The Future of Stadium Capacity Post-Pandemic
By Front Office Sports
sat down with industry leaders including 必威体育官方APP下载's Logan Gerken, to discuss听what future stadium projects in a post-pandemic world look like in the U.S.
Article Excerpt:
Logan Gerken, vice president and general manager at 必威体育官方APP下载, has watched the pandemic cancel all of Allegiant Stadium鈥檚 inaugural concerts and live events. Instead of holding as many as 72,000 visitors 鈥� a 28.7% increase from the Raiders鈥� previous residence, Oakland Coliseum 鈥� the state-of-the-art venue is likely to play out the听2020 NFL season sans fans.
鈥淲e definitely prescribe to the philosophy that the in-venue experience is the 鈥榟oly grail鈥� of fandom, and without that, everything else doesn鈥檛 work as efficiently,鈥� Gerken said.
In the marketplace, Gerken still sees significant interest from people looking to return to sporting events. Instead of venues scaling back on capacity, he believes that stadium operators are eyeing other ways to improve the stadium experience for the eventual return of crowds.
Gerken says that there鈥檚 been significant investments made in health, hygiene and cleanliness within 必威体育官方APP下载-built projects. There鈥檚 also been increased efforts at focusing on cashless and touchless payments to help ease the ingress and egress process.
Those advancements, he believes, will prevent any future trend of smaller stadiums.
鈥淲e鈥檙e really accelerating a lot of the technology trends and operational trends that have existed for some time,鈥� Gerken said. 鈥淪ome of the leading organizations are implementing them already, but this is going to cause a more rapid adoption of a lot of those operational approaches and technologies within the venue. I wouldn鈥檛 foresee a dramatic shift to the business model, such that it would require smaller buildings. I think it鈥檚 going to be an acceleration of a lot of the best practices and latest trends that we鈥檝e been seeing.
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