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Teams pour more money, tech into preview centers

The explosion in sports facility development over the past 18 months has resulted in a key secondary trend — the high-tech, multimillion-dollar preview centers that teams build to market their new venues.

The centers, the traditional sales space used to showcase premium seats for stadiums and arenas under construction, have been reimagined across North America, from Miami to Edmonton and Atlanta to Sacramento. As new facilities become more sophisticated, so do their temporary showrooms, even expanding to the college space for major football stadium retrofits at Notre Dame and Oklahoma.

Inside the centers are mock suites, scale models, state-of-the-art videos and high-tech elements that sports marketers use to sell suites, club seats and loge boxes. Colorful wall graphics documenting team history are designed to build an emotional connection and, hopefully, an urge to buy. Cutting-edge technology inside the facilities enables teams to push the “wow” factor for moving premium inventory.

The Kings’ Granger uses tech to sell what will be a tech-filled arena.
Photo by: SACRAMENTO KINGS
It’s the latest in a team’s assault on the senses of consumers.

The Experience Center in Sacramento is a prime example. The Kings, owned by technology developer Vivek Ranadivé, use both augmented reality and virtual reality in their marketing pitch for the new $477 million arena opening in 2016.

Unlike most other preview centers, the Kings don’t showcase a physical model of their new facility produced by an architect. Instead, they use a tablet containing 3-D images of the arena seating bowl that pops up on the tablet screen when waved over a tabletop equipped with augmented reality.

“We’re showcasing technology and the way we can use it to improve the fan experience,” Kings President Chris Granger said. “When teams build arenas and stadiums, they build a model too. This is our model, but you can only see it when you hold this device over it.”

As Kings season-ticket holders and new buyers go deeper into the preview center, they can put on a pair of Oculus Rift goggles that vividly takes them through a midcourt experience with DeMarcus Cousins (see SportsBusiness Journal, Oct. 6-12, 2014). The 8,000-square-foot Experience Center’s high-tech elements extend from a wireless charging station to the sample remote control in the mock suite, which allows patrons to control their experience by choosing broadcast angles on their televisions and ordering food and drink.

“We’re doing everything we can to make the entire experience seamless, frictionless and intuitive,” Granger said.

The Kings’ center sits in an office building overlooking construction of the arena and a mixed-use project. In Atlanta, the Atlanta Falcons Preview Center is tucked into an office park off Interstate 75, eight miles north of the stadium construction site. Legends, the Falcons’ sales agency, developed the 7,000-square-foot facility at a cost of $2.2 million, including back office space for 32 sales representatives.

Photo by: ATLANTA FALCONS
The strategy behind the center was to emphasize the new stadium’s innovative retractable roof design and video board, plus its flexibility for events extending from Major League Soccer to the SEC football championship, said Michael Drake, Legends’ vice president of sales and service, who is managing the project.

The tech-heavy feel at the Falcons preview center extends to the centerpiece of

The Falcons’ preview center has its own halo board (top); Drake shows off sections.
Photo by: DON MURET / STAFF
the facility, a miniature halo video board that hangs above the stadium model. The uniquely shaped screen produced by NanoLumens, a local firm, provides potential buyers with a first look at one of the new stadium’s signature features, a 66,000-square-foot video board. The scaled-down version of the board has helped drive new stadium sales as prospects conclude their preview tour, Drake said.

“There’s the big reveal of the model and the halo board and that’s when they start to go, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m starting to realize what this is about to be,’” he said. “Technology’s part of that.”

But like most technology, bugs in the system can restrict its effectiveness. On one Monday in early March, the hard drive crashed for the mini-board, and it was out of service on another busy day when Legends had 88 appointments scheduled. But with the Falcons’ information technology staff working out of Arthur Blank’s office and foundation up the street, on-site assistance is never far away.

Legends situated the preview center outside the city when initial talks with Atlanta business leaders suggested that it would be difficult for season-ticket holders and new buyers to access a facility downtown because of traffic and parking limitations.

To compensate for the preview center’s remote location, Legends had a flat-screen installed behind the stadium model tied to a web camera showing live construction images.

Models, like this one in the Vikings’ center, are still part of most presentations.
Photo by:VAN WAGER SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
In Minnesota, the Vikings’ preview center has garnered attention since it opened in February 2014 on the fifth floor of a historic building across the street from stadium construction in downtown Minneapolis. Industry sources said the 7,500-square-foot facility cost about $3 million to build, a figure officials from the Vikings and Van Wagner Sports and Entertainment, their sales agency, would not confirm, citing only a cost in the low seven figures.

Van Wagner worked with new stadium architect HKS to form an immersive game-day experience that puts fans in the middle of the team’s locker room before walking down the player tunnel to a field-level club. To replicate the experience, eight 84-inch television screens line a 90-foot-long corridor and speakers blast Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” to get the juices flowing among prospective buyers (SportsBusiness Journal, Feb. 24-March 2, 2014).

“We re-created the whole field-level concept of what it will be like in the new stadium, which is unlike anything that’s ever been seen here in Minnesota,” said Jason Gonella, Van Wagner’s vice president of team and venue services.

To date, more than 8,500 appointments have been completed and about 34,000 people have gone through the center, said Steve LaCroix, the Vikings’ executive vice president and chief marketing officer. Van Wagner has reached $90 million in seat license sales toward its goal of $125 million. The sales program is ahead of projections for the $1 billion stadium, which will open in 2016, and the preview center has been a key factor for generating revenue, Van Wagner Vice President Chris Allphin said.

In South Florida, where the Miami Dolphins are spending $400 million to upgrade 28-year-old Sun Life Stadium, the Samsung Business Preview Center showcases new technology planned for the facility after the team signed a naming-rights deal with the electronics retailer’s enterprise group.

Inside a closing room at the Dolphins’ Samsung Business Preview Center
Photo by: JONATHAN WILLEY / DOLPHINS
The Dolphins spent $2 million to develop their business center inside of Gate G at Sun Life Stadium. It was done in-house with help from HOK, the architect designing stadium upgrades. When the renovations are completed in 2016, Samsung Business will convert the space into a showroom for its customers (SportsBusiness Journal, Feb. 23-March 1).

The cost to frame the right environment inside a major league preview center typically runs seven figures, but for colleges, it’s less expensive. Oklahoma spent $550,000 for its preview center across from campus in Norman. Legends runs that facility and Notre Dame’s preview center.

As much as these preview centers are built to market new venues, they also serve to promote and sell the mixed-use projects next to the facilities.

SunTrust Park, the Atlanta Braves’ new stadium opening in Cobb County in 2017, the same year as Falcons, is connected to a major retail and entertainment development. As a result, it was important to place the $1 million preview center overlooking the stadium and other buildings coming out of the ground at the same time, said Derek Schiller, the Braves’ executive vice president of sales and marketing.

The situation is similar in Sacramento and Edmonton, where preview centers provide premium-seat patrons with a strategic peek into new arena projects and the downtown redevelopments connected to those venues. In Alberta, the Oilers’ two-story preview center opens in June. The first floor encompasses a condo presentation room. The second floor focuses on arena development with individual rooms dedicated to a full suite, theater box and loge seating. The preview center, developed in-house by the Oilers, is a stone’s throw from the arena site, team spokesman Tim Shipton said.

Large graphics of historic team moments help the Braves sell.
Photo by: DON MURET / STAFF
In Atlanta, the Braves’ preview center sits on the eighth floor of an office building across the street from ballpark construction. It has an open, airy feel, likened to an art gallery. There is 11,000 square feet of total space, of which 6,000 is devoted to presentation and closing rooms named for the team’s biggest stars such as Hank Aaron, Dale Murphy, Phil Niekro and Greg Maddux. The balance is office space reserved for the Braves, officials with Van Wagner, the team’s sales agency, and those involved with the real estate development next door to SunTrust Park.

The four large meeting rooms all have a set of mechanized shades branded for SunTrust Park that cover the windows at the start of the sales presentation. At the point when officials are ready to show the construction site, they press a button on a remote control and the shades go up.

“You’ve got this really emotional moment where you are seeing the physical construction of SunTrust Park,” Schiller said. In addition to meeting with season-ticket holders and new buyers, the Braves are pitching potential founding partners at the center and expect to use it for social functions, happy hours and receptions to educate VIPs on the overall development, Schiller said.

“We’re not only selling the ballpark but the entirety of the experience,” Schiller said.

With experience in both Atlanta with the Braves and Minnesota with the Vikings, Van Wagner’s Allphin said not every team has the luxury or the luck of building a preview center next to the construction site.

“It’s nice to have, but I don’t think it’s critical,” he said. “A lot of what we’re doing [in Minnesota] is using technology, models and environmental graphics to demonstrate what it’s going to be like when you get there. As beautiful as the windows are overlooking the site, people are looking at the video screens. If we had to do this 20 miles away, I think we’d be OK.”

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