Van Andel Arena, Grand Rapids, Mich., hosted Black Keys.
Cold and snow nothwithstanding, sports and entertainment business was hot in the Midwest. This year’s 50 Midwest Top Stops grossed over $264.1 million from Feb. 1, 2014 to Jan. 31, 2015. The Midwest continues to be a major country market, followed closely by professional, farm team and college hockey. Capitol improvements emphasized the fan experience in 2014, with new sound and display systems and redesigned concessions and concession services.
VARIETY OF EVENT TYPES
With a goal of bringing an average of two shows per month to SMG-managed Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich., GM Rich MacKeigan was slightly disappointed with 2014’s final number of 21 concerts. Nevertheless, they were definitely busy.
“You know building managers, they’re always greedy and never satisfied,” said MacKeigan. “It’s never good enough. It’s good, but never good enough.”
In addition to dates from Lady Antebellum, Brantley Gilbert, Bruno Mars and Motley Crue, Van Andel Arena continued to try to cultivate the Hispanic market in West Michigan, with funds allocated specifically for that purpose. A Ramon Ayala show in May at the arena sold only 249 tickets, but GM Rick MacKeigan believes the potential is there, even beyond concerts.
“It’s our hope that we’re able to get involved with a couple of things, not just concerts but other types of events,” said MacKeigan, “and incubate those opportunities so that they have success and we become a more active player in the Hispanic space.”
Having opened in November 2002, Fox Cities Performing Arts Center in Appleton, Wis., is in its 12th season. In that time, it has welcomed 25 Wisconsin premiere Broadway titles, a pattern that continued in its 2014-2015 season with an eight-show Wisconsin premiere of The Book of Mormon. The incredibly popular event grossed over $1.3 million, and the season didn’t stop there. Runs from A Christmas Story, Once, Annie and Jersey Boys solidified the venue’s strong Broadway reputation while making sure to offer something for everyone.
“We’ve got such loyal audiences who are interested in spending time in the theater and enjoying great performances by the best out there,” said President Maria Van Laanen. “I think that’s really helped us hit so many marks year after year.”
The performing arts scene was also alive and well in Omaha, Neb., where Orpheum Theatre and Holland Performing Arts Center brought audiences Wicked, Blue Man Group, John Legend and Reba in 2014. Joan Squires, president of Omaha Performing Arts, which manages both venues, said they have a $40-million annual economic impact on the community, while bringing in over 2.3 million people.
“We strive to bring a wide variety of performances,” said Squires, “from the best of touring Broadway to jazz, popular artists, and speakers and try to reach all market segments and lots of performance genres.”
The inaugural Big Ten Men’s Ice Hockey Tournament was held at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn., in March. The six-team tournament was a popular draw, attracting more than 41,000 fans for the five games. The event will be coming back to Xcel Energy Center again in 2016.
“Being the first one, it actually had the feel of being something new with all the Big 10 teams here and all their bands,” said GM Jack Larson. “There was a lot of excitement in the building.”
BOK Center’s 2014 season brought many major country acts to Tulsa, Okla., like the sold-out George Strait show at the SMG venue in April. But GM Jeff Nickler said they have worked hard to go beyond country shows to bring in big pop acts like Katy Perry and Bruno Mars last year and attract fans from Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas.
“Tulsa is known as a country market historically,” said Nickler, “but we worked really hard to change that perception and to generate concert traffic with all genres of music. That variety is huge and has been a huge part of our success.”
In September, BOK Center booked One Direction’s only arena date on the entire North American stadium tour, selling out the arena and grossing $981,875.
“We place such an emphasis on booking and being aggressive to get shows,” said Nickler, “and it really paid off for that one. The crowd was electric, and the amount of excitement and hype around that show in the community was through the roof.”
TECH UPGRADES
Quality sound equals a quality show, which made new systems worth investing in for two venues. An entirely new sound system was installed at Holland Performing Arts Center to better support the popular shows and speakers that come to the facility. SMG-managed Peoria (Ill.) Civic Center Theater also spent $600,000 to upgrade its sound system to a line array. Now, all the comedians and smaller concerts can use the sound system without any extra equipment.
“It’s really made a difference in the performances,” said GM Jim Wetherington, “and it made it more economical for the shows to come in because they don’t have to bring in sound.”
Fox Cities Performing Arts Center recently installed a telecoil hearing loop into the main theater. With the system, a wire loop transmits sound signals from the speaker system directly to telecoil-equipped hearing aids or to assisted hearing devices that can be checked out. Van Laanen said the addition of the hearing loop has made a big difference to a major part of the performing arts center’s audience.
“We’ve had incredible stories from people who felt that they could no longer enjoy live performances and now with the addition of the telecoil they’ve been able to come back and really feel part of the community again,” said Van Laanen. “Suffering from hearing loss can really be something that makes you feel isolated and separated from society, so we’ve had some very heart warming stories.”
In September, Xcel Energy Center installed a whole new Daktronics video board, scoreboard and ribbon board display system. The $6-million project brought a center-hung video board that is almost six times larger than the previous one into Xcel Energy Center, as well as a new outdoor marquee.
THE BOOKING GAME
After a 2014 Broadway season that had its ups and downs, especially among single ticket buyers, Peoria (Ill.) Civic Center Theater recently announced a 2015 season that will include a week of Book of Mormon in June and a week of Kinky Boots in September. Normally the theater gets splits and not full weeks, so GM Jim Wetherington is hopeful that the long runs of big-name shows will bring their season ticket base up. Already, the theater is looking forward to its 2016 season by locking in a show for an even longer, two-week run.
“We’re really trying to reach further out to get the anchors for the seasons and working with the agents to get those done,” said Wetherington.
What’s normally an arena manager’s nightmare ended up working out nicely for Van Andel Arena. Originally scheduled to bring her Prismatic World Tour to Grand Rapids on Sept. 1, Katy Perry’s concert date was canceled due to illness. However, her team was able to work with the arena to bring the show back on Dec. 1 for a sold-out performance.
“I’m really pleased with her camp that they were able to come back,” said MacKeigan. “Just acknowledging that there were a lot of fans in West Michigan who had tickets and were looking forward to it, made it great that she was able to come back.”
Fox Cities Performing Arts Center continued to build on the commercial front with a number of country, rock and comedy acts. By attracting more audiences with acts like Heart, Ron White and Toby Mac, the performing arts center is able to generate $30-$40 million of economic activity every year.
“It takes a little while to attract those promoters and let them see the strength of your audience, especially in a smaller community,” said Van Laanen. “It’s really exciting to see us turning that corner. I think commercial promoters out there are recognizing that although our venue is just slightly over 2,000 seats, we regularly sell at such a high percent capacity that it’s a very attractive venue for them to bring their artists to.”
SUCCESS WITH THE NEW
Last year, BOK Center matched its busy event schedule with a busy construction schedule as it continued to make enhancements to the guest experience. Projects included a major concessions redesign where all the concession stands were redeveloped with new concepts, a new sky lounge that acts as an upscale premium area and the addition of new suites to keep up with premium seating demands.
“The experience had to keep up with the trends,” said Nickler, “so it was a big year in construction as well.”
Xcel Energy Center worked with Levy Restaurants to find ways to create excitement around new concession products.
“We concentrated on trying to find new ways and new ideas in the concession area to spark interest and different ways of getting people to buy more when they’re here,” said Larson.
In-seat service was started during Minnesota Wild hockey games on the club level in September. Servers take orders from people in their seats and then deliver the product directly to them. Larson said the service has helped increase per caps and is already being expanded to other events as well.
Fox Cities Performing Arts Center put an emphasis on capitalizing on all the revenue opportunities connected with the events at their building. This idea was emphasized in concessions through specialty food items and group outreach.
“If there’s opportunity to maybe highlight a specialty drink or tailor some of our concession offerings to the audience that we think will be coming through the venue doors, or if we know that there are other groups that may be interested, we make sure that we’ve got the ancillary spaces within our venue being used by those groups while we also have a performance going on in the main hall,” said Van Laanen. “And there’s a connection between those groups so that you have some efficiencies in scale there.”
In 2014, Peoria Civic Center Theater tried a potentially risky approach to raising per caps at the venue when they lowered the price of beer.
“So the model of ‘if they don’t have to spend as much will they buy more’ has worked,” said Wetherington. “That’s something unique in our industry. People are used to charging $10 for a beer, and if we lower it to $7, we’ll sell them two instead of one. So our per caps have actually gone up with lower drink prices.”