Future of sports venues: How architecture is revamping the fan experience

Innovations in architecture are transforming how we experience sports.

Transcript

00:00The advances and opportunities in sports and entertainment is one of the things we're really

00:05excited about for 2025. We see just a tremendous growth happening and it's really in kind of three

00:10areas. One, fan experience. Really trying to amp up the fan experience so that when you're going to

00:17a venue that it's not just about what's happening on the court or the field but it's actually how

00:23you experience, you know, pre-game, how you experience during the game and not necessarily

00:27sitting in your seat the whole time. It's also then the athlete experience. A big part of this

00:32is like how do you actually make the athlete experience better? So whether it's at a venue

00:37and it's about game day and you're getting ready for the game, what's that environment like?

00:42But real big emphasis in 2025 on the practice facilities. So where it's like WNBA, perfect

00:47example, for the Phoenix Mercury. We just created an amazing practice facility and it's all geared

00:54towards the female athlete that is able to go on the court and play at her best. So that

01:01environment, it feels very different in terms of the design. One of the things we explored with them

01:06was how do you actually create a locker room that doesn't feel like a typical locker room.

01:10It feels like a place you want to go, you want to be, you want to work, you want to be with your

01:14colleagues. And then from a performance enhancement standpoint, how can you actually train and

01:20in a sense practice in an environment that gets you ready, gets you prepared for game day?

01:26The third thing that we're seeing is just the rise of these sports and entertainment districts.

01:30And that is really the areas outside of venues. So sports teams, ownership groups, and other

01:36partners are recognizing that the value of the brand goes beyond the arena or the stadium itself.

01:43So how do you take the areas around it and start to bring new life? A great example of that is

01:48the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. It's where the Washington Capitals for NHL,

01:52Washington Wizards for NBA, where they play. So working together with the ownership,

01:57with adjacent developers, and the city, it's actually reimagining that entire venue,

02:02transforming it, but then the area around it, the whole experience, the streetscape around it,

02:08bringing that up as well so that it helps revitalize a part of the city that really needed it.

02:18you