The sports industry is plenty prone to hype and hyperbole, both on and off the field. But even within that context, a recent description of Tim Leiweke, chief executive of Los Angeles, California-based stadium development company Oak View Group, still easily stands out.
“We’re dealing with the Babe Ruth of arenas in Tim,” said Jon Ledecky, co-owner of the New York Islanders, the National Hockey League franchise working with Oak View on the development of the forthcoming UBS Arena in Elmont, New York. “If there was a Hall of Fame for the number of arenas built, Tim would be No. 1.”
Indeed, there is perhaps no other executive in sports currently making as much of an impact upon both the present and future of the entire industry than Leiweke. In addition to developing UBS Arena, Leiweke and Oak View are also in the midst of developing Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington, a new facility in Manchester, England, in partnership with City Football Group, and the Moody Center, a forthcoming multi-purpose venue in Austin, Texas, among numerous other projects. Each of those venues is slated to open between 2021 and 2023.
Despite a live event industry historically battered this year by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and still-prevalent fears about the safety of fans returning to games and events, Leiweke, through this set of development initiatives, insists that the sports and entertainment business will not only come back, but do so stronger than ever, ideally buttressed by both the eventual arrival of a vaccine for the virus along with improved treatment procedures.
And Leiweke and Oak View Group have been able to financially back that fervent optimism through a series of large-scale naming rights deals completed while much of sports sponsorship spending elsewhere remains on hold. The frothy sales run includes landing four large-scale naming-rights deals in less than a year, with more set to arrive in the coming weeks. The UBS deal for the Islanders in particular was pegged at about $350m (€295m), while Amazon’s unique, cause-based pact for Climate Pledge Arena will total as much as $400m.
“We always felt that social distancing was a temporary moment, that it would pass and hopefully quickly,” Leiweke said. “By the time we get to October, November [of 2021] and start opening all of our new buildings, social distancing won’t really be something we talk about.”
But Leiweke, 63, is hardly assuming a passive stance on the pandemic and simply waiting for the medical research community to deliver a miracle.
Instead, he and his firm, a partnership with noted music industry giant Irving Azoff, are looking to redefine how cleaning, sanitisation, and overall venue operations are conducted in the age of Covid-19, with those measures to form a key part of the new normal for live sports and entertainment going forward, with or without a vaccine.
Oak View recently formed a broad-based task force, involving a diverse array of other industry providers such as architects, commercial cleaning services, and concessionaires, to create a set of universal industry standards for building safety.
In addition to heightened cleaning procedures, a strong focus on recycling, and fundamentally rethinking elements such as air circulation, Leiweke has also been aggressive in implementing features such as grab-and-go concessions to reduce potentially contaminating touchpoints.
And in the case of Seattle and Climate Pledge Arena specifically, that overall approach dovetails directly with an ambitious environmental conservation goal to make that planned venue the industry’s first fully-carbon-neutral arena, and Amazon’s intent to use the naming rights pact to spotlight the global need to reduce greenhouse gases.
“We’re doing a lot of thinking now about how we use technology, use design, use engineering, to make these buildings really focused long-term on health and wellness,” Leiweke said.
“The virus certainly has our attention, and at times keeps us awake at night. But what I am 100-per-cent convinced of is we’re going to end at the right place. This will pass. We need to have faith,” he said.