Ballpark Overview
Baseball is a major sport attracting a huge fan base in the US. It’s considered as National's “pastime” and is engraved in the US and gained popularity in the 19th century (Peterson et al., 2019). The Forbes magazine identifies baseball as the third favorite sports among the US millennials (Ozanian, 2018). Since 2015, baseball has recorded a 14.3% annual casual play growth rate and the participating amounted to 23.4 million participants in 2017 above soccer participation of 17.4 million people (Ozanian, 2018). The baseball sport governed by the Major League Baseball (MLB) founded in the 1876 and currently entailing 30 teams.
The proposed Neville state-of-the-art MLB ballpark will be first of its kind with a multi-use development and community. Reichard (2019) notes that sporting facilities are increasingly being positioned as mixed-use economic hubs and/or industrial complexes, a vision that the current ballpark seeks to realize. The Shelby park community needs will be at the center of the design as the project management team will work with the local agencies and community residents to revitalize the Shelby neighborhood by creating new cultural, economic and recreational opportunities. The stadium will be a top-tier entertainment and sports venue providing a shopping center accessible all year round. The Neville Park will be the absolute fusion of classic ballpark feel, classic amenities, and Southern hospitality, leaving a unique fan experience. A MLB team in Nashville offers both quantifiable and non-quantifiable benefits to the local community. The complex will be a source of revenue to the local community in the form of sales, in the floor of tourist, and employment from both the ballpark and the auxiliary establishments (Ebert & Ballard, 2017; Fox, Kessler and Norwood 2017).
The high-tech infrastructure complex will entail a ballpark, an office building, luxury hotel, shopping plaza adjacent and with a view of the ballpark and a theater to enable sustain the economy of the complex on non-game days. A three-tier sitting capacity of 43710 people will be designed to optimize on sightlines ensuring that every seat gives the best view for fans. The ballpark will feature a unique configuration that incorporates a high number of seats closer to the field compared to other MLB ballparks, a design that puts the fans proximal to the action. Neville Ballpark 67 luxury suites will be a home-run hitter of hospitality. The luxury suites will feature two distinct areas tactfully designed to enable guest interactions. A section of the suite will entail a rich wood-paneled and granite countertops bar area while the second section will feature a spacious lounge and a private room with comfy leather furnishing and sliding glass windows. The stadium will feature more than 10,000 parking spaces and a private shuttle service linking to the Nashville metro system.
Ballpark Location
The arena will be established on the Shelby Baseball field that is located 0.5 miles West of the Shelby Bottoms Nature Center & Greenway located within the 361 –acre Shelby Park in Nashville, state of Tennessee. The proposed ballpark will be located in the most populous metropolitan and capital of the Tennesse state. Nashville city was founded in 1779 during the American revolutionary war. The city occupies 527.9 square miles that lie on the Cumberland River. The central location of Nashville city implies that the city is at the crossroads of three interstate highways connecting the state to three other states (Kreyling).
Ballpark Amenities
Incorporating a modern and forward-thinking architectural approach, the stadium will be an iconic design globally. The stadium will offer a fusion of amenities that will ensure activity on game and off-game days 365 days in a year. A $100 million theatre establishment linking the stadium to the adjacent mix of offices, restaurants, residences, and shops will be designed to play a host of diverse events including music and comic shows. An oval oversized video board worth $40 million that according to Tucker (2014) sets a tone for the fan experience. A $125 million retraceable roof convert with canopy horseshoeing to protect the fans from rain and sun will refine the overall look and experience of the stadium. An emerging trend in the baseball arena is the backdrop of social media where fans are increasingly projecting themselves to the world through social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter among other platforms. Reichard (2017) notes that fostering social media has prominently become integral for top-notch sports organizations. Subsequently, the proposed stadium will incorporate a $1.25 million Wi-Fi infrastructure to enable the fans to share an instant experience which as well will facilitate in expanding the stadium’s fan base.
With the current thinking, a restaurant and art gallery worth | $8 million, a lounge and night club investment worth $20 million, a stadium club worth $20 million scattered around the stadium will provide centers for diverse entertainment joints. Also on the entertainment front is a franchise museum worth $4.5 million, $1 million worth cabanas and pool and $1 million famous art murals across the stadium. Given that the stadium location is around a well-conserved ecological area, above the Cumberland River, the construction will incorporate natural feel by installing a grass field at a cost of $380,000 thousand and undertaking annual field-grass maintenance at an annual cost of $52,000 thousand. Consequently, the ballpark will account as a green stadium contributing to the global call for ecological conservation. Other unique features of the stadium include a $ 2.5 million standing room view designated section and a $25 million handheld guides at premier seating to order food, surf the web, and play interactive games. Consequently, the fans attending events at the ballpark will have diverse access to food and drink options including pork steaks, nachos, toasted ravioli, bratwurst, sandwiches, peanuts among others.
Stadium Financials Overview
Funding for complex infrastructures may mainly be in the form of public funding and private funding. The Academy (2008) identifies that the public funding may...…Red bull sponsorship of the MetroStars that saw an increase in soccer fan base, a sport that traditionally had low fan base in the US, reiterates the popularity corporate sponsorship yields for a major sports league (Chiaruáin, 2017).
Jack Daniels, a Tennessee Whiskey brand has been identified as the sponsor or the proposed MLB stadium. The sponsorship will be equivalent to $2.2 million per sponsorship deal which will entail the transfer of naming rights. Jack Daniels is the premium top-selling American Whiskey across the globe and produced by the Jack Daniel Distillery in Located in Lynchburg Tennessee. The Jack Daniels brand has been in existence since 1875 recording increasing growth over the decades to emerging as a leading whiskey brand globally. Given that Tennesse is the home of Jack Daniel’s, the sponsorship of the proposed MLB ballpark resonates with the location of the sponsor. In other terms, the sponsorship has sentimental value for Jack Daniels Distillery. The Jack Daniels sponsorship is an enormously valuable asset for the proposed MLB ballpark. Although Jack Daniels has not been a mainstream sponsor of baseball leagues, over the years it has ventured in into the baseball sponsoring space (Seybert, 2017). Jack Daniels has sponsored major leagues such as the Texas Rangers and holds naming-rights of Rangers Ballpark Diamond Club in Arlington. The management of the Rangers Ballpark credits the sponsorship of Jack Daniels as the principal reason for the ballpark’s high attendance records relative to other MLB ballparks (Carlisle, 2014).
Sport is not merely about a game, but it’s also an entity configured to generate money, hence sponsorship has a twofold objective, supporting the game and generating value for the sponsors. Corporate sponsorship offers exploitable commercial opportunities to the sponsors. The corporate sponsors have an opportunity to advertise to a massive target audience. Seybert, (2017) posits that alcohol commercials during MLB games stick in the mind of the consumers realizing the objective of a commercial. MLB sponsorship enables product amplification and consumer engagement. According to Cornwell, et al. (2004), an announcement of major league sponsorship is associated with an increase in the stock price of the sponsoring firms. Cornwell, et al. (2004) observed a $123 million to $558 million increase in share value as a result of a sponsorship announcement implying a substantial return on investment for corporate sponsorship of major sports leagues. The baseball fan base is to a large extent a representation of the target market of alcohol corporates, hence the Jack Daniels sponsorship confers advertising market opportunity to the appropriate customer base. Moreover, corporate brands attract fan allegiance and loyalty for long term sponsorship of specific leagues. Diverse geographical locations resonate with sports, hence sports sponsorship enables the corporate sponsors to maneuver extant language and/or cultural boundaries enabling expansion of customer base.
Conclusion
A sports complex and a major league baseball team are inevitable in the revitalized metropolitan of Nashville, Tennessee. The economic analysis demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed 43710 people capacity ballpark to be constructed at the Shelby Baseball field.…
