Maturing venues
Unlocking New Value From Existing Assets
10–20 Years
Your Ballpark Has a Track Record. What Is It Telling You?
After 10–20 years of operation, a ballpark has something a new facility doesn't: a meaningful track record of how it performs.
Attendance patterns are established. Seating demand is better understood. Popular destinations have emerged. Some spaces have consistently delivered value, while others may no longer align with how fans experience the game or how the organization operates.
Over the past 20 years, we've learned that maturing venues often have significant untapped potential hiding in plain sight. A fresh look at seating, accessibility, hospitality, retail, concessions, and other existing assets can reveal opportunities to improve performance without replacing the facility.
The Opportunity to Reposition
At this stage, the question is often less about adding something new and more about reconsidering what the venue already has.
A seating bowl designed around a different attendance profile may no longer reflect current demand. A premium space may need to be repositioned. An underperforming concession or hospitality area may offer greater value in another use. Accessibility requirements and evolving codes may create opportunities to rethink seating distribution and circulation.
The most effective improvements are often strategic rather than sweeping—right-sizing, repositioning, and reinvesting in the areas that can have the greatest impact.
The objective is to make existing assets work harder while extending the value of the investment already made in the ballpark.
Where You Might Find the Greatest Impact
Seating Performance
A decade or more of operating data provides a much clearer picture of how seating inventory is actually performing.
Look at overall seat count, attendance patterns, sell-through, pricing, and the mix of seating products. Opportunities may exist to right-size the bowl, create more desirable seating environments, or convert underperforming inventory into higher-value experiences.
ADA & Code Compliance
Accessibility requirements and building codes continue to evolve, while the way fans use a venue changes over time.
Look for opportunities to reassess accessible seating locations, distribution, sightlines, companion seating, circulation, and other code-related requirements. In some cases, right-sizing seating can create opportunities to address accessibility while simultaneously improving the overall seating experience.
Underperforming Assets
A maturing venue provides enough operating history to identify spaces that aren't delivering their intended value.
Look for opportunities to reposition seating, hospitality, concessions, retail, circulation areas, and other underperforming assets into experiences that better serve today's fans and the organization's business objectives.
Capital Priorities
At this stage, there are often more potential improvements than available capital.
Look for opportunities to establish a clear hierarchy of investment—separating immediate needs from longer-term opportunities and identifying improvements that can deliver the greatest impact for the investment required.
These Lessons in Action
Craft Pier Party Deck | Petco Park
Turning underperforming seating into a high-value group destination.
Craft Pier replaced approximately 800 existing outfield bleacher seats with a dynamic group deck, addressing a gap in Petco Park's hospitality inventory. Packaged with enhanced hospitality offerings, the new destination transformed underperforming seating into a premium group experience and generated a return on investment in approximately two years.
Lesson: Underperforming assets can become significant revenue generators when repositioned around an unmet demand.
Explore Craft Pier Party Deck →
Concessions Improvements | Petco Park
Transforming food and beverage into a reason to visit the ballpark.
A focused series of improvements to Petco Park's food-and-beverage program introduced strategically curated partnerships with San Diego's favorite restaurateurs, bringing a distinctly local flavor to the ballpark. The improvements strengthened per-cap performance while helping create a more compelling experience for fans.
Lesson: Targeted reinvestment in existing concessions can strengthen a venue's identity, improve guest satisfaction, and turn food and beverage into a meaningful driver of revenue.
Explore Petco Park Concessions Improvements →
Seating Bowl Replacement | Lake Elsinore Diamond
Repositioning the seating bowl around how fans use the ballpark today.
The seating bowl reinvestment at Lake Elsinore created a series of distinct neighborhoods better aligned with current fan behavior. The project right-sized ADA seating to meet current code requirements, introduced 4-Tops above each dugout, added flexible drink-rail group seating behind home plate, and transformed underperforming left-field seats into a new group deck.
A clearer pricing hierarchy, padded premium seating, and a lime-green family section further differentiated the bowl and reinforced the Storm's identity.
Lesson: A seating bowl can be repositioned around today's demand through strategic adjustments to inventory, accessibility, products, pricing, and identity—without replacing the entire facility.
Explore Lake Elsinore Diamond Seating Bowl Replacement →
Coca-Cola Front Porch | Coolray Field
Filling a gap in the ballpark's hospitality inventory.
The Coca-Cola Front Porch transformed the area directly behind home plate into a 150-person group deck designed as an open-air concourse suite, providing the Stripers with a large, flexible group space previously missing from their hospitality inventory. The project pairs a premium group experience with some of the best views in the ballpark, while 4-Tops below the deck created a new seating neighborhood that has quickly become a fan favorite.
Lesson: Identifying what's missing from a venue's inventory can reveal opportunities to turn existing space into new hospitality and revenue products.