Former New York Mets and MSG executive Dave Howard has joined with hospitality specialist John Sergi to create a new consultancy focused on the fan experience at sports venues.
The firm, Howard and Sergi, will focus on facility-related areas and team operations including venue development, hospitality planning and design, sponsorship sales and fan services. The firm has initially worked with Palace Sports & Entertainment on the new East Terrace at the Auburn Hills, Mich., arena, as well as consulting on the planned stadium for the relocated Los Angeles Rams in Inglewood, Calif.
 |
Dave Howard (above) and John Sergi worked on the Citi Field project when Howard was a Mets executive.
Photos: COURTESY OF HOWARD AND SERGI
|
Howard, while executive vice president of business operations with the Mets, worked closely with Sergi during the development of Citi Field, which has won widespread praise as one of the best ballparks in all of Major League Baseball for food and beverage offerings.
The pair collaborated again during the extensive renovation of Madison Square Garden that was completed in 2013, and the idea of working together in a joint consultancy began to take shape
last year, after Howard’s departure as president of MSG Sports.
“John’s hospitality thinking also has relevance to all other parts of the fan experience,” Howard said. “It made too much sense to not at least explore this idea of teaming up, and the early encouragement we received from the Palace made a huge difference.”
Both Howard and Sergi will work out of their homes, with Howard in the New York area and Sergi in Boston.
For Sergi, the arrival of Howard means a marked expansion in the services offered from those of John Sergi Associates, the hospitality design consultancy he ran himself from 1989 to 2010. During that time his clients included the U.S. Open tennis tournament and Dodger Stadium. He later joined Centerplate as chief design officer, where he remained until 2014.
“The key idea is to get all the fan touchpoints speaking in the same voice,” Sergi said. “It doesn’t make any sense, for example, to fix the food at a venue and still have the fan with a bad experience parking the car. Attending a sports event has become a much more holistic experience, and we see great opportunity in helping tie all of those elements together.”
