, “and it was a pleasant surprise that it was the opposite effect.”

Rainier Development Company and the University of Oklahoma Foundation broke ground on the Rock Creek Entertainment District on May 12, officially setting in motion construction of a $1.2 billion, 269-acre project in Norman, Okla., that’ll include a $330 million arena, home to Sooners basketball and gymnastics.

Rainier Development Company will lead the project’s planning, design, coordination and development, its quasi-official entry into the sports-adjacent mixed-use development game. Rainier Development Company was launched in 2023 by Dallas developer Rainier Companies with a sole focus on sports-adjacent real estate. And it quickly grew its sports expertise by hiring a handful of people, including President David Neher, from Lincoln Property Company (which was initially involved with the Rock Creek effort but no longer is).

Rainier brings its own angle to sports real estate, informed by its parent company’s retail focus. In recent sports mixed-use projects, retailers — like high-end shopping, food and drink-driven concepts and music venues — were performing better than national averages. Higher sales were leading to landlords collecting higher rents.

The positioning of retail within the development and easily accessible surface-level parking are symbiotic priorities for any Rainier project, according to CEO Danny Lovell. It’s allergic to five-level parking decks that scream to visitors “you’ll be stuck in here.”

“The retail’s got to lead,” said Lovell. “And if you get the retail right, then those other components,” meaning office, residential or hotel, “are ancillary, and while they’re beneficial, you can move them around a little more than the retail.”

Here are two other takeaways from my recent conversation with Lovell:

Rainier is focused on college sports-adjacent possibilities

Lovell said that Rainier has about $3 billion’s worth of projects in development, including one breaking ground in September and another in the first quarter of 2027. There are two big reasons Rainier zeroed in on the college sports-adjacent development opportunity: first, universities are significant landowners, so public-private partnerships with developers can be established more quickly.

“If you’re thinking about a major market and buying up land around a stadium, that land is expensive, especially in a major metroplex,” Lovell said. “A lot of [universities] have more land than they know what to do with right now.”

Second, higher-ed institutions carry the necessary political and cultural clout in their markets to get development tax incentives approved, like the pair of 25-year tax districts that will help fund the Rock Creek project.

“You can’t build these without a public-private partnership, pretty much anywhere,” Lovell said.

College brands can make smaller markets viable sports-adjacent mixed-use destinations

Nationally, new retail construction over the last 20 years has been limited, Lovell said, something Rainier Companies knows as a serial landlord.

That’s led to higher costs and rents, which can hinder development in the large towns and small cities that are often home to nationally known universities. But those locales — Norman, for example — share one market condition-defying advantage: a magnetic university brand.

“In Norman, Oklahoma there is no way we could build a $1.1 billion entertainment district and project in a town of 125,000 people without the University of Oklahoma and the attraction of tourists and shoppers that go to Norman because of the university,” Lovell said. “If the university wasn’t there, there is no way this would work.”

The Heat have always leaned into the color palate of fire when renovating Kaseya Center. Traditionally, that’s resulted in a lot of orange, yellow and red. This summer’s $40 million project partly pivoted to a different fire hue: blue.

The North Lounge, one of four event level spaces being addressed, features the color of fire at its hottest, indicating a temperature well over 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The bar’s metal centerpiece curls at the edges like a charred piece of paper on the edge of a campfire.

The North Lounge, South Lounge, The Arc and 1988 Club will revamp Kaseya Center’s event level premium offering, doubling capacity. The 1988 Club replaces Hyde Lounge and will feature a partnership with Michelin-star chef Jeremy Ford, while The Arc is being created from reclaimed storage space beneath a retractable seating system installed two years ago.

Lately, the organization, which has invested $100 million into the publicly owned, 30-year-old arena since 2023, seems to do these offseason projects like they’re assigned summer reading from the teacher.

“It’s really in response to the changes in our market,” said Jennifer Alvarez, Heat SVP/ Brand and Chief Creative Officer, alluding to higher fan expectations and an influx of global corporations into the Miami market. “We want to make sure we’re meeting our fans where they want to be met.”

The renovations were designed by Miami-based EoA Group and Populous and built by Moss and Associates. Demolition is complete, and construction is underway, with the project to finish before the 2026-27 NBA season.

The Arc, which will afford views of players walking to and from their locker rooms, is part of the team’s new tiered system for season ticket holders and premium members. It’ll be the nicest space available to those season ticket holders, and starting at $21,560 per seat, it’s the lowest price of any of the new or renovated spaces.

The South Lounge is more in line with the typical “fire” color palate, highlighted by the yellow/orange fixture hanging from the bar ceiling.

Both North and South lounges hold about 150 people and are being expanded this summer by up to 1,500 square feet.

The 1988 Club sits next to the South Lounge. Its bar centerpiece is a large lighting fixture that will likely be made of a resin/glass material. The color emanating from the lights within the fixture will cast a warm glow over what Alvarez called “a love letter to South Florida,” its design nodding to the state’s history and unique ecology. A new 1,600-square-foot kitchen will help elevate the Ford’s chef program with food and beverage provider Levy.

The project follows a premium renovation last offseason that was also designed by EoA Group.

“We’ve just come to feel that they understand us as an organization. They understand our identity in a way that can manifest itself in some beautiful designs,” said Joe Castaldi, a Heat project manager. “We believe EoA being a local designer can capture this more than those other national firms.”

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How precious are these tennis ball madeleines that Sodexo Live is serving at Roland-Garros the next two weeks for the French Open? Costing about $8, they’re filled with almond paste and include a chocolate spread. Mangeons!

The American demographic landscape is shifting as urban growth moves beyond suburbs and into exurbs, with Texas seemingly the trend’s Ground Zero, according to this Axios story. In our sports facilities context, it’s easy to see this trend impacting venue development and team relocation within market (see: Dallas Mavericks or Stars).

• Congratulations to Petco Park for winning Sports Facility of the Year at the Sports Business Awards.
• In a recent SBJ opinion piece, golf legend Greg Norman argues that the trend of tearing out trees during renovations to make course longer is removing strategy from the game.
• An entertainment district is the most likely mixed-use development for Penske Entertainment to pursue at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and that vision will start to be shared with the public over the next two years, reports SBJ’s Adam Stern.
• In the latest SBJ Football newsletter, SBJ’s Ben Fischer clears up the misconception that a new stadium means a Super Bowl is coming to town.
• One of my takeaways from SBJ Tech Week: Venues must build their tech backbone before they need it.