The Atlanta Falcons are adding 28 loge boxes to the premium-seat mix at
Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the team’s future $1.4 billion home.
The move comes late in the facility’s development, about a year before the retractable-roof stadium opens in June 2017. The Falcons have teamed with stadium architect HOK and Legends, its sales agency, to design the midpriced inventory.
Prices for the loge boxes have not been established, but in general, the new inventory will be designed in groups of four to six seats in the back rows of the lower bowl, said Michael Drake, the Falcons’ senior vice president and chief revenue officer. The loges, which the Falcons are calling “tech-centric,” will have wireless charging pads and small television monitors controlled by patrons’ smartphones, as well as counter and storage space, Drake said.
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The Owners Club (above) and the Founders Club are among premium gathering spots.
Photos by: MERCEDESBENZSTADIUM.COM (2)
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The stadium has 193 suites, including team owner Arthur Blank’s midfield suite and the eight touchdown suites at field level in both end zones.
About 20 suites are reserved for the Falcons’ partners, including the Georgia World Congress Center, the stadium’s landlord, and the Southeastern Conference, which signed a 10-year deal to hold its football championship game at the new stadium starting in 2017.
The Falcons have sold about
three-quarters of the 173 units available for sale, said Drake, who was Legends’ vice president of sales and service in charge of the Falcons’ premium sales campaign before coming over to the team side in March. The 20
Owners Suites, the stadium’s most exclusive inventory, are sold out at $400,000 a year. The two-story spaces, situated 10 feet to 12 feet from field level, include a communal lounge. Food and drink, including beer, wine and alcohol, are included in the suite package.
One level above, on the NCR Suite Level, the main suite floor, 82 of 85 suites have been sold, Drake said. Those suites are 35 rows from the field and match up with the upper level of the owners’ suites.
The average price for a suite is $206,000 a year, and most suites carry 20-year terms with the exception of a few 10-year agreements, he said.
Legends has sold out of all inventory for the 1,200-seat Founders Club and 1,068-seat Piedmont Club and has moved at least 65 percent of the roughly 5,000 remaining club seats. The Founders Club carries $45,000 PSLs, the stadium’s highest-priced seat license.
“From a premium standpoint, we’re well ahead of the 49ers and Cowboys relative to this point in the project,” said Drake, who sold premium seats for Levi’s Stadium and AT&T Stadium.
> FANATICAL: Sports retail veteran Alan Fey has joined Fanatics as vice president of venue development after spending the past six years as president of Gameday Entertainment.
“It was the right time and the right move,” Fey said. His first day with Fanatics was May 16.
Fanatics started in 1995 as an online retailer and has deals with multiple major league teams and leagues. Over the past few years, it has expanded its presence to running merchandise at several venues, including Churchill Downs, Daytona International Speedway, Prudential Center, BBVA Compass Stadium and the NBA Store in New York City.
Fey has worked in the event merchandising business since 1992, first as an intern for the NBA’s Denver Nuggets. He later spent time at the NBA before landing a job in 1998 as director of merchandising for Orca Bay Sports & Entertainment in Vancouver, now called Canucks Sports & Entertainment.
He helped launch AEG Merchandising in 2000 at Staples Center and spent five years there before forming XP Events in 2005. XP Events filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009, and Fey and Jeff Newman, his business partner at the time, moved on to start Gameday Entertainment.
Don Muret can be reached at dmuret@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @breakground.
