Innovation in global sports facilities happens in a number of ways. According to online sports management education, one of the ways that I think is really interesting is this concept of public-private partnerships. The cost of building sports facilities is enormous these days. We’re seeing arenas pushed between $500, $700, and even $800 million to build a first-class arena, and football stadiums in the NFL, over a billion and a half dollars. A more recent one in Las Vegas has been quoted as being $1.4 million.
The communities are participating. You might say sports and their respective sports management has got so much money, why do communities need to invest? The answer is that they are community assets and those community assets lend themselves to being public private partnerships. They’re not just used for sports, they’re used for meeting places. They’re almost like their 24-hour convention centers and this is a way that gets both the community, the developers, and the teams invested in an asset, which is transformative.
