Due to the many generous donations given by members, your IAVM Foundation Board of Trustees is proud to announce the winners of the VenueConnect 2021 scholarship winners for the Joseph A. Floreano Scholarship + Internship Program and the 100+ Women of IAVM campaign!

2021 Joseph A. Floreano Scholarship + Internship Program scholarship recipients:

• Sara Beatty, CVP, Theater Operations Manager, Kauffman Center for Performing Arts
• Donna Miller Brown, CVP, Production Services Manager, Kauffman Center for Performing Arts
• Victoria Radford, Director of Events, Raleigh Convention and Performing Arts Complex
• Tammy Sweeney, Chief Operations Officer, TCU Place
• Eboni Wilson, Director, Guest Services, MGM Resorts

2021 100+ Women of IAVM campaign scholarship recipients:

• Victoria Costantino, CVP, Security Manager, Alamodome
• Polina Selinevich, Event Manager, Alerus Center
• Cynthia Tucker, Assistant Director of Event Operations, University of Southern California – Trojan Event Services
• Ashley Keen, CVP, Production Supervisor, Mesa Arts Center
• Erin Southard, Events Manager, Vicksburg Convention Center

Congratulations to the 2021 Scholarship recipients!  And THANK YOU for investing in YOUR Foundation to make each of these scholarships possible!

By R.V. Baugus

Steve Koonin is a busy man these days. The chief executive officer of the Atlanta Hawks and State Farm Arenas wears many hats.Steve Koonin is a busy man these days. The chief executive officer of the Atlanta Hawks and State Farm Arena wears many hats. Steve (“Don’t call me Mr. Koonin!”) recently carved out a few minutes on the day of Game 4 of the NBA Hawks competing in the Eastern Conference to talk about a number of topics near and dear to his heart, many of which he will share as the Closing Keynote Speaker at VenueConnect in Atlanta with a presentation titled “From Venue To A Vehicle For Reopening.” His is a session that you will not want to miss and will be complete with insights on the role of venues today, the role and necessity of innovation, and even a story of stories about how he broke into the industry. Sorry, no spoiler alert here. You’ll have to be there. to talk about a number of topics near and dear to his heart, many of which he will share as the Closing Keynote Speaker at VenueConnect in Atlanta with a presentation titled From Venue To A Vehicle For Reopening. His is a session that you will not want to miss and will be complete with insights on the role of venues today, the role and necessity of innovation, and even a story of stories about how he broke into the industry. Sorry, no spoiler alert here. You’ll have to be there.

I CAN TELL FROM THE TITLE OF YOUR SESSION THAT SOME CHANGE IS IN THE WORKS FOR VENUES, AND IN THE TYPE THAT YOU OPERATE, DEFINITELY WITH ARENAS. HOW ACCURATE IS THAT?

Steve Koonin: Arenas have changed from venues to a reflection of the city. To me, venues can be a vehicle for recovery. How your venue means something in your marketplace I think is the future of the venue. We’re at a real reflection point. Let’s be honest, nobody ever thought that an arena or stadium would do voting, would do vaccinations, would do food. That’s the stuff I want to talk about is the ability to be so important that it changes your perception in your marketplace. We’ve seen that in ours.

We have to help people reimagine and think differently because if you’re going to go back and open up, pay x amount to the promoter, I don’t know if you will be successful, but if you demonstrate to the community that you’re part of the fabric of the community and that you stand for something, I think people will value the venue a lot more in the future than they have in the past.

I really believe that venues have a different role today than if we would have had this conversation two years ago.

TAKE A LEAP FORWARD NOW AND TALK ABOUT THESE CHANGES THAT YOU HAVE JUST MENTIONED IN MORE DEPTH.

When you look at a venue on the outside they have scale, they have mass, and people bring events there, but until recently they really haven’t served multiple functions in the community. They’ve shown multiple pieces of entertainment. Then the pandemic comes forward and all of a sudden you have to have a place for people to vote so you can socially distance and have incredible WiFi and technology that allows people from all over the city to get there.

We were the first arena to open our doors to voting. It was the largest single arena voting site in the history of the US with 3,000 people able to come in and vote safely and securely and taking advantage of our trained staff of hospitality, our technology, our location. Next comes vaccinations and we were leading the charge. Where’s the scale coming from? Stadiums and arenas. And then, kitchens during the pandemic. Our seven kitchens and Mercedes-Benz Stadium’s 11 kitchens all working around the clock to create meals for the hungry, for healthcare workers, and our role wasn’t to host the next concert, our role was to help the community get through the crisis.

When you become a fabric of the community, you become a place that people care about and a place that people know stands for good, then you’re increasing your role and your relevance to people throughout the community. We’ve seen that happen.

ONCE YOU GET TO AND THROUGH THAT POINT, IS IT TRUE ABOUT THE OLD SAYING OF “NO TURNING BACK?”

Correct, and there should not be any turning back. I look at the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dodger Stadium. They did a terrific job both with vaccinations and with voting. What do we have? We have scale, parking lots, seats, square footage that – even a small venue has more than a library or a school. If you look at the way voting has been done in the past and even the way that food distribution been done in the past, it’s always been on a very small scale. Now these venues – which a lot of them are community supported and city supported – are really paying it back to the residents of those markets. I think there is no going back for us. I think there are more and more and more things that we can and we should be doing with our venues to make sure that our cities and towns have everything they need for people to be successful.

OBVIOUSLY YOU NOW HAVE TO BE PREPARED FOR ANYTHING WHEN YOU GET INTO THE PUBLIC ASSEMBLY VENUE INDUSTRY, RIGHT?

You look for opportunities and they don’t always have to be done in a negative. We saw voting as an opportunity, not a negative, because the formula was right, meaning connectivity, hospitality, scale.

I’m going to do a lot of speaking on our venue. We have a barber shop, we have a distillery, we have Top Golf, we have different things because the consumers are changing. I’m going to end with talking about how innovations fuels recovery. The innovation doesn’t always have to be bricks and mortar capital, but looking at your business differently.

WHAT NEW IMPLEMENTATIONS DO YOU SEE GOING FORWARD FOR VENUES AND THEIR STAFFS AND FANS AS WELL? WE THINK OF A LOT OF THOSE AS PHYSICAL IMPLEMENTATIONS BUT WHAT ARE SOME OF THE INNOVATIONS?

I think the innovation of moving from seats to spaces is a really important piece. I think how people use your venue is something today that’s far different than yesterday. Growing up, we would go to a ballgame, sit in the seats, eat and accept a hot dog that was cooked on a roller, stuffed in aluminum foil hours earlier, have a beer and never really got up and moved.

Today, a goldfish has a longer attention span than the average Millennial. That’s a scientific fact. So, you can’t go to market the same way. You can’t just have pedestrian offerings and think you’re going to be successful. You are competing with a great night out. You’re competing with people’s living rooms, and you have to innovate and you have to create and you have to replicate the best night out in your city. If you can do that, then you’re going to have tremendous success.

TALK A LITTLE MORE ABOUT MEALS YOU SERVED TO FRONT LINE WORKERS AND THOSE WHO JUST NEEDED A MEAL.

We did it three different ways. The first thing we did immediately when the country shut down is we realized there would be a lot of kids that would not be getting meals at school so how could we help and how could we supplement that. One of the things we had done was build 27 basketball courts throughout the metro area in underserved communities and we used those and turned them into pop-up grocery stores. Families could come by and get two weeks of groceries, vegetables, fruit, produce, dairy for free from those Hawks’ courts.

We created a delivery service and partnered with a company called Gooder which is a very cool food and security company. We partnered with State Farm who happens to be our naming rights sponsor and obviously one of the great companies in this country to help people in difficult times.

We created these grocery stores all throughout town that provided two weeks of groceries at a time and evolved that to a senior home food delivery. So, the first immediate thing was to make sure that we could help the communities around our courts which were some of the most underserved communities in the city.

The next piece we did, we wanted to keep and assist two different groups. A lot of medical workers leaving the hospital going into grocery stores were getting shot and they’re booed and even told they could not walk in wearing scrubs. We created a program called Healthcare Heroes where we took a bunch of restaurants who were obviously closed and struggling and turned them into commissaries. We made 8,000 meals per day for healthcare workers to take home to their families. So, when you got off your shift whether you were a doctor or orderly, you had a great meal pre-cooked, packaged and you could just walk out the door with it and go home and avoid going to the grocery store.

The third piece was working with the Atlanta Food Bank. We have seven huge kitchens in our building, so there was no reason for them not to be working. Our partners at Levy and our chefs came in and, again, created meals for months.

That’s what I’m talking about as looking at the assets you have and the problems you have and match them together.

IS STATE FARM ARENA NOW PLAYING AT CAPACITY?

We started with friends and family and then on January 26 we went to 1,700 people. We took that up post All-Star Game that we hosted to 3,200 people in mid-March. We went full bore except for some restricted NBA seats since the playoffs started in mid-May. We’ve been sold out 16,500 for every game. Knock wood, no issues.

DO PEOPLE NEED CONFIDENCE STILL TO ATTEND EVENTS?

The confidence of seeing it happen in New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles now, and I think people see there is some genuine acceptance that now it’s working, and then obviously having vaccinated sections and vaccinated-only concerts like you saw with the Foo Fighters in Madison Square Garden last week. Those are the kind of events that continue to build confidence and bring it back.

For members of IAVM, this should be a record-setting year. It’s just, let’s get there, and let’s get there safely.

WHAT IS A TAKEAWAY YOU WOULD LIKE FOR YOUR PEERS TO GO HOME WITH?

I would like people to walk out and look at the people they either came with or work with when they get back and say, do we represent our home towns? How are we doing things differently? How are we taking lessons that are learned in the pandemic and applying them for the future? And how well do we really understand our customers? At the end of the day, the more that customer feels that you understand them, the more patronage they’re going to give you. We have so many options for entertainment in the world and the biggest one we usually compete with is our own living rooms at home. A night out has to be extraordinary. Are we extraordinary or are we just average? Then, how we get to extraordinary doesn’t mean expensive. It just means that from the service to the smiles to the experience means something. How are you thinking about your experience in your market for your customers?

Zakiya Smith-Dore, MBA, CVP has been named Assistant Director of Operations for San Diego Theatres, the non-profit operators of the Historic Balboa Theatre (1,339 seats) and the San Diego Civic Theatre (2,967 seats).

In this role, Zakiya is responsible for overseeing Event Operations and Facility Services for both venues. Zakiya will be a key player in San Diego Theatres reopening, contributing personnel management, organizational planning, and innovative service design.

Zakiya was previously with the University of Florida, where she got her start in venue management in 2013. Starting at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center (2013-2017), she was quickly promoted to Changeover Supervisor. She credits the O’Connell Center for helping her learn the ropes of all things venue management. While she was tapped to serve in operations, Zakiya was given opportunities to work in every area of the facility including the box office, technical department, and event staff division.

In 2017, Ms. Smith-Dore joined University of Florida Performing Arts as Event Operations Manager. In this role she oversaw all business operations (from venue marketing to contracting to closure completion) for their auxiliary venue, the Baughman Center. She also provided management support to the 1,700-seat performing arts hall, Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. She is grateful for the many learning experiences working at the University of Florida provided, including the opportunity to earn multiple degrees (most recently her Masters of Business Administration).

By R.V. Baugus and StadiumBusiness

After going through a year of athletic competition where venues were either void of fans or with a very limited capacity, we all know the energy and atmosphere was just not the same as in a full building. Now, the Summer Olympics in Tokyo which begin on July 23 will be contested sans fans.

Indeed, fans will not be able to attend the majority of venues at this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo after a state of emergency was declared in the Japanese capital.

With COVID-19 cases rising in Tokyo, a five-party meeting between the Games’ organizing committee, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Government of Japan, the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee was called on July 8.

Olympics Minister Tamayo Marukawa has now confirmed that the escalating COVID-19 situation in Tokyo means that no spectators will be permitted in the capital during the Olympics, which are scheduled to run from July 23 to August 8 before the Paralympics follow from August 24 to September 5.

It had been hoped that a limited number of spectators would be able to attend events and last month it was announced that venues could operate at 50% capacity with up to 10,000 fans permitted. The decision was, however, subject to Tokyo being placed into a state of emergency, which is now set to be imposed from July 12 to August 22.

Venues in the neighboring prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama will also be without fans during the Olympics. A decision on fan attendance at the Paralympics is set to be made following the conclusion of the Olympics.

The Tokyo 2020 organizing committee had projected some 90 billion yen (£595m/€692m/$819m) in ticketing revenue from the Games and the banning of spectators is set to have a huge impact.

It was announced in March that overseas fans would not be allowed at the Olympics and Paralympics due to travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic, and it has now been confirmed that domestic supporters will also be barred.

The Olympics had been scheduled to take place last summer but were one of a number of major events either postponed or cancelled due to the pandemic.

Japan most recently reported 2,180 new cases of COVID-19, with 920 of these in Tokyo. It marked the largest figure in the capital since 1,010 were recorded on May 13.

By R.V. Baugus

To think, when I was a kid the big deal at a baseball stadium was just hoping to afford seats so I didn’t have to sit on those hot aluminum bleachers at Arlington Stadium when the Texas Rangers relocated from Washington, D.C., in 1971.

Today? Seems the latest in hospitality and the every-growing customer experience is to give fans the ultimate Airbnb experience. Count the New York Mets and Citi Field as the latest sports venue to offer up the grand opportunity.

Partnering with online marketplace Airbnb, the Mets made the announcement recently to coincide with Bobby Bonilla Day on July 28, in which fans will mark one of the most wildly — ahem — unsuccessful contracts in MLB history. Yes, the slugger was let go by the team in January 2000 after hitting .160 with four home runs and 18 RBIs the previous season, when a knee injury limited him to 119 at-bats.

Thankfully, both player and team let bygones be bygones as Bonilla will serve as host for the experience where guests watched both a day and a night game from their own VIP suite, enjoying limitless ballpark hotdogs and drinks.

The fans will even spend the night in the suite, while they are also be able to access the Mets gym during their stay. To top things off, they will then throw the ceremonial first pitch before the night game on July 28.

The one-time, one-night stay is not a contest, as fans are able to book the stay for up to four guests Said Bonilla: “As a born and raised New Yorker and a longtime player in the city, there is a special place in my heart for Mets fans and it’s wonderful to see the faithful back in some green seats in Queens.

“This year, I’m joining in on the fun, trying on a new glove as an Airbnb Host and hopefully giving a few folks the night of their lives at Citi Field.”