ASM Global has named Liam Thornton as EVP Strategy and Development to further expand its rapidly growing project development program.

In making the announcement, ASM Global President and CEO Ron Bension said, “We already have unmatched scale and worldwide experience with a multitude of stadiums, arenas, theaters, entertainment centers, convention/event spaces, and consumer touchpoints as well as the ability to integrate brands into the unique ASM Global live experience ranging from music to sports to business, tech, and more.

“This will drive tremendous value for private and municipal partners and ultimately guests. We’re going to leverage the coming years for a period of unprecedented growth in our business space. Liam’s extensive experience, particularly in creating new developments and enhancing existing assets, will provide far and away the most diverse and enriching opportunities the industry has ever seen.”

In Thornton’s new role, the former executive vice president of development at Live Nation Entertainment will be responsible for strategic planning, market research, site selection, lease and partnership negotiations, development feasibility, site planning, project advisory, and investment analysis.

“ASM Global’s growth potential is unlimited,” Thornton said. “We’re already known as the world’s largest live-event physical platform with a marketing platform to match, which enables us to deliver fans and financial returns on a scale that no one else can deliver. We’re now accelerating our entry into equity investments and strategic partnerships as well as ramping up our project advisory services including feasibility studies, master planning, and bringing startup projects to fruition.

“The world is craving live-event experiences more than ever, and ASM Global and investors want to be a part of those moments. No one has the breadth of events, venues, tenant partners, and boots on the ground like ASM Global,” he said. “At a full run, there are 164 million people coming through our venues already. We are very excited to grow that number.”

By Mary Klida

Karen Totaro, CVE, general manager for Huntington Place/ASM Global, announced the rollout of new public safety and security measures starting with the Nov. 4 all staff International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) Venue Safety and Security Training. Mark Herrera, director of safety and security at IAVM, will conduct the training for all teams inclusive of leadership working to secure all events in Huntington Place.

“Safety is one of the top concerns for meeting planners and attendees,” Totaro said. “Combining local, state, and national security efforts in a way that makes our clients feel safe and cared for will be instrumental to our future.”

Public Safety is increasingly becoming a top priority for convention centers and other venues. Marlon Wilson, who began his role director of public safety Huntington Place last month, will be working with Herrera to train staff on the latest safety and security protocols for venues. The IAVM is committed to provide innovative safety and security guidelines and training so as to assist venues and their executive teams in managing with the priority of protecting all aspects related to life-safety and physical assets. They also provide education, resources, advocacy, and certification to event industry professionals and venue managers.

“I look forward to continuing my mission of the highest standard of safety and security for every team member, patron, and vendor who visits and interacts with Huntington Place,” Wilson said. “I plan to use my longstanding law enforcement background to implement protocols and procedures that create the safest and most conducive environment possible for all.”

Midterm elections are the focus of increasing anxiety for voters and election officials in the United States. The Huntington Place public safety team has been working with an extensive security task force in Detroit all year to make sure the enhanced safety and security measures in place for the Nov. 8 Michigan elections keep everyone safe. The FBI, Homeland Security, all state and local law enforcement agencies, the Michigan Secretary of State, Detroit Department of Elections, and the Downtown Detroit Partnership Security Task Force are working cooperatively as a Security Response Team and central on-site command to share information and strategies.

Herrera oversees the industry’s Academy for Venue Safety and Security and will work with Wilson to roll out the Nov. 4 staff training in Huntington Place. Herrera has seen a growing demand for guidance related to security issues in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He has conducted more than 350 training sessions to leadership and frontline teams on Behavioral Indication and Risk Mitigation through Guest Service Interjection. The training emphasizes developing teams capable of providing exceptional focus, performance and control in extreme situations.

“Facilities such as Huntington Place under the direction of GM Karen Totaro pride themselves with creating better experiences within the venue industry inclusive of all facilities which is more important now than ever before,” Herrera said. “Training teams to forecast and expect those unexpected challenges in the future provides them with the tools to mitigate the risks our world delivers daily.”

Convention centers across the country are coming out of the COVID pandemic with changed sets of customer expectations for service delivery and environmental hygiene. Public safety departments have broadened their reach to not only include crisis communications, crowd control and policing strategy, but also guest experience and customer service.

“We are thrilled to coordinate these national programs and agencies in our local public safety protocols,” said Totaro. “With Marlon having an extensive background in local law enforcement and knowledge of our community, and Mark’s expertise in venue security, it is the right fit for our team’s efforts. Public Safety is continually front and center of our guest experience in Huntington Place.”

Mary Klida is Senior Marketing & Communications Manager for Huntington Place.

By Gil Fried

A new YouTube channel has been launched as a crowd management training tool. The free videos are designed to help train front line staff. Through utilizing 15 minute or less videos, venue management and crowd management companies can help train their staff on a continual basis. Crowd management training is often undertaken once a year, but to really turn crowd management best practices into muscle memory for employees there needs to be constant training and refresher training on a broad array of topics front line staff might face.

That is what motivated Professor Gil Fried from the University of West Florida to launch the YouTube channel called the Crowd Management Doctor. The channel can be found at this location.

Prof. Fried stated “[T]he channel’s goal is to provide current events and cases studies in a fun and informative manner which can be watched by an employee on their phone and on a break to keep their skills as current as possible.”

The channel has been adding new videos, including a regular update of current events. Other videos have included case studies, responding to various hazards, and then interviews with industry professionals such as fan psychologists and venue professionals. The plan is to release 10-12 videos every year and then at a certain point create a library where front line staff can watch a certain number of videos, take an exam, and receive independent third-party certification of crowd management knowledge from the University of West Florida.

This training is not designed to replace any current training undertaken by venues and crowd management companies, but to serve as a supplement where staffers can hear from others and learn in a different environment.

For more information visit the YouTube page or contact Gil at gfried@uwf.edu.

From Green Sports Alliance

Oak View Group and Green Sports Alliance are announcing a strategic collaboration agreement to better support the sports industry’s response to climate change. The partnership will lead to collaborative greening events, firmer connections between Green Sports Alliance’s 300-plus members and OVG360’s 200-plus venue clients, and content, data and case study sharing.

OVG360 President Chris Granger said that he and Roger McClendon, executive director of the Green Sports Alliance, first spoke about the idea during the Green Sports Alliance Summit in Minneapolis.

“We both recognized this is a critical time,” Granger said. “Momentum is increasing, and venues are increasingly interested in ideas and support and best practices, and at the end of the day we both realized that by collaborating together we can accelerate the conversation around sustainability in a way that would not be possible if we were working on our own.”

No money is changing hands in the arrangement, though OVG will contribute in multiple ways to the Green Sports Alliance Summit, held annually the last 10 years; the 2023 edition will take place in Seattle at OVG’s Climate Pledge Arena. OVG360’s just-launched GOAL program and Green Sports Alliance’s Play to Zero program will work together, sharing data from a wider pool of venues, as well as case studies and best practices, all to get the sustainability ball rolling faster in the sports industry.

“We’re past the tipping point,” said McClendon. “What we appreciate about organizations like OVG and leaders like Chris and [OVG co-founder and CEO] Tim [Leiweke], is they’re moving with action. Talk is cheap. Move sports with action and bring people along.”

Green Sports Alliance launched in 2011 as a nonprofit trade organization focused on moving the sports industry forward with regard to its sustainable practices and using sports’ platform to influence the public toward more sustainable behaviors in daily life. OVG360 is the venue management arm of Oak View Group, which recently celebrated its seventh birthday. OVG360 recently launched GOAL (Green Operations and Advanced Leadership), a member platform that will help venues operate more sustainably.

Green Sports Alliance was an early pioneer in the sports sustainability movement, a fight OVG’s Leiweke believes in passionately. At SBJ’s CAA World Congress of Sports two weeks ago, Leiweke implored the industry to act on environmental issues. “GOAL is a huge priority for us,” he said. “Whatever the new stadiums look like — football, baseball, whatever the new arenas look like, whatever the new theaters look like, whatever the new training centers look like — we as an industry have to make the fact that this Earth is dying our No. 1 priority going forward in design and in operation.”

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has secured the contract to design Hangzhou International Sports Centre – a project which will include a 60,000-seat football stadium, 19,000-seat arena and an aquatics centre.

Located within the Chinese city’s Future Science and Technology Cultural District, the sports centre establishes a new riverfront park and public plazas with direct access to Hangzhou’s expanding metro network. ZHA has won the contract following a design competition.

Accommodating Hangzhou’s growing population, the International Sports Centre’s design aims to provide a variety of facilities for grassroots players through to professional athletes. The compact design of each venue, together with their orientation and composition, allows almost half of the site to be transformed into new public spaces for the city. Integral to the district’s urban plan and the natural landscapes along the riverbank, the centre incorporates new parks and gathering places for events, recreation and relaxation.

As the largest venue within the centre, the 135,000 sq.m football stadium is situated on the eastern side of the new park, facing the city. Located to the west and south of the stadium, the indoor arena and aquatics centre are connected to the stadium by the centre’s layered podium that weaves through the site.

Informed by the terracing of the tea farms on Hangzhou’s surrounding hillsides, the striated 45,000 sq.m podium houses the sports centre’s ancillary facilities that are shared between the venues including training and fitness halls, locker rooms and offices, as well as shops, restaurants, and cafes overlooking the podium’s courtyard and terraces.

ZHA said that unlike the solid façades of most stadiums, the façade of the Hangzhou International Sports Centre stadium is open to the exterior with louvres sheltering terraces that host a variety of food and beverage outlets offering panoramic views across the city.

Designed to FIFA standards, the stadium’s seating bowl is configured to bring spectators as close as possible to the field of play and ensure unrestricted views from every seat, creating an intense matchday atmosphere. These programmatic requirements define geometries that are expressed as undulations within the louvred façade.

ZHA said: “The stadium’s louvred façade blurs the boundary between interior and exterior. The louvres’ materiality and detailing give the stadium a stratified, geological appearance of solidity when viewed from nearby. When viewed from a distance, the louvred façade becomes transparent, connecting the public spaces beneath the stadium’s seating bowl with the city.”

With a capacity of 19,000 seats, the 74,000 sq.m indoor arena can operate independently to the stadium and is designed with maximum operational flexibility to host many of China’s most popular spectator sports such as basketball, in addition to large music and cultural events.

Situated on the western edge of the park, the 15,000 sq.m aquatics centre incorporates two 50-metre pools suitable for competitions, training and teaching at all levels.

Located within the warm temperate climate of Hangzhou, the International Sports Centre has been designed to the highest 3-Star rating of China’s Green Building Program with each venue using natural hybrid ventilation most of the year. ZHA said annual solar irradiation analysis has determined the composition of the façade’s external louvres, while photovoltaics will harvest solar power for all venues. Ground heat exchange and recovery systems will seek to ensure efficient operations for all facilities.

The centre’s landscaping establishes wetlands along the riverbank that are integral to the district’s drainage network. Collecting and channelling rain and grey-water for filtration and re-use, this network uses aquatic flora and fauna native to the region to naturally remove contaminants.

To reduce the embodied carbon throughout the project, ZHA said its optimisation processes minimise the amount of materials required for the structure and are integrated with local supply chains and procurement systems that have been developed to increase the recycled and recyclable content.

The International Sports Centre is set to be the latest addition to Hangzhou’s facility portfolio. In July, the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) announced that Hangzhou’s postponed Asian Games will now take place from September 23 to October 8 next year.

The multi-sport event had been due to take place from September 10-25 this year but the Games were postponed in May, with OCA citing the “pandemic situation” in China and the size of the event.

All venues for the Asian Games were completed in April and cleared to begin hosting test events. Some 56 venues are due to be used during the Asian Games and the Asian Para Games. Twelve venues have been newly constructed, while 26 have been reconstructed, nine are existing facilities and a further nine have been set up as temporary destinations.