Katy Perry's Prismatic World Tour plays American Airlines Center in Dallas Oct. 3
There’s no feeling lonely in the Lone Star State, at least, not for our Texas Top Stops. The 19 facilities grossed a combined $223.7 million in 2014, out-pacing the about $185 million that the top 19 heavy-hitters grossed in last year’s chart. We broke things up a little differently this year, creating the 30,000+ category to distinguish two behemoth stadiums. Venues of all sizes focused on diverse entertainment and how a well-trained staff enhances the fan experience.
Something For Everyone
It may sound cliché, but that doesn’t make it less true: hosting something for everyone is one way to ensure that a venue appeals to many different types of fans. American Airlines Center in Dallas raked in huge numbers with Katy Perry, Paul McCartney, Queen and Lady Gaga, with its largest single-day event gross of more than $2.5 million coming from a March 15 UFC date.
“Dallas is just a good live entertainment market period. We’ve established ourselves as a must-play because if something is on the calendar it’s going to sell tickets,” said the venue’s Dave Brown, GM. “There’s not a whole lot of background noise in Dallas to captivate anyone’s attention, like ski slopes or a beach. Dallas is a work hard, play hard kind of city and, if folks are looking for an outlet, concerts get their attention.”
Cedar Park (Texas) Center had success with family shows from Walking with Dinosaurs to Disney on Ice to Professional Bull Riders.
“It was kind of a mix in 2014,” said the facility’s Sammy Wallace, who said that there was a tricky period from May to June where the tenant hockey team advanced into the playoffs that ran into Disney on Ice, scheduled graduations, and even rodeos. “If it had advanced into game seven we would have had to play hockey the day after PBR. Luckily, we won before then.”
Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center in Midland, Texas, began its first presenting season featuring unique performers from 2 Cellos to Vienna Boys Choir. GM Ty Sutton said that diverse options are key because of the many demographics in the area, both from being on a university campus and from the area having a large influx of people due to the oil boom.
“The more diverse you are as a building, the stronger you can be,” he said. “If you’re doing the same thing over and over you’re only targeting one section.”
Though State Farm Arena in Hidalgo hosted primarily Latin events in 2014, some of its most successful shows included George Strait and Lionel Ritchie. One of NRG Stadium’s largest events was with his daughter’s favorite band (One Direction), and GM Mark Miller with SMG said the stadium hosts a large variety of events. “From Sesame Street Live to Grand Prix to conventions to NFL football, there are 5.6 million people through the doors every year,” he said. “Invite that many of your closest friends and see how that goes.”
Busy, Busy
Focusing on booking something for everyone can make for a lot of full dates. For March 2015 American Airlines Center recently wrapped a run of 33 events in 31 days, with only one dark day the entire month. “The staff doesn’t get to sleep in March — they can sleep in the summer,” joked Brown, who added that making sure staff isn’t overworked is the biggest challenge of a busy schedule.
“You have to keep your staff energized and the only way you can do that is to sometimes make them go home. When you have stretches like we have in this building you could easily have 50 events in 50 days and the event team wants to be here, so you have to force them to stay home or to come in late,” he said. “People are going to be fried at the end of these busy runs. Getting a little singed is okay, but you can’t recover from burnout.”
Mark Solis of State Farm Arena juggles three different tenants. “Each one of those tenants needs dates and, of course, they all want weekend dates that makes it kind of challenging to juggle the calendar,” he said. “There are a lot of days that are taken up and we try to make it work for everyone.”
Upgrading People and Places
Employee education has ramped up this year, with several Top Stops facilities focusing on training staff. Frank Erwin Center in Austin and American Airlines Center both have Disney Institute come in to lead training.
“We bring in everybody from police to EMS, parking and traffic, because the fan experience starts long before people get in the building,” said Frank Erwin Center’s Jimmy Earl.
American Airlines Center’s Disney training was sponsored by the NBA, with resident Dallas Mavericks paying for it. The program rolled out Feb. 10 with about a three-month process of analyzing the needs of the facility, Disney formulating a specific program, and then training senior leadership before rolling it out to the front line staff.
“It’s expensive and it’s intense,” said Brown. “We had a pretty good service culture in place. For us it wasn’t going the extra mile, it was going the extra inches — really fine tuning our service standards.”
Other facilities focused on physical improvements.
State Farm Arena updated its back of house with a concentration on dressing rooms, production offices, and a game room for traveling clients.
“Right now it’s all games with an Xbox and Playstation, and from wall to ceiling it’s all wrapped in different gaming logos,” said Solis, who added that the door is kept locked during work hours.
NRG Stadium has upgraded connectivity, with Verizon installing new DAS for the stadium and Sprint working on park-wide DAS. American Airlines Center invested about $1 million to create the Tequila Patron Lounge space in 3,000 square feet of staging area courtside.
“It seems like we can’t get enough variety of premium space in our building,” said Brown. Premium is a stratified concept these days — it’s not just one size fits all.”
Interviewed for this story: Dave Brown, (214) 665-4218; Jimmy Earl, (512) 471-3678; Mark Miller, (832) 667-1788; Marc Solis, (956) 227-6012; Ty Sutton, (432) 552-4433; Sammy Wallace, (512) 600-5012