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March 9, 2011
Mission impossible?
Meadowlands Matters [NorthJersey.com]
by John Brennan
John Brennan, who's done some of the most astute mainstream-media coverage of Atlantic Yards from across not one, but two, rivers, scoops the New York MSM again.
Sean Saadeh was just hired to be vice president of programming for the Barclays Center, the Brooklyn arena that is under construction and is scheduled to open in August 2012.
According to the press release, “The Barclays Center will host more than 200 events annually, including premier concerts, monthly major professional boxing cards, professional tennis, top college basketball and hockey, family shows.. and Nets basketball.”
200? With one sports tenant? Figure 45 to 50 Nets games, counting preseason and maybe a round or two of playoffs (might be being kind there), and that leaves at least 150 other events to go. In a recent Sports Business Journal story, club chief executive Brett Yormark broke that down to include 48 Feld Entertainment shows, 12 boxing events, 25 college basketball and hockey games, at least 20 concerts with Live Nation, and a couple of tennis events.
That doesn’t even add up to 200, and those estimates sound optimistic anyway - even with Madison Square Garden going dark in the summer for a couple of years due to a $1 billion renovation. Sounds like the Nets either expect a lot more Harlem Globetrotters and Disney on Ice events to suddenly be held, or they expect to steal nearly all such events from Nassau Coliseum, Izod Center, and Prudential Center.
But as the latter Newark arena discovered after its 2007 opening, promoters and acts didn’t flock to that site from 30-year-old Izod Center just because the new building had wider concourses and a fresh coat of paint. The acts wind up where they can make the most money, not where their fans can get a wider variety of snacks at the concession stand. So Saadeh has his work cut out for him.
Related coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Will the Barclays Center host even 200 events a year? That's questionable--and the longstanding promise was 225 events
That adds up to about 110 events beyond basketball, or less than 160.
Brennan suggests that the example of the Prudential Center, which didn't lure acts from the Izod Center, bodes ill for Barclays. Then again, as one Brooklynite pointed out on NetsDaily, there's a new market to tap.
Yeah, 'cause god knows the hassle of taking the subway all the way to Madison Square Garden. Most Brooklynites have never even been to Manhattan.
As we've known for years, the longstanding projection of 225 events a year depended on the closing of the Meadowlands Arena (now the Izod Center) and no construction of an arena in Newark. (Forest City even told the MTA there would be 250 events.)
That scenario of 225 events was accepted by famed sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, a paid FCR consultant, even though it left no place for the New Jersey Devils to play hockey, as Gustav Peebles and Jung Kim pointed out in their critical analysis of Zimbalist's report.
The Izod Center remains open. A new arena was built in Newark. That means more competition, even if Brooklyn is an under-tapped market.
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Coming Soon! An Empty Arena
The unravelling of fantasy versus reality in the world of Forest City Ratner continues, as John Brennan, a veteran sports business journalist, takes a look at the booking potential of the Barclays Center on NorthJersey.com. He notes that a recent press release promises that the venue will host "more than 200" events per year, but Brennan does the math and has a hard time coming up with a number even close to that.
...Brooklyn residents may be happy to have fewer nights of Barclays-induced traffic jams, but in the end the odds are that if the Arena falls short of its financial fantasies, in one way or another New York taxpayers will be picking up the slack.
NoLandGrab: What, no Hasidic weddings?
Posted by eric at March 9, 2011 12:50 PM