USA TODAY International Edition
Should college athletes unionize?
Sports facilities count losses from missing customers, events
As universities call for players to start returning to campus, now could be the time when serious talks about organizing gain traction.
Just north of downtown Indianapolis, 57 fields and three indoor facilities sprawl across more than 400 acres of land in Westfield, Indiana – a sports mega- complex called Grand Park Sports Campus.
Andy Cook, the mayor of the town that owns and manages the facility, said the idea behind it all was pretty straightforward: If you build a massive sports complex, travel teams and events will come. Business investment will follow. The commercial tax base will grow, and the economy thrive. And the mega- complex will only have to, more or less, break even.
“It’s, relatively speaking, a rather inelastic industry,” Cook said. “Families will continue to spend dollars traveling, enjoying each other’s company, even in times of economic slowdown.”
Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and Grand Park – like dozens of other sports mega- complexes across the country – was faced with a drought of business.
Travel tournaments were canceled or postponed. Soccer fields that are usually packed throughout the spring sat empty. Facility staff that would normally be planning and executing events were instead cutting grass, director William Knox included.
All told, Knox said 320 events at Grand Park were canceled in a six- week span, resulting in a loss of roughly $ 1.8 million, or about 25% of the facility’s projected revenue for the 2020 fiscal year.
“We were very strategic in our cuts,” Knox said. “All of them are such that we will bounce back from this.”
Mega- complexes such as Grand Park have carved out a notable, and lucrative, position in the youth sports industry, which Wintergreen Research estimates is now a $ 19 billion market in the United States.
While kids have long played sports in
local recreational leagues, Wintergreen Research found that travel teams and tournaments are becoming increasingly popular, representing what the company describes as “a nascent market” with “no end to growth in sight.”
Mega- facilities, which tend to be privately owned, have benefited from that surge – often hosting travel tournaments in sports such as baseball, lacrosse, soccer, softball and volleyball, in addition to other local leagues or community events.
But when youth sports shut down due to the coronavirus, they also had to deal with the fallout.
“Industry- wise, nobody saw this coming,” said Jason Clement, the CEO and co- founder of Sports Facilities Management, which runs sports megacomplexes in 20 states.
Clement said the company’s facilities have lost about $ 2.4 million in revenue, and the communities surrounding them have lost about $ 80 million in related spending, so far.
At The St. James, an indoor facility in a suburb of Washington, D. C., that features everything from two NHL- size hockey rinks to a 50,000- square- foot health club, co- founders Kendrick Ashton and Craig Dixon said the COVID- 19 pandemic forced them to furlough more than 75% of their workforce. Outstanding debt on the building, which opened less than two years ago, has contributed to the financial strain.
While the facility itself has been closed since March due to local government restrictions, The St. James has tried to shift some of its offerings online, including workout classes and sportspecific instructionals.
“It’s a really big foundational challenge to our business, and to others,” Dixon said. “We’ve tried to bridge the distance ... with digital tools. But that can only do so much.”
Ashton and Dixon said they hope the size of their 450,000- square- foot facility will be an asset when they are able to reopen, likely with social distancing measures in place.
Other mega- complexes have been making similar preparations for weeks, formulating plans about how and when they can welcome back local teams – and, perhaps at some point, regional or national tournaments.
“We’re finding now that people may want to try smaller things, in the fall,” said Louis Mateus, the general manager of Mercyhealth Sportscore complexes in Rockford, Illinois. “They’re asking, ‘ Can I bring 10 teams in and do a smaller tournament?’ That’d be an advantage for us if we can do that.”
Mateus, whose facilities usually count April and May as their busiest months, said he and his team have developed more than a dozen different plans that account for potential differences in government restrictions in the coming months.
They are also evaluating how COVID- 19 could localize or regionalize travel sports in the years to come, due to financial constraints on families, government orders or both.
“Instead of going and playing a tournament in Orlando, ( local travel teams) might be able to come to Rockford for $ 100 instead of $ 1,000,” Mateus said. “It’s an opportunity for us to look at the whole market. How do we help these teams stay more local?
“This is a great opportunity for us to reinvent ourselves.”
But scaling down has not been in the youth sports industry’s DNA.
Mark O’Brien is the CEO of LakePoint Sports, a sprawling facility north of Atlanta that averages 1 million visitor days a year. He notes that Wintergreen Research projects the global youth sports market to exceed $ 65 billion in revenue by 2026, and he remains bullish on industry growth despite the challenges that COVID- 19 presents.
“The sentiment, the feedback we get from coaches, from team members, organizers is they’re very interested, very anxious to get back out there,” O’Brien said. “Bu, we want to make sure we’re being responsible.
“Gradually, over time, the interest and the follow- through will increase. Our role will be to facilitate the safe, responsible environment in which they can compete.”
For Grand Park, that long- awaited return is now just around the corner.
The city of Westfield recently released a three- phase plan to reopen the complex, which – barring any changes – would begin Sunday by allowing local teams to conduct practices and local families to use the facility as a green space. Grand Park could be back to standard operations as early as July 4, and possibly even host the NFL’s Colts training camp, should it still occur, later in the summer.
“Our governor has given us the green light on our last step, July 4, we’re back to normal,” Cook said. “( Though) that may very well be a new normal.”