Sports Museum Of America Eyeing One Million Visitors In First Year

Sports Museum Of America Slated For May

Sports Museum of America Founder & CEO Philip Schwalb is "confident" that the institution set to open in May in N.Y. "will thrive," according to Richard Sandomir of the N.Y. TIMES. Schwalb, who predicts the museum will have one million visitors in its first year, said, "It'll be flat-out fun. But our test is to make it intellectually stimulating and emotionally moving." Former Alliance for Downtown New York President Carl Weisbrod: "There are few really attractive, magnetic paying attractions in Lower Manhattan. The museum is very appealing for tourism." Schwalb "does not view [other] museums as competitors," as he has partnership agreements with many of them. Schwalb "will measure his success by other yardsticks: major city tourist attractions like the Museum of Modern Art, Madame Tussauds, the American Museum of Natural History." The Museum will provide a home to the Heisman Trophy and the Billie Jean King Int'l Women's Sports Center's HOF. It will have both baseball and basketball galleries and "similarly themed galleries will exist for soccer, hockey, football, golf and other sports." An immersion theater will show a HD film "on great moments in sports." Schwalb said that his goal was "not to poach fans from other [HOFs] but to promote them in New York as places to go in the future." Schwalb has signed 60 partners, "including small sports-themed museums and national sports-governing bodies." These deals give Schwalb access to their artifacts and membership lists "in exchange for a share of an annual $2.5[M] fund and a kiosk in the museum's Hall of Halls." Sandomir notes the "major holdout" is the Baseball HOF, while the Pro Football HOF, "once resistant, has now joined" (N.Y. TIMES, 3/12).