Yankee Stadium is among the venues that will use the new platform.getty images
Legends is adding a venue safety consultancy to its suite of hospitality, concessions, project management and merchandise sales services.
It’s the latest move in the sports venue industry to expand hygiene programs and provide best practices to ease the concerns of fans and employees once they are allowed to return to live events.
The Legends Venue Reintegration Platform offers the company’s clients and the sports industry as a whole a comprehensive program that will help protect guests and employees, said Legends President and CEO Shervin Mirhashemi. Legends will offer the same program to nonsports facilities such as office and retail buildings, and attractions.
Along with medical and government experts, Legends’ platform will bring in hospital-grade hygiene experts, professional vendors and operational expertise to assess a venue’s readiness to host fans and other guests.
Advisory partners include representatives from the International Association of Venue Managers, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of the assessment partners include Venue Solutions Group, Environmental Infection Prevention and CrowdRx. On the cashless and contactless payment front, vendors include FreedomPay, Square, Ingenico, Clover, Apply Pay, Google Pay, Tap to Pay, Zippin, ReadyCredit, Tapin2 and Appetize.
The move to develop structure and resources across venue safety has understandably accelerated in the past eight weeks. Tim Leiweke’s Oak View Group has plans for a new division to make certain that venues are sanitized properly. ASM Global also has launched a similar initiative and the Houston Texans have posted a position for a facility hygiene coordinator.
The Legends platform has two phases.
“There’s an initial assessment and planning portion, which we call phase one of the analysis, that’s a two-to-four week process, which is very customized and involves over 150 checklist items to assess and ultimately provide a plan of what that venue or event needs to safely conduct business in this new COVID environment,” Mirhashemi said. “The second phase is based on those recommendations, we have solutions with various different vendor options, with different paths that will address each one of those over 150 checklist items.”
Mirhashemi noted the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees — which own Legends — were using the platform in preparation for the eventual return of live sports. He said Legends will charge a one time consulting fee that will be customized for the specific client.
Some of the hypothetical recommendations Legends may make include providing branded personal protective equipment to fans, a revised ticketing and manifest process, a policy addressing season-ticket holders if venues have to reduce capacity, a plan for a contactless and cashless environment, an app-managed safety checklist for employees, and revised food and beverage and merchandising operations.
“We’re addressing that entire journey, for both the employee as well as the fan, from the time they leave their home, to the time they return, which includes egress, ingress changes to the event and venue, and new hospital-grade cleaning and hygiene options on how they need to go about cleaning that venue or that event,” Mirhashemi said.
