SBJ Facilities: Venue leases under women’s sports microscope

America has been attracting foreign visitors to its unparalleled collection of sports venues and developments for years, World Cup aside.

The Ravens recently hosted Yomiuri Giants executives at M&T Bank Stadium during the Japanese baseball team’s research trip to the U.S. And Centennial Yards President Brian McGowan mentioned to me in June that the Austrian ambassador and Manchester United executives had separately visited the development within the last year as they ponder plans for their own sports real estate projects.

They’re just two examples of the venue-recon trips that foreign sports entities make to the U.S. all the time. Don’t hesitate to let me know the next time you host foreign sports visitors to your building or development.

A statue honoring WNBA great Lisa Leslie will be unveiled Sept. 20 outside Crypto.com Arena, home of the L.A. Sparks.

That kind of permanence would seemingly tie the Sparks to the arena, better known as home to the Lakers, Kings and the Grammys, forever. But the Sparks’ lease only runs through 2029.

I recently caught up with Sparks President Stacy Johns and Tim Katt, who co-leads Transwestern’s Sports and Entertainment practice, to get an update on the WNBA team’s practice facility project (which Katt’s company is involved with). During that conversation, we began talking about the issues that women’s pro sports teams still face as tenants in their venues.

The women’s training facility boom is driven in part by those teams’ lack of control over the venues where they play their games. That’s changing slowly in the NWSL — a 12,000-seat stadium can be cheaper to build than an arena — but tenancy is still most teams’ reality. And that’s fine for the majority; building, operating and maintaining a financially viable venue is a huge undertaking carrying significant risk.

But as more women’s teams own and control practice facilities, and if league and team valuations continue growing, the pressure on future lease negotiations between women’s teams and their landlords should increase.

Scheduling is paramount

The Sparks play in one of the world’s busiest arenas. Behind the Kings and Lakers, they’re third in the venue’s pecking order, and maybe fourth if you consider the venue’s world-leading concert and entertainment-events business. And that’s even after the Clippers left for Intuit Dome.

“One of the primary issues that should be under the microscope is scheduling and date availability,” Johns said. “These venues historically have been able to make a lot more money on concerts or other men’s events, but that’s changing.”

Playing games at better times of day on better days of the week has everything to do with where a WNBA or NWSL team sits in the venue’s hierarchy.

Johns was an executive with the Indianapolis Colts, who are Lucas Oil Stadium’s lone tenant, an obviously ideal scenario. At her next two stops, LAFC and Bay FC, the NWSL club was the No. 2 tenant in an MLS-controlled stadium. But many WNBA teams belong to NBA ownership groups, some of whom are tenants in their buildings (Detroit, for example).

I still wonder if the WNBA especially wouldn’t be better served expanding (when financially viable) into markets without NBA or NHL teams. The WNBA team might be an arena’s top priority in places, like — and I’ve plucked this out of thin air — San Diego or Birmingham, Ala.?

Women’s teams are competing with live music

In the 1990s and early 2000s, an arena might host four or five concerts a year. Women’s sports teams playing in major arenas now compete with Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar and Billie Eilish for relevancy in a venue’s business. Johns acknowledged the status importance of playing at Crypto.com Arena, but the building’s owner, AEG, owns the Kings and is also a global live music promoter.

“Stacy’s not just working around the Kings and the Lakers, but also if Harry Styles is in town, and he wants to do a residency,” said Katt. “That’s a huge shift.”

Once MLS moves to the global soccer calendar, the NWSL season will no longer overlap with the men’s league. But clubs like Gotham FC, which announced last week that it’s moving to Etihad Park when it opens in 2027, will instead contend with soccer-specific stadiums’ summer concert schedules. That was one of the perks of the MLS calendar change; opening a clear run in June and July for teams to book stadium concerts.

Financial opportunities

Most leases that WNBA and NWSL (and other leagues’) teams sign severely limit available sponsorship categories and premium revenue. If women’s teams remain tenants, getting more amenable carve-outs in these two categories will be paramount to reaching overall financial solidity.

“Do you have a [building] GM that wants to work with you and be helpful to you, or not? And some of that’s terms,” Johns said. “I think it’s going to take a lot of time and there is not a magic bullet to this.”

Deal length?

Many women’s pro teams are pursuing long-term arena and stadium leases to signal stability to their organizations, fans and sponsors. But it’s a Catch-22, Johns said, because these agreements can lock teams into situations that within a few years don’t reflect potentially increased franchise value.

The Sparks extended their Crypto.com Arena lease in 2024 for five years, taking them to 2029. Intuit Dome has opened in L.A. since then, which would seemingly give the team more leverage in future negotiations. Would the Sparks take the Lisa Leslie statue with them if they moved? We’ll have to check the lease terms.

When Chris Del Conte was hired as Texas’ AD in 2018, one of his first moves was to lower concessions prices at Darrell K Royal Texas Memorial Stadium by an average of 30% on the 10 most popular items.

Texas’ Fan First menu promptly ratcheted up order volume. After COVID waned and the stadium converted to digital ticketing and cashless transactions, Texas deployed its first grab-and go markets. There has been a steady stream of Mashgin units sprinkled throughout the 102-year-old stadium ever since.

Return on investment has routinely been realized by the following season, said Texas athletics CFO Rob Novak. At minimum, converted stands have produced 30% year-over-year revenue lifts, as well as increases in fans’ average check size per transaction (which hover, currently, around $20).

“This one is just straight ROI,” said Novak. “Whether we play Wyoming or Ole Miss, we’re going to have a sold-out football stadium. We’re going to keep innovating in this space. It’s just a no-brainer.”

Texas is adding 18 “power counters,” the name for Mashgin’s new lower-profile unit, ahead of the 2026 college football season. That’ll take Texas’ deployment to 111 units, nearly all of which are in the football stadium.

The power counter weighs about 40% of the traditional Mashgin kiosk and is 16 inches shorter, as Mashgin continues to dial in the unit’s form factor. The new format is the result of Mashgin’s natural product evolution, with a likely added nudge from competitors whose slimmer tech uses iPads or other tablets. Northwestern’s Ryan Field will have 62 power counters when it opens this fall, while the Bills’ Highmark Stadium will have 52.

Running cable has been the main hurdle to deploying Mashgin in Texas’ century-old stadium.

“We’ve had to think outside of the box to make them work,” said Jason Carstens, district controller for 1883 Provision Co., the Sodexo Live entity that runs the stadium’s F&B business.

The Mashgin markets have more than doubled revenue at the locations where they replaced traditional F&B stands. Some of them have registered year-over-year sales increases of up to 125%, while transaction times went the other way, dropping from 35 seconds to a 10-second median.

“I’ve done a couple of presentations for Sodexo when we’re bidding for new campuses, and those are usually the two pillars I stand on,” said Carstens.

The third deck on the stadium’s east side was a particular mess. There were only eight F&B locations serving more than 25,000 people. Long lines of waiting fans jutted into the concourse.

Thirty-eight Mashgin units were deployed as part of a $2.5-million project in 2024 that converted every traditional stand on that level into a market and added four more locations (for 12 total). Now, the Mashgin market queues, inherently shorter, snake along the walls of the concourse thanks to a smarter physical footprint.

“In addition to the revenue and guest experience,” said Mashgin VP/Sales Brandon Scott, “I’d have to imagine the fire marshal is much happier because there aren’t a hundred people standing in line.”

As part of its $330 million renovation, Camping World Stadium is getting a skin transplant.

For years, the Orlando stadium’s two main sideline facades resembled the framework of a Connect Four game. But the multiyear redo of the 90-year-old venue — the overall project cost is $400 million when counting the addition of an events center next to the stadium — will dramatically change its outward appearance with the installation of 19 LED ribbons covered by metal panels on the venue’s east and west sides. The metal covers diffuse the light, so the stadium’s facade is not directly an LED board, but it is still capable of transmitting messages and images in high-fidelity.

“They wanted to redefine the identity of the stadium, this new, contemporary destination,” said Ryan Freeland, Sports Design Leader at DLR Group, which designed the renovation.

Camping World Stadium sits at the west entrance to Orlando’s downtown, providing many visitors’ first impression of the city’s center. Because the stadium doesn’t have a main tenant — although the Jacksonville Jaguars will play their 2027 season there during EverBank Stadium’s renovation — there was freedom to create a more chameleon-like facade capable of echoing the spirit of any particular event.

That’d be especially interesting for the Electric Daisy Carnival, the largest electronic music festival held annually on the East Coast, which attracts 100,000 daily visitors for three days to the Camping World Stadium site. The Rolling Loud and Warped Tour festivals each bring 60,000 fans daily for their annual three-day stints. The LED facade could actually participate in those events, as well as the college football bowl games and international soccer matches regularly held at the venue.

The project team settled on a silver colored metal panel, which during daylight is reminiscent of the sun bouncing off the ponds and lakes that surround Orlando. Each metal panel is essentially a pixel with an integrated lighting scheme that’s programmable in nature. The skin also serves as code-required hurricane bracing for the building. Tucking the LED ribbons behind the metal panels will help them resist the Florida climate better and last longer, while also illuminating the stadium concourse inside of the facade at night.

The city of Orlando hasn’t yet finalized the vendor for the facade portion of the project, said Allen Johnson, the city’s chief venues officer. The new skin will make an impression on millions of Orlando motorists each year, while demonstrating clearly how some of their tax dollars were used.

“More people see the outside of the venue than the inside,” Johnson said. “Why shouldn’t they get a special experience as well?”

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Sushi Push Pops are coming to Commanders games at Northwest Stadium this fall, courtesy of Levy. The push pop presents sushi in an easier way to eat at a game, almost like a Pez dispenser, but pieces of a sushi roll instead of candy. More than a few times I’ve eaten sushi in my car, and a push pop format would have been much easier there, too.

Levy’s sushi push pop is a hand-made Maryland Blue Crab Roll with fresh local blue crab, avocado, flying fish roe and fiery corn puffs, served in a custom Commanders vessel with soy sauce tube attached. A vegetarian version will be available, too.

Strategic sampling at a recent Chris Brown and Usher concert at Northwest Stadium drew strong reviews. The price hasn’t been set yet, but these will probably sell well regardless.

Real estate giant JLL has an interesting research look at the 16.5-million square feet of location-based entertainment development that’s in the works. I haven’t encountered one of these game-show concepts yet, but they sound fun(ny).

• World Cup fan festivals provided a showcase for the benefits of a modular approach to temporary builds at events. This week’s magazine features the latest in our “Great Ideas” series, illustrating how teams and leagues are finding ways to innovate — and profit from — modular and temporary structures for events.
• Tepper Sports & Entertainment will spend $500 million more than originally expected to renovate Bank of America Stadium, revising the total project cost upward from $800 million to $1.3 billion, reports SBJ’s Ben Fischer. The city of Charlotte’s $650 million share is unchanged.
• The Chiefs selected Manica as the lead architect for its future $3 billion stadium project in Kansas, with HNTB serving as the stadium’s architect of record. The team also released renderings of the project.
• The Mavericks hired Legends Global as their owners’ representative for the team’s upcoming arena construction project. Legends Global will represent the Mavs’ interests from design through commissioning the building and closing out the project.
• Oklahoma City selected the design of local artist Matt Goad for the main concourse floor at Continental Coliseum, the future home of the Thunder that opens ahead of the 2028-29 NBA season. The blueish terrazzo concourse floor will likely consist of an amalgamation of shell, recycled glass, porcelain and reflective mirror aggregates.
• SURJ Sports Investment, Live Nation and Oak View Group created Radia, a joint venture focused on the management, operations, and commercialization of Saudi sports and entertainment venues.