What you’re seeing a lot of nowadays is that events are not only hosting sport-organization events, but obviously, they’re going to start hosting concerts. There are a number of concert series that will happen at Citi Field. So, they’ll clear out the entire field and make it an applicable space for any given concert or band.
There have been a number of different concerts that happened at the Mets stadium. One notable one is Billy Joel because he’s from Long Island, and he often represents Long Islanders, and therefore, New Yorkers. Again, it’s this whole idea that New Yorkers can go to Citi Field to feel as if this place is re-emphasizing their identity as a New Yorker, not only in terms of Ebbets Field, but also, in terms of the Jackie Robinson rotunda, which signifies this whole idea of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ history. It’s part of Brooklyn history.
Then they can go into this venue and see someone who represents New York, such as Billy Joel. We can usually take these venues and often translate them to outside events, such as concerts with Billy Joel.
What you’re starting to see is an evolution of sports organizations and sports management and how they’re constructing their venues. Previously, it was just however much capacity it could hold. Certain baseball stadiums would hold 50,000, maybe 60,000 seats, without mini suites or party events. And as you saw, perhaps in the early 2000s to 2010, new stadiums were limiting the capacity in terms of the amount of people the stadium could hold and opening up more suites areas, VIP areas.
The idea was while they might not be getting the extra 10,000 seats by going from 50,000 to 40,000 seats, they would actually be getting more bang for their buck in charging more for the suite tickets. They’re earning more revenue, getting more of a bang for your buck, given these suite tickets.
However, what we’re seeing today is that even these suite parts, or these web arenas or areas, in where individuals can come and pay a hefty amount for a ticket — those are actually starting to be on the decline because people are starting to prefer in-house watching. They’d rather actually sit in their house rather than come to a stadium. What stadiums have been doing nowadays is transforming some of these suite areas into priority areas, into communal areas, kind of representing certain living-room-style events.
It’s an interesting thing that sports organizations are now doing in global sports. They’re actually offering certain types of living-room-style events at the stadiums so family members can come together. Groups, communities can come together in this open space so it’s not just so much for watching the sporting event, but it’s more so a medium to come together where you can enjoy time together within the venue.
This information is part of our sports management education course.
