The Philadelpia Union are among those aiming to get more stadium shows.getty images
At an MLS board of governors meeting in 2022, teams began discussing ways to get more significant events held at their stadiums.
From there, executives delved into the concert touring and promotion world, tapping their contacts to see if they could pinpoint help. Kristin Bernert, Columbus Crew president of business operations, had a co-worker familiar with Terrapin Station Entertainment, an intermediary between the touring entertainment and sports industries founded by music industry veteran Jonathan Shank. The result, announced this summer, is a coalition of 10 MLS teams (and 11 stadiums) that are working with Terrapin Station to book shows more regularly at the venues, most of which previously just hosted a concert or two annually.
“Ultimately,” Shank said, “we have become an extension of the team and really a liaison to the local promoters, to the national tour promoters and to the agents.”
Many MLS teams are building decent private events-hosting businesses, especially the ones with newer stadiums that are utilizing their novel and high-end club spaces for corporate gatherings, weddings and the like. But concerts at MLS stadiums can routinely net mid-six-figure revenue each show, according to Shank.
“The revenue in an MLS [venue] is of course not the same as in the NFL,” said Steven Lundy, Terrapin Station Entertainment EVP, business development, “but it is definitely meaningful and something that gets the attention of these organizations and ultimately worth the investment and energy.”
It’s easy to see the lift that hosting not just one or two but five or six of these kinds of stadium concerts annually could give the MLS teams’ bottom lines.
“It’s a question of how much support could they use, and is there room for growth?” Lundy said. “If there is room to improve upon it and bring in more content, then that’s what we’re here to do.”
One-offs not enough
Shank spent roughly 25 years in music management, working with the Grateful Dead, Smashing Pumpkins and Eve. Terrapin Station Entertainment, named after the 1977 Grateful Dead album and title song, grew out of Shank’s initial 2018 freelance project using his touring industry connections to help the Milwaukee Brewers land more shows at American Family Field.
Terrapin Station has about a dozen people working on sports venue efforts, including Lundy and partnership development and strategy executive Andrew Pauls, who joined after 17 years with the Brewers. Terrapin has produced over 1,500 shows overall, grossing more than $110 million at the box office, mostly in the family entertainment vertical.
Terrapin Station contracts individually with the teams. It’s compensated for shows booked and gets a cut from the shows’ resulting revenue. Within two years of its official 2020 launch, Terrapin Station had a stable of sports team/venue clients, including the Dallas Cowboys, Washington Commanders, Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Guardians and St. Louis Cardinals.
Parallel to Terrapin Station’s emergence, MLS teams needed help booking more content for their stadiums. Philadelphia Union President Tim McDermott said his club intermittently tried to host more events during the past decade with mixed results, partly because it lacked a devoted, in-house concert booker.
Concert connections
The MLS venues pursuing more concerts as a group, with Terrapin Station Entertainment:
Allianz Field, Minnesota
America First Field, Salt Lake City
Dignity Health Park, Carson, Calif.
Exploria Stadium, Orlando
Historic Crew Stadium, Columbus
Lower.com Field, Columbus
Red Bull Arena, Harrison, N.J.
Shell Energy Stadium, Houston
Subaru Park, Chester, Pa.
Toyota Stadium, Frisco, Texas
TQL Stadium, Cincinnati
“It usually ends up being someone from stadium operations side, stadium events manager that dives in,” he said. “Typically, it’s more inbound to a team. A call comes in and you flush it out and see if it works.”
The MLS teams’ motivations were clear. More and better shows could draw more — potentially new — fans to the MLS stadiums, leading to more impressions for sponsors and elevating the team’s brand beyond soccer and into the wider entertainment market. But doing that with one-off shows didn’t make financial sense. “We needed a knowledgeable, reputable company to spearhead this, and I think we needed scale,” McDermott said.
Michele Powell, Haslam Sports Group VP of event development, had an existing relationship with Terrapin and connected them with Bernert, who then reached out to all the interested MLS teams and put together a working group.
“It was a lot of her bringing this to life and making it happen,” McDermott said of Bernert. “It was something we all wanted, and we just needed someone to lead it.”
Sweet spot
The timing was perfect. Stadium shows are experiencing a renaissance not seen since the 1990s, Shank said. The venues, especially those built in recent years, are more fan-friendly and have greater technological and production capabilities than ever. As Shank said, “you’re almost able to create intimacy within these big venues.”
MLS venues’ biggest competitors are most often amphitheaters located on the periphery of cities. MLS venues, especially newer ones, tend to sit in urban cores and many of them are relatively new — a dozen have opened in the past eight years — meaning amenities for performers are more substantial and intentional. The stadiums and their generally younger, more diverse fan bases, are attactive to artists from a broad range of music genres.
“It’s sort of a new category of venue and stadium, so they’re a bit larger than an arena but it’s not quite at the MLB level, where it’d be 35,000, 40,000 tickets they’re trying to sell,” Lundy said. “So, it hits this sweet spot while also being a stadium play and having that prestige and excitement around it.”
The net revenue generated by shows at MLS stadiums doesn’t quite reach what MLB and NFL stadiums can do — well into the seven-figure range — but is still meaningful, while the shows provide ancillary value to suiteholders and sponsors. The holy grail, Lundy said, is having multiple artists play at a venue in one weekend, meaning floor coverings and stage buildout could be reused, increasing net earnings.
So far, Terrapin Station has landed some headliner shows for sports venue clients this summer, including Stevie Nicks at AT&T Stadium and two Luke Combs shows at undisclosed venues.
The MLS coalition will likely start seeing results next summer. Terrapin Station has three shows booked for MLS venues that haven’t yet been announced, and Shank said another dozen are nearly confirmed. McDermott said the Union has had more conversations and proposals with concert promoters in the last few months than it had in previous years.
“If everyone was working together, we could make this an even better opportunity for a promoter and an artist,” Bernert said about the MLS cohort. “We would love to have a tour that goes across all 10 venues, that would be the utopian goal.”
Bret McCormick can be reached at bmccormick@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on X @Bretjust1T.
