SBJ Unpacks: Views from the upper deck

Tonight in Unpacks: Upper-deck seats at venues have long represented diehard fandom and were inhabited by supporters willing to cope with the often-uncomfortable experience for a chance to see their team play. Now, the spot is facing new scrutiny as stadium economics shift. Some new stadiums are eliminating nosebleed seating or completely reimagining it in renovations.

Also tonight:

• Inside CBS’s shot, ad inventory for Masters
• How Louisville is becoming a sports business pacesetter
• Wisconsin AD McIntosh to take new position at Big Ten
• Avs, Nuggets introduce outdoor viewing for home playoff games

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Austin Karp talks about Rory McIlroy’s Masters wins, a surprise hire at the Big Ten office, the NBA Play-In Tournament making its Amazon Prime Video debut, big investment news for baseball in Denver, and Joe Buck saying he wants to finish his career at ESPN.

Nic Barlage remembers attending two Timberwolves NBA games with his middle school. He and his classmates sat in the Target Center’s top two rows. Live sports got into his bones.

Since pro and college sports moved into large stadiums and arenas, upper-deck seats have been the setting for many fans’ first live sports experiences.

Ticket sales were sports’ primary revenue engine in the 20th century, and upper decks — providing big chunks of lucrative stadium and arena capacities — were valuable.

The term “nosebleed seats” appears to have first been used in the 1950s, when upper-deck seats represented diehard fandom and were inhabited by supporters willing to cope with the often-uncomfortable experience because it could be the only way to see their team live. Upper-deck seats meant slogs up 30 rows of concrete steps or metal bleachers, watching games through binoculars.

Upper decks are frequented by families and single-game buyers, and have long served as a gateway to lifelong fandom.

“That was my germination moment,” said Barlage, now CEO of Rock Entertainment Group and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

But the place where many fans have those moments is facing new scrutiny as stadium economics shift.

The price of attending live sports has risen more than 123% since 2000, according to the Consumer Price Index. And amid the industry’s venue-building boom, upper-deck seats are increasingly under the microscope — eliminated in some new stadiums and completely reimagined in renovations.

The cost of renovating or building new venues has increased substantially during the last 10 years, an issue for the last few rows of seats because they’re the most expensive to build and the hardest for operators to monetize.

“You’re not seeing the massive upper decks you’ve seen in the past,” said Jeff Goode, HNTB design principal and seating bowl expert. “Owners, they want larger lower bowls. We’re hearing that in all the leagues. ‘Pack more fans down low.’ When you do that, it pushes those middle and upper tiers further out.”

It’s getting harder for upper-deck seats to compete with watching a game in more comfortable surroundings, and upper-deck economics are shakier with season-ticket sales’ gradual decline.

“Unequivocally” more upper-deck seats are being sold as single-game tickets, said Eventellect co-founder and managing director Patrick Ryan, whose company often helps sports teams sell those seats. Fewer season tickets make upper decks less financially reliable, especially for new stadium projects.

In many of those projects, thousands of nosebleed seats are wiped from the ticketing manifest altogether.

The Cleveland Browns’ under-construction Huntington Bank Field will open in 2029 with a 14-row upper deck — a fraction of the 26 rows in the current stadium.

Even more extreme is the A’s move from a multisport relic — the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum (46,847 baseball capacity), which has more than 21,000 upper-deck seats — to their Las Vegas stadium (33,000 capacity), which will have around 2,000 when it opens in 2028.

“If you’re no longer trying to set the record for attendance at events, it certainly makes sense to reimagine them,” said A’s President Marc Badain.

Upper-deck seats are being challenged in almost every project Adam Hardy works on as vice president of project development for Mortenson’s sports and entertainment construction vertical. Because teams are designing venues with smaller capacity starting points, there aren’t many extra seats to cut.

“But the budget challenges make us ask in all planning meetings,” Hardy said. “Are there two rows up there where we could find another place to put 1,500 seats?”

Where ‘forever fans’ are made

For decades, stadiums and arenas consisted of a lower bowl, a ring of suites and an upper bowl.

That began changing around the turn of the century, and modern stadiums’ seating layouts are much more complex. The Texas Rangers’ Globe Life Field, which opened in 2020, has 37 seating products on its online seating map, ranging from the VIP Lexus Club down to the Grandstand, each with a correlating unique color. The color-coded map features eight shades of green alone, with per-game ticket prices ranging from $9 to $300.

In many venues, upper-deck seats aren’t disappearing; they’re simply being reimagined.

New configurations are influenced by the concert industry’s growing importance to sports venues’ bottom lines and now often feature large, open social spaces instead of vast stretches of uninterrupted seats.

Fans’ expectations have changed, especially as the cost of attending live sports has increased. More basic amenities — escalators instead of ramps, and more restrooms — are being added to improve the perceived value.

Kraft Analytics Group CEO Jessica Gelman has long seen strong demand for upper-deck seats across sports and venue types because they reach a different customer — a more entry-level buyer, often families and children.

“To me, the 300 level is where you make your forever fans,” she said.

Barlage’s experience colors the Cleveland Cavaliers’ focus on what it calls “Loudville,” the upper deck of Rocket Arena.

“It’s truly part of our strategy,” he said. “Your fans’ journey starts with a germination moment, and a lot of those moments come from them buying the most cost-effective seat in your building.”

But that long view is challenged by the booming demand for premium seating experiences and the industry’s near-term revenue desires and goals. Even some erosion of upper decks will make it harder for the general population to attend live sports.

“I know that’s a thing that’s on people’s minds, both at the pro level and the college level,” said Nate Appleman, director of HOK’s Sports + Recreation + Entertainment practice. “We don’t want to make this so exclusive that only a certain percentage of the population can afford to attend.”

Why upper decks are under scrutiny

Since 2008, construction costs — all types, not just sports venues — in nine major markets have increased between 92% (Minneapolis) and 110% (Seattle), according to data from Mortenson. And tech spending has increased greatly, reaching roughly 20% of a project’s total cost, according to Ampthink — a figure that can mean hundreds of millions of dollars in a several-billion-dollar project. Any public investment increases the pressure for every aspect of a sports venue to show return on investment.

That environment has intensified the scrutiny on the last 2,000 seats in a venue, said Josh Cohen, CAA Icon senior vice president, strategic advisory. Adding those seats to a design means more restrooms, points of sale and ingress/egress corridors … more costs.

The higher a stadium or arena climbs, the more the structure weighs, meaning more load for the foundations, footings and structural systems to bear. Indoor upper-deck seats are exponentially more expensive than outdoor ones because of the roof structure and the need to condition the enclosed space. The cost of deciding to have an extra upper-deck row trickles all the way down into the ground, Hardy said.

The Chicago Fire’s new stadium has just over 22,000 seats, a capacity that President of Business Operations Dave Baldwin said was influenced by the future venue’s long, narrow site, which would have increased the expense of constructing a second-level concourse. The math didn’t make sense on a privately financed $750 million project; the result for fans will be a more intimate but expensive (on average) viewing experience when the venue opens in 2028.

“The rigor will continue to increase, and I don’t see how those seats continue to pencil — rising costs, inflation, tariffs,” said Brandon Doll, founder of consultancy Sports & Entertainment Advisors. “You have to get smarter in terms of how you design, how you budget, build and monetize.”

What pencils out

The upside-down seating bowl era — during which many sports venues had more seats in the upper bowl than the lower — began ending in the early 2000s.

Teams now have far more revenue streams beyond ticketing, making it easier to build smaller venues. New NFL stadiums regularly land at 65,000 seats or below, down from the long-accepted 70,000-plus. Baseball parks sit closer to 40,000 than 50,000, while NBA and NHL arenas often land around 18,000, rarely topping 20,000.

“It’s more about responding to the economics and what the consumer really wants as you design the building,” said Badain. “Decide what you want to emphasize, what you want to spend the money on and where you want the fan experience to go.”

New and renovated venue capacities are dropping, but premium seating is expanding. Globe Life Field has 8,000 fewer seats than its predecessor, Globe Life Park, but the new ballpark moved the Rangers into MLB’s top five for premium seating, said CRO Jim Cochrane. And Capital One Arena’s three-year, billion-dollar-plus renovation will raise premium seating from 15% to 35% of total capacity when it’s completed in fall 2027.

Many premium capacity increases occur on the event level, formerly the domain of backup basketball goals and concessionaires’ staff locker rooms but now home to many venues’ highest-end premium clubs and bunker suites. Some premium seating is moving into upper decks, too, like at Chase Center, whose 60 Acrisure Theater Boxes line the bottom of both upper-deck sidelines. Seating treads — the space reserved for each seat — are growing, too. More luxurious spaces consume more square feet.

“That’s really the balancing act people are finding,” Appleman said. “Because there is more premium, the value of the upper deck just isn’t there.”

Growing portions of upper decks are shifting from season tickets to single-game sales, allowing teams to charge more dynamically based on opponent or event. But that model doesn’t work for expensive new stadium or renovation projects, which rely on a strong season-ticket base and sometimes permanent seat licenses to underwrite the investment, Ryan said.

“We see overarching high demand for the most expensive tickets and get-in prices,” said Gelman. “Depending on the percentage mix of those two, if you have a huge percentage in that middle group, there needs to be innovation. One concept is you’re removing that lower price point.”

Designing the modern upper deck

Achieving an upper-deck equilibrium where the needs of fans and the venue owner are both met is more complicated than ever. It’s changing the way upper decks are perceived, configured and designed.

Venues with less capacity are pushing upper-deck seats closer to the action. The highest seats at Northwestern University’s Ryan Field, which opens this fall, will be 136 feet from the playing field, compared to 253 feet at Michigan Stadium. The 35,000-capacity Ryan Field seating bowl’s steepness will be similar to the 18,300-seat Intuit Dome.

“They wanted it to feel like an arena,” Goode said of the HNTB and Perkins&Will-designed Ryan Field.

On its tight nine-acre Las Vegas site, the A’s’ new venue uses stacked tiers to create intimacy similar to Fenway Park. By stacking the seating stand tiers, the seating bowl tightened, reducing the total size of the stadium (and its unusual armadillo shell roof), as well as overall construction and ongoing maintenance costs.

“If we’re chasing dollars in construction, the single biggest impactful driver of cost is the overall square footage of the building,” said Steve Collins, OVG president of global venue development.

The concert business is a stronger consideration than ever, especially for upcoming covered NFL stadiums in Nashville, Cleveland, D.C., Kansas and Denver. For a live music-focused entity like OVG, which has built seven arenas, upper-bowl construction costs are a consideration, but a minimal one, said Collins. “At the end of the day, it’s $10 or $20 million over a project that could maybe be a billion,” he added.

The bottom line for OVG, and increasingly for more team-run venues, is that concert promoters value capacity, which makes upper-deck seats positioned in the right places — facing the stage and not behind it — important to a venue’s concert business.

Turning the upper deck into a destination

Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment’s $140 million renovation of Barclays Center included creation of the Modelo Bridge, a neon-lit replica of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s an Instagrammable perch, with food and merch trucks and graffiti beneath the bridge — a nod to the scene beneath the actual Brooklyn Bridge — and a performance stage above. The Populous-designed Modelo Bridge puts underutilized space to work by creating a destination that draws fans from other parts of the building, reducing congestion.

“Everybody is trying to create that experience that is truly unique to their venue, their market, their community,” said Adina Erwin, Barclays Center executive vice president and GM.

As more of life becomes digital, social experiences seem to grow more valuable. People might attend a game with a group of eight or 10 others, and don’t want to speak to just the people sitting to their left and right.

“In those instances, owners are looking for seats that are easily transformable without massive revenue hits,” said Gensler Principal Ryan Sickman, a global leader for the firm’s sports practice. “In that case, yes, the upper deck is an easy target.”

Arenas are starting to create in-venue social destinations, like the Modelo Bridge, that used to be found mostly in baseball stadiums. There is a cost to continually generate interest in upper-deck seats, said Legends Global EVP Tim Statezni, but successful in-venue destinations market themselves. They’re also sponsorable assets — Corona, Dr Pepper and Modelo are some of the major brands involved — which strengthens the business case for upper-deck investment.

“The money and numbers don’t lead in this area, they follow,” Barlage said, “But I think if you structure it the right way, it also can be a complementary area of your financial ecosystem relative to the fan.”

The Toronto Blue Jays’ Rogers Centre renovation replaced static outfield seats with five neighborhoods, each offering a distinct vibe for a subset of fans and $20 tickets. The focus on the game ranges from backdrop for socializing to bleacher seats geared toward baseball purists. The concessions program highlights Toronto’s melting-pot international population.

“People that come to those spaces, per-caps are higher because the ticket cost was not so much,” said Statezni. “It’s a pipeline builder for other things.”

Closing the upstairs gap

Sports venues’ exterior walls typically go straight up and down. As a seating bowl climbs up and out, the space higher in the building gets tighter, which is why upper decks have narrow concourses, the fewest amenities and are the farthest from live cooking.

The long-running lack of basic amenities gradually bled the perceived value of nosebleed seat tickets. Many venues still haven’t fully addressed the growing gulf between downstairs and upstairs. Yet, Ryan said many upper-deck seat tickets cost the amount lower bowl seats did 10 years ago.

They’re “built with minimalist amenities, but it’s no longer minimalist prices,” he said. “And many teams have improved the experience upstairs to match those prices and it can be sustainable. But those that havent made improvements in the upper deck may need to be more cautious about higher prices”

The increased competition for people’s discretionary funds and free time is jolting the owners of new and renovated venues into seemingly long overdue upper-deck amenity improvements.

“The amenities, the restroom counts … you used to cheat upstairs,” said Collins. “We’ve had to raise the standards in the upper bowl to deliver experientially what everyone has gotten used to.”

The $500 million-plus Caesars Superdome project removed hundreds of thousands of square feet of ramps that fans had used for decades and replaced them with express escalators that move them upstairs in a fraction of the time. Modern renovations almost always add more restrooms, and the wider seats/deeper treads trend has reached the nosebleeds, too. Checkout-free technology is thriving in compressed upper-deck concourses, saving space for other, more interesting concessions options and trimming lines.

In newer venues like Globe Life Field or the A’s Vegas stadium, upper concourses are left open to the field with bathrooms and concessions pushed to the back, so that fans stay connected with the game while out of their seats.

And more cross aisles are splitting upper decks, reducing the distance fans climb or descend to their seats in half, while creating additional “front-row” seats that are easier to sell.

“The perception of how many rows you have to climb is a real thing,” said Emily Louchart, director of design, interiors, for HNTB, which designed the A’s ballpark with Bjarke Ingels Group. “So, having less rows gives a more premium feel.”

Why upper decks still matter

Because nosebleed seats are a sports venue’s most affordable, any significant reduction quickly affects access to live sports.

“We have started to see some secondary market trends to be aware of because we’ve had this steady increase in prices across the board,” said Gelman. “Your everyday fan would be not able to have that experience of actually attending the game.”

Premium seating is, rightly or wrongly, often seen as a threat to cheaper seats. New York City FC plans to use premium revenue to subsidize ticket prices in other parts of its under-construction Etihad Park, namely the supporters section and tickets reserved for local Queens residents. NYCFC CEO Brad Sims posited recently that 85% to 90% of Etihad Park’s ticketing revenue could come from premium seating, though premium seating will only make up 20% of the total capacity.

Because of that disparity, non-premium seats could be priced as cheap as necessary “because then it’s not about revenue. It’s about optics, it’s about the environment, atmosphere,” Sims said. “For us, we’re going to make the revenue off the beachfront property.”

The Jacksonville Jaguars will close the 22,005-capacity upper deck at EverBank Stadium this season as part of their multiyear, $1.4 billion renovation. Including some lower-bowl seats that will be cut, the stadium’s overall capacity will decline from 67,838 to 42,507 during the project. The revenue hit is mitigated because of the relatively low value of upper-deck seats, Jaguars President Mark Lamping acknowledged, but those seats still play an important strategic role for the Jaguars by allowing less wealthy fans to experience the product.

“If we felt that that was the way to go [long term], we’d never open the upper deck again,” Lamping said. “But we’re going right back in 2028 with the upper deck open again, and particularly that year, it will play a really important role.”

Upper-deck seats are the setting for lifelong memories, like Badain’s photo from the 2010 World Series with his then-7-year-old son, Bernie. Their seats were about as far from Oracle Park’s home plate as possible, Badain said.

Barlage, of all people, understands the long-term value of those seats and of the affordable tickets they provide. They’re of such strategic importance to him that out of respect for the fans seated in Cleveland’s Loudville, he wouldn’t even use what he called “the U. D. term.”

“I don’t even think about it from an economic perspective,” Barlage said. “I just think about how it continues to grow and expand our ecosystem.”

Staff writer Ben Fischer contributed to this story; it’s been updated from its original version.

CBS showed 391 shots during its coverage of the Masters on Sunday, including all 71 of Rory McIlroy’s round as he went on to win his second straight Green Jacket. McIlroy was the only player to have all shots shown during Sunday’s broadcast. Cameron Young, who played in the final pairing and finished T3, had 67 of his 73 shots shown. Justin Rose had the third-most shots shown on Sunday with 51 (finished T3), while runner-up Scottie Scheffler had 50 shown during his round of 68.

Overall, CBS showed 391 shots on the day, up from 337 for last year’s final round. Those 391 shots were across 23 players, also an increase from 20 last year.

On the commercial side

CBS showed just 17.5 minutes of full commercials for the full broadcast, which ran from 2:00pm ET to just before 7:00pm. All ads were from the tournament’s four “Champion Partners” -- IBM, Bank of America, AT&T and Mercedes-Benz. CBS also aired two separate 30-second “sponsored by” segments during the day that highlighted the four partners.

All but one full commercial break consisted of three 30-second ads. CBS’s first break of the day, which came around 40 minutes into its coverage, was a 60-second break in total with two 30-second ads. CBS’s heaviest commercial hour came from 3:00 to 4:00pm, which had four 90-second breaks for 6 minutes of total ad time. CBS had just one 90-second break in the final hour between 6:00 and 6:53, when McIlroy’s final putt dropped.

Critics come out

CBS was widely criticized on Sunday for segments of its coverage. Both McIlroy and Young hit wild tee shots on the 18th hole, McIlroy to the right, Young to the left. McIlroy, with a two-shot lead, played a blind approach shot to the 18th green over a massive oak tree, but a full 60 seconds elapsed before CBS cameras found his ball in a greenside bunker. CBS did show Young’s approach in that window, but like McIlroy’s, it wasn’t able to track his ball. Still another 35 seconds elapsed before Jim Nantz indicated the ball in the greenside bunker might be McIlroy’s as he was walking in that direction.

Earlier on Sunday, the network drew criticism for not showing a short birdie putt by Scottie Scheffler on the second hole that, had he made it, would have pulled him within two of the lead. On the 13th hole, CBS’s shot tracer appeared to show Justin Rose’s second-shot approach heading straight for the tributary of Rae’s creek, but the ball instead pitched onto the green and gave Rose a mid-range eagle putt.

CBS also was praised during the week for its drone tracing, which was used for the first time at the Masters and highlighted the course’s sweeping doglegs and topography. CBS also added new cameras around Amen Corner that caught the attention of viewers with never-before-seen angles of Augusta National.

It takes sports travelers in Louisville mere minutes to feel as if they are in a place unlike any they’ve visited.

Maybe the whole town could be — maybe should be — a museum.

In just a quick drive, or in some cases a stroll, a visitor can experience the Twin Spires of Churchill Downs, where the Kentucky Derby has been run since 1875; watch real baseball bats being handmade, a practice dating to 1884 at the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory; and float like a butterfly a few blocks away to the Muhammad Ali Center. The city is epicenter of the world’s bourbon production and where Evan Williams opened his distillery on the banks of the Ohio River in 1783.

It’s a heritage that the simultaneously 100% Southern and 100% Midwestern city embraces, as Louisville quietly evolves into one of America’s great sports business cities.

While the market’s success is rooted in centuries of hospitality, its recent and future growth comes from the top down.

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg’s résumé reads like that of a C-level sports business executive.

After earning his J.D. at Harvard, the Louisvillian returned home to practice law; co-founded (and later sold) 21c Museum Hotels, a local art-infused boutique concept that is now in six cities; and later became co-owner of Ohio Valley Wrestling, a former WWE developmental property.

Since taking office in January 2023, Greenberg has helped lure sports events and secure funding for the creation of nine-figure mixed-use developments around the city’s downtown sports venues.

“These projects bring together two of my administration’s most important priorities — economic development and housing,” said Greenberg. “But we need to have world-class facilities to host larger outdoor youth sports events, so right now I’m advocating in our state legislature for some funding. Based on the success we already have with the indoor youth tournaments, the outdoor facilities will easily generate 75,000 to 130,000 new hotel room nights a year.”

An avid runner, he worked with the Louisville Sports Commission to create the annual four-race Planet Fitness Mayorthon series to showcase much of the city’s history to visitors and residents, including Historic Bowman Field, the country’s oldest operating airport; the Louisville Water Tower, a National Historic Landmark; many of the city’s 17 Bourbon Trail distilleries that are showcased in a 5K run in conjunction with the Bourbon & Beyond Music Festival, which draws 200,000 visitors each fall; and the University of Louisville campus.

Greg Fante has been immersed in the city’s tourism business for nearly four decades, including 11 in the hotel industry and eight with the local convention and visitors bureau prior to joining the Louisville Sports Commission in 2007. He has overseen the organization’s growth to a $2.2 million operation last year.

“Our 10 owned-and-operated events should generate just over $1 million in revenue this year,” said Fante, who became president and CEO of the sports commission in January 2023. “With what we have already booked and what we are expecting to announce soon, we expect 2028 to set a new bar for the sports commission and our entire community.”

In terms of non-owned events, its most lucrative tournaments are staged at the Kentucky Exposition Center, about 4 miles south of downtown. Home of the venerable Freedom Hall, where the University of Louisville basketball teams played for years, the building is undergoing a $470 million overhaul that will make it the country’s fifth-largest convention space. The renovation includes a $2 million upgrade to Freedom Hall’s acoustics system.

It was the site of last weekend’s League One Volleyball semifinals, alongside the Junior Volleyball Association World Challenge, presented by Nike, one of the world’s largest youth volleyball tournaments.

OVG handles the Expo’s food and beverage, 70% of which is general concessions, thanks largely to the number of youth sports tournaments.

The Expo ranked as the busiest convention center in the nation, according to Placer.ai data cited by David Beck, who oversees both the Expo and its downtown sister venue, the Kentucky International Convention Center.

The sports commission’s other owned-and-operated events include the largest college cross-country meet in the U.S. and the Paul Hornung Award presented by Texas Roadhouse, a ceremony honoring college football’s “most versatile player.”

Louisville’s portfolio of wins since Fante joined is as diverse as any city in the country, from UCI Cyclocross World Elite Championships (the first time the event had been held outside of Europe), multiple Ironman events and six NCAA men’s basketball postseasons (including next year’s first and second rounds). The city also was named one of nine preferred host sites for international FIFA base camps for the 2026 World Cup.

To Doug Bennett, the executive vice president of Louisville Tourism, the region’s destination marketing organization, the separate announcements in January that two prominent but empty downtown buildings were going to be converted into hotels was like winning a Daily Double at Churchill Downs.

The 26-story Fifth Third Bank building next to Fourth Street Live, an entertainment district run by Cordish Companies, will undergo a $185 million conversion into a 418-room JW Marriott slated to open in 2027. Additionally, the former Humana headquarters, a 27-story, pink granite tower on West Main Street, is set for a $600 million to $700 million redevelopment beginning next year, creating a 1,000-room convention hotel.

The new properties will boost the downtown’s room inventory by 20% and will be just a few blocks from KFC Yum Center and the KICC, two of the city’s most marketable sports venues.

Bennett worked for Visit Indy for more than 16 years and knows the value of having multiple hotel options inside a walkable footprint.

“We trail Indianapolis and Columbus and Cincinnati in terms of hotels,” he said, noting that those nearby markets each has a hotel of more than 700 rooms that has recently opened or is under construction.

More than 90% of the DMO’s $52 million in revenue last year came from the region’s 8.5% local transient tax and the 1.5% Tourism Improvement District assessment. Louisville Tourism uses 4.5% of the total rooms tax to market the city.

The organization gave $530,000 to help fund the sports commission.

Bennett said that the city’s volleyball and gymnastics résumé proves that it can support even more higher-profile events.

“We took an event that USA Gymnastics couldn’t find a home for and we invested in it,” he said, referring to the men’s and women’s Winter Cup that has taken place at the KICC for the past four years. “Now it is a revenue-producing event for us and for them.”

Along with others in the city, Bennett appreciates the heft that being the home to the Kentucky Derby provides when he is out in the marketplace.

“But people are starting to see that we’re more than a one-trick pony.”

For 151 consecutive years, Churchill Downs has hosted the Kentucky Oaks, the Kentucky Derby and the Clark Stakes.

“That makes Louisville the oldest sports host in the United States,” said Churchill Downs Racetrack President Mike Anderson.

Last year’s Derby Week generated $441 million in direct economic impact, according to Louisville Tourism and verified by several economists.

But the Twin Spires’ impact goes beyond race day.

Churchill Downs and its satellite facility 5 miles down the road have more than 500 horses on-site year-round, employ approximately 340 full-time staffers and own the Derby City Gaming & Hotel downtown.

Roughly 400,000 visitors come to town during the three weeks leading up to the race (which draws nearly 150,000 inside the venue) for the Kentucky Derby Festival, including Thunder Over Louisville, the nation’s largest fireworks show that lights up the Ohio River.

“We’ve taken this two-minute horse race on the first Saturday of May and blown it out to a three-week experience,” said Anderson, who has been with the company since 1996. “If you live here, it’s part of your breeding and it’s something to be proud of. We know that all the nation’s eyes are on the city of Louisville.”

The iconic venue continues to upgrade the fan experience, with a $20 million overhaul of the suites and a $5 million makeover of The Mansion ultra-luxury experience wrapping up this month. A two-year, $300 million project, dubbed “Victory Run,” begins this summer and will include the construction of a four-story tower that’s scheduled to debut for the 2028 Derby.

“It will fill in what we call the venue’s ‘gap in the smile,’” Anderson said, saying that the Populous-designed project also will be the highest level of premium. “Because the most exciting two minutes in sports means nothing if they don’t have a good experience.”

One of the city’s most unmissable sights is leaning against the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory: the largest baseball bat in the world, standing at 120 feet tall and weighing over 60,000 pounds.

Inside the doors, it’s a family thing for the company’s 200 employees.

Hillerich and Bradsby Co., makers of Louisville Slugger bats, is in its fifth generation of continuous family ownership. Board Chair Jack Hillerich, for example, has been at it for 68 years. President and CEO John Hillerich has been with the company for more than 40 years. Whitney Pfister, wood bat operations director, has 22 years and followed her mother, Vickie Boisseau (40 years), into the company. Factory employee Tommy Forrest and his father, Danny, have a combined 63 years.

“I think about this a lot: Kentucky Derby, Muhammad Ali and Louisville Slugger,” said Deana Lockman, the company’s vice president and executive director, who started as a tour guide in 1997. “My gosh, we are so incredibly blessed. We’re just this little town in Kentucky, you know, but we got lucky enough to have those three things that just tie this whole community together like a family.”

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The museum has welcomed more than 7 million visitors since it opened in 1996. It launched a mobile museum in 2010, in which four employees hit the road four or five times a year to nearby MLB markets (Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Kansas City) for fans to see the full, live bat-making experience.

In 1999, the company signed naming rights in perpetuity for the minor league ballpark that was being built a few blocks away.

The privately held company recently invested nearly $100,000 renovating its adjacent 2,000-square-foot bourbon tasting facility, and last month, renamed it Big Bat Bourbon.

As they say inside the factory and tasting room, it’s all about the wood.

The 2000 opening of the 13,000-seat, $34.2 million Louisville Slugger Field was a catalyst for the city’s redevelopment. The riverfront stadium sits on a site previously occupied by the Louisville Scrap Material Co. and a train depot used by the Big Four Railway and Chesapeake & Ohio railroad lines. Then-Mayor Jerry Abramson’s goal was to use the ballpark as a destination to connect the downtown to the river area.

Since then, more than 12.2 million fans have come to a baseball game, and millions more have come for concerts (a 2006 Dave Matthews concert drew 20,000 fans, still the ballpark’s biggest crowd), and other events. Louisville City FC was a tenant from 2015 through 2019 after the club’s founding owner, Wayne Estopinal, invented a retractable mound so the soccer team could play there until its Lynn Family Stadium opened in 2020.

Much of the material from the original train depot structure was preserved and reused in the ballpark’s grand entryway, an 11,000-square-foot pavilion that is the biggest space of its kind in Minor League Baseball, and a significant source of revenue for the club, said Louisville Bats President Greg Galiette.

Galiette, in his 42nd season with the club, graduated from Louisville in 1983 and started selling tickets for the team a short time later.

The club was bought by Diamond Baseball Holdings in December 2023 and has worked with the mayor and others to break ground next year on the Diamond District, a $250 million mixed-use project around the ballpark.

“The ballpark’s success is a reason why the mayor wants these downtown projects,” Galiette said. “He knows the sort of energy the city had when the ballpark and KFC Yum Center was coming up out of the ground.”

The new district would be partially funded via Tax Increment Financing, in which a portion of the sales tax generated within the footprint would be earmarked to pay down the development’s debt service.

The team’s marketing efforts lean heavily into the market’s heritage.

The April 17 game, for example, is Derby 152 Night, presented by Churchill Downs (“Wear your best Derby attire as we celebrate the greatest two minutes in sports!”). On Saturday, April 18, the club will once again rebrand itself as the Derby City Mint Juleps, with multicolored uniforms, argyle sleeves and a silver julep cup logo. Since 2018, the club honors bourbon by playing a few dates as the Mashers, sponsored by Whiskey Thief Distilling Co., a new partner located just a few blocks away that has two branded areas in the ballpark.

Although soccer and football are but colts in Louisville’s sports paddock, their presence and venues have already made an impact on the city.

In September 2016, John Neace, a retired insurance executive who had been living most of the previous 4½ years on his boat in the Bahamas, received a call from investors in the USL’s 1-year-old Louisville City FC.

“I owned a 3% share of the team with more than three dozen others, and let’s just say they were frustrated by the lack of progress in getting a soccer-specific stadium deal done,” Neace said.

The ownership group appointed Neace chairman and operating manager. He is now LouCity’s majority owner and said that he continues to increase his stake as original investors divest.

Two years after taking over, he had all the pieces for the stadium in place, including a $21.7 million TIF to help fund the 37-acre, $200 million mixed-use Butchertown Entertainment District near downtown.

The HOK-designed, $64 million Lynn Family Stadium, with a total capacity of up to 15,300, opened in 2020, with a roof on the exterior-facing façade designed to resemble, of course, a bourbon barrel.

The stadium hosted the 2023 NCAA Division I men’s soccer championship game and was selected as a candidate to be a FIFA World Cup base camp.

In 2020, Neace’s Soccer Holdings was awarded an NWSL franchise. Racing Louisville FC debuted a year later, with a moniker that is an obvious nod to the state’s $2 billion industry.

In 2021, the company financed the $15 million Lynn Family Sports Vision & Training Center, which houses day-to-day operations for the teams and provides eye care to the players, employees and the public.

Legends Global operates both venues and Louisville-based GE Appliances is the kit sponsor for the clubs.

Dr. Mark and Cindy Lynn, who purchased the naming rights for 10 years and an undisclosed amount, had previously donated to the University of Louisville for construction of the school’s soccer stadium, Dr. Mark & Cindy Lynn Stadium, which opened in 2014.

Lynn Family Stadium’s tenant roster grew last month when the UFL Louisville Kings made their debut before a sellout crowd. The league is co-owned by Mike Repole, an entrepreneur who earned billions by selling his Vitaminwater and BodyArmor brands to Coca-Cola. Repole has equity in horses running in the Kentucky Oaks and the Derby in May.

The Kings’ next home date is no coincidence: Before the horses enter the gates for the Derby on Saturday, May 2, the team will host the St. Louis Battlehawks on Thursday on FS1.

“The gestation period for the Kings’ birth in Louisville was fast,” said UFL CEO and President Russ Brandon. “On June 15, 2025, the morning after the league’s championship game in St. Louis, I drove four hours to Louisville to meet with Neace, [Soccer Holdings President] James O’Connor and Eric Wood, [a former NFL player and University of Louisville hall of famer], to discuss the logistics of fielding a team at Lynn Family Stadium.”

The Kings were announced less than four months later.

Neace said he would not have left his boat if he had not seen the potential for a long-term play. He has stake in several Louisville-based companies through his private equity firm Neace Ventures, and said at press time that he is “actively engaged” in talks with developers, the mayor, a minor league hockey ownership group, a professional volleyball organization and others to build an arena on the soccer stadium site, with a target date of 2028 to open.

The quiet growth of Louisville as a golf market gives the city yet another medium for international exposure, and leading that drive is an equally under-the-radar company.

In 1962, Louisville hardware store owner Jim Kirchdorfer Sr. parlayed his love of golf into a business specializing in underground golf course irrigation. He named the venture the Irrigation Supply Co., and grew to become the dominant player in the space.

ISCO has been headquartered on Whiskey Row for a decade, and 71 employees have been with the company for at least 20 years.

In 2024, ISCO signed a four-year deal with the PGA Tour for the title sponsorship of the former Barbasol Championship, which is now played each July at the Hurstbourne Country Club in Louisville.

“Louisville is a golf town,” said Jimmy Kirchdorfer Jr., ISCO’s president and CEO and co-owner of Valhalla Golf Club since 2022. “When the Solheim Cup comes to Valhalla in 2028, we will become the first city to host the PGA Championship, Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup at the same venue.” Valhalla, which was designed by Jack Nicklaus, hosted the PGA Championship in 1996, 2000, 2014 and 2024, and the Ryder Cup in 2008.

Kirchdorfer said the PGA of America reported that the 2008 Ryder Cup generated record revenue for the organization, and that Louisville’s sports business stakeholders have made progress in their efforts to attract a future one, though likely not until 2041 at the earliest.

“We bring clients who are high-level decision-makers from around the world to Louisville, and international players come here to play,” he said. “It’s a good value for our brand and it’s great exposure for the city to be associated with professional golf. Our name. Our city.”

On the West End of town in Louisville’s Russell neighborhood, a mile from the childhood home of Cassius Clay, the $68 million Norton Healthcare Sports & Learning Center celebrated its fifth birthday in February.

Built on an uninhabitable 24-acre brownfield, the complex includes 90,000 square feet of floor space; a 4,000-seat, 200-meter banked indoor track; and the 400-meter Humana Outdoor Track & Field.

“When I started trying to get this thing built, people were not taking me seriously at all, or maybe they were taking me seriously and just did not like my idea,” said the venue’s founder and president, Sadiqa Reynolds. “Finally, Valle Jones, a local real estate developer [who had recently helped bring the Whiskey Row mixed-use development to life], connected me with Soccer Holdings [investor] Tim Mulloy. Tim sat me down in his office and said, ‘Sadiqa, my kids run track and I think this is a great idea.’ Because I had been met with such resistance, I really thought he was just humoring me to get me out of his office.”

Naming rights, other corporate sponsorships, private donations and $10 million from the city paid for the entire development, meaning there is no debt payment and no lease.

The site is owned by Louisville Urban League, a Black-led nonprofit organization.

Reynolds said the building is running at 95% to 99% capacity and the organization is in the position of selecting the events that will generate the most revenue, versus simply filling dates with as many events as possible.

“I don’t know what they did five years ago before we built this place,” she said, noting that there are often 30 to 40 consecutive days of track meets, along with other sporting events, concerts and community events.

Reynolds said that the venue has given Louisville national exposure, and that it was built to meet NCAA specifications.

“It is a big deal to me that we’ve been on ESPN three times,” she said.

The Legends Global-operated site generated $2.04 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2024 (the most recent data available), up from $1.26 million the previous year.

Additionally, four multipurpose fields are set to open this spring after $3.5 million was raised to build on a vacant space on the site.

The University of Louisville has spent $138 million over the past decade to build or upgrade its sports facilities. What are typically considered nonrevenue sports accounted for about half that spending. Since 2017, $2 million has been spent transforming a basketball practice court to the 1,000-seat L&N Federal Credit Union Arena, a volleyball-only venue. The credit union signed a $2 million naming-rights deal in 2019.

“Louisville volleyball might be the toughest ticket in town right now,” Fante said.

Similarly, $1.4 million has been spent modernizing Trager Stadium, one of the few Division I venues dedicated solely to field hockey. The venue will host its seventh NCAA Division I Championships this fall and has served as host for three NCAA Division II Championships.

The school’s athletic department is led by Josh Heird, who has served as the Cardinals’ athletic director since June 2022 following a six-month interim stint. His contract was recently extended through June 2030.

Heird’s presence in the heart of horse country seems almost predetermined.

“I grew up on a small farm, my grandparents had a sheep farm and my father founded the Texas A&M equine department,” he said.

In 2023, Heird finalized a 20-year, $41.3 million deal to rename Cardinal Stadium to L&N Stadium, one of the largest deals in school history, and secured a $4 million commitment to open the stadium’s Angel’s Envy Bourbon Club.

If the Bats’ ballpark was the first-generation catalyst for development, the KFC Yum Center was 2.0.

The Louisville Arena Authority in January announced that the arena hosted more than 792,000 visitors at 113 events in 2025 (including nine sold-out concerts), which generated $16.7 million in gross ticket sales. None of that included University of Louisville men’s and women’s basketball, the venue’s anchor tenants.

The specific line items are not available for 2025, but in the calendar year 2024, the authority received $1.7 million from the building’s naming-rights deal, $4.8 million from sponsorship sales, $1.56 million from suite sales and $10.8 million from Metro Louisville’s annual payment.

Like the proposed ballpark and soccer mixed-use developments, the authority is part of a TIF district, which provided $21.6 million in 2024, up from $17.84 million in 2023.

The school paid $2.42 million in rent last year, and the lease, which runs through 2038, includes significant revenue sharing.

The authority announced a $100 million renovation project to roll out over five years, and the venue’s largest capital project, a $13.6 million full replacement of the original roof, was completed in December. The project included a metal panel retrofit design that resembles the narrow wooden strips that are used to form the sides of bourbon barrels.

The arena’s original design included a hotel, a plan that was scrapped due to costs. So, January’s announcements of two new arena-area hotels was welcome news to Eric Granger, KFC Yum Center’s general manager for operator Legends Global.

“Fifty percent of our non-basketball revenue comes from out-of-town visitors right now,” said Granger, who has been in arena management since 1995, with stays at FedEx Forum and Nationwide Arena just three hours away. “Having a convention hotel is only going to help drive that number up.”

He said that although last year Yum announced that it was moving its KFC operations to Plano, Texas, the company is spending $12 million to renovate a building not far from the arena for its new headquarters. In 2020, Yum extended its naming-rights deal through 2031.

Learfield handles the arena’s marketing and sponsorship sales.

Heaven Hill Distillery, makers of Elijah Craig and Evan Williams bourbons, are the arena’s “biggest partners,” according to Granger.

Sodexo Live has handled the food and beverage operations since Day 1, through its 2017 acquisition of Centerplate, and an extension signed in 2021 required the concessionaire to invest up to $1.2 million toward upgrading point-of-sale and installing grab-and-go checkout kiosks.

The contracts for Legends Global, Learfield and Sodexo expire June 30, 2027.

As the city begins welcoming visitors this week for the three-week Derby spectacle, the banners on every lamp post and the murals on the buildings share the history, and the signs of progress at every turn help tell the story of Louisville’s sports business ecosystem racing into the future like a thoroughbred.

“You can look around my office, or look around the city, and you can see the inspiration from the G.O.A.T.,” Greenberg said, referring to Muhammad Ali. “You can see so much history and culture, and you can see so much ongoing growth. We really have all the pieces.”

Wisconsin AD Chris McIntosh is resigning from his position immediately and joining the Big Ten as its newly created deputy commissioner for strategy. McIntosh will report directly to Commissioner Tony Petitti, while his role will focus on shaping the broad strategy of the league. Wisconsin Deputy AD/COO Marcus Sedberry is likely to be named interim AD, sources told SBJ, though immediate succession plans are fluid. McIntosh was in Las Vegas over the weekend for UW men’s hockey’s Frozen Four appearance and flew back to Madison on Sunday. The Badgers lost 2-1 to Denver in the national title game on Saturday night.

“To be able to work for the University of Wisconsin and certainly for the last five years as athletic director, to be able to pour everything I had into transitioning Wisconsin into a changing world, it’s just been an honor,” McIntosh said when reached by SBJ. “I’ve said along the way that the best thing about Wisconsin is the people. I’ve been surrounded by the best people and people who care about, first and foremost, our student athletes and about the university. They’ve just given everything to making Wisconsin the best it can be.

“On one hand it’s very difficult for me to transition away from a place that’s so important to me. On the other hand, it’s an incredible honor and an incredible opportunity to be able to transition to a position at the Big Ten and to work for an incredible leader like Commissioner Petitti and alongside some top-tier, very capable members of the Big Ten as we navigate a dynamic period for college athletics.”

A former standout football player and All-American at UW, McIntosh was selected in the first round of the 2000 NFL Draft by the Seahawks. After neck injuries derailed his pro football career, he worked in the private sector around various start-up ventures. McIntosh eventually moved into an administrative role under then-AD Barry Alvarez in 2014, working his way up to Deputy AD. He took over for Alvarez in the Badgers’ top administrative role in 2021.

While football has had its struggles under coach Luke Fickell in recent years, McIntosh and his senior leadership team have overseen a number of successful initiatives on the business side of the athletic department. Those efforts include a recent 10-year, $104.5M renewal with Under Armour, an agreement with UW Health making it the presenting sponsor of Wisconsin women’s sports and a new NIL initiative through its multimedia rights agreement with Learfield.

“Personally, there’s excitement to play a role in preserving the best of what college athletics means to student athletes,” McIntosh said. “Change like this can be incredibly difficult and the love I have for the University of Wisconsin, it’s a time in which I think we all need to do everything we can to ensure that college athletics is put in the best position in the Big Ten."

The UW football program will likely be a major point of focus for the next athletic director. McIntosh gave Fickell a vote of confidence in October amid his second consecutive losing season, along with promising more resources to compete in the increasingly costly NIL era. Fickell would’ve been owed more than $25M had he been fired last year, per ESPN.

The move also comes in the midst of a leadership vacuum within Wisconsin’s broader university ecosystem. System president Jay Rothman was fired last week under turbulent circumstances, while UW Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin was chosen as the new president of Columbia Univ. in January.

Kroenke Sports & Entertainment will welcome up to 3,500 Avalanche and Nuggets fans to watch each of the teams’ home playoff games outside Ball Arena. The new fan zone and viewing area will be known as Avs Alley for Avalanche games, with Key Bank serving as the presenting sponsor, and Base Camp 5280 Fan Zone for Nuggets games, with UMB and Ibotta serving as presenting sponsors.

The stretch of Chopper Circle between 9th Street and 11th Street, which will be closed to vehicle traffic, will feature live game broadcasts on a 20-foot video board, along with DJs, food trucks, beer and hard seltzer carts, giveaways, partner activations and appearances by team mascots and dance teams. General admission to the viewing area will be free for the first two rounds of the playoffs, but digital passes will be required for entry. If either team advances to the conference finals, an admission fee will be instituted, with all proceeds benefitting Kroenke Sports Charities.

“The point of Avs Alley is to not only elevate the experience of people coming to the game but also give other fans a low-cost place to gather and celebrate the team,” Avalanche Senior Dir/Marketing Megan Boyle said.

Outdoor fan zones have become popular across the NHL and NBA during the playoffs in recent years as an opportunity to engage fans who aren’t able to secure tickets while driving additional revenue through sponsorship and the sale of concessions and merchandise. Prior to 2018, the NHL limited the number of watch parties that teams could hold to protect its broadcast partners, but it has since embraced the concept fully.

• As the WNBA was working through uncertainty on the labor front, it was largely business as usual for the league’s sponsorships team, reports SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo.
• Nike is entering professional lacrosse by signing a deal with the Premier Lacrosse League and its affiliated Women’s Lacrosse League to become the official apparel partner of both properties through 2028, per SBJ’s Irving Mejia-Hilario.
• ESPN saw healthy viewership growth in Q1, and a 14% increase for its studio shows was a big part of that, as “The Pat McAfee Show,” “Get Up” and “NBA Today” saw record Q1 audiences along with the 2pm ET and late-night Scott Van Pelt-helmed windows of “SportsCenter,” writes SBJ’s Austin Karp.
• CBS Sports Network will televise 10 Southern Conference regular-season men’s basketball games annually, doubling the previous annual commitment, as part of an extension of their deal through the 2031-32 season, reports SBJ’s Ben Portnoy.
• The WNBA and Mars have inked a multiyear deal making the M&M’s brand the league’s official chocolate sponsor in a newly created category that includes plans for Mars to activate at tonight’s WNBA Draft, writes SBJ’s Na’Andre Emerson.
• Baseball and softball event operator Perfect Game has developed a discount ticketing program with the Royals, Astros, and Cardinals, according to SBJ’s Ethan Joyce.