Oak View Group
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The Oak View Group is working with Hamilton Urban Precinct Entertainment Group and officials of the city of Hamilton, Ontario on a plan to begin renovations on the 18,500-capacity FirstOntario Centre, a reimagined arena that will be the centerpiece in revitalizing the city as a music, sports and entertainment destination, 45 miles southwest of Toronto.
The $280 million renovation is spearheaded by Oak View Group who will transform the facility into an 18,000-seat capacity venue with a reimagined facade, premium seating, enhanced acoustics, improved sightlines, upgraded concourses, optimized clubs and suites and artist lounges. The newly modernized venue will accommodate shows unable to land an available date at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. Scotiabank Arena is owned my Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, where Tim Leiweke, OVG Chairman & CEO, served as chief executive from 2013 to 2015.
Live Nation will serve as the arena’s booking partner and bring concerts and other live events to Hamilton. Work on the facility will begin in spring 2024, and the building is expected to open in fall 2025.
“Our timing is perfect,” says Leiweke, noting that billions of dollars in construction for ten projects in Hamilton is planned for the fast growing region. “It’s a great market as Toronto has run out space for new construction. We’re making a big bet but we feel great about it. We have a great team here in place, a lot of great companies that believe in us and we are feeling very optimistic.”
OVG recently worked with Louis Messina, promoter of the Taylor Swift tour, to sell sponsorships for the singer’s six night run in November 2024 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.
“We already have a great infrastructure in place with a strong team up here,” said Leiweke. Besides Hamilton, Oak View Group recently completed renovations at the CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore and plans to complete work at Coop-Live arena in Manchester, U.K. later this year.
The Hamilton Arena Project was designed by Brisbin Brook Beynon Architects and is part of a larger downtown revitalization project known as “The Commons”, which includes the arena, renovated convention centre, the Art Gallery of Hamilton as well as new residential, office, and retail space development.
Leiweke tells Billboard the new facility “will completely transform the downtown area with its accessibility, technology forward improvements and priority on sustainability.”
The Oak View Group will unveil its Theater Fund during the inaugural gala for the OVG Theater Alliance headlined by Rachel Platten, Jake Wesley Rogers, Lindsay Ell and country a cappella group Home Free at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville on Oct. 11.
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“Part of our mission at OVG is to identify ways we can help our members,” says Joe Giordano, vice president of OVG’s three facilities groups — the Arena Alliance, Stadium and the recently launched Theater Alliance, which debuted in January. The Theater Fund will be operated in collaboration with Music’s Promise as a 501(C)3 that will support Theater Alliance members, many of which operate through or with non-profit entities.
“We will take all the money raised from the fund and divy them up equally between all the foundation non-profits in the Theater Alliance,” Giordano explained, noting that 21 foundations will benefit from the event.
The goal is to help Alliance members rebuild in a challenging post-pandemic environment for arts organizations, which are dealing with decreased attendance, a decline in annual subscriptions, gaps in government support, rising costs and competition with more modern buildings.
While the concert business has bounced back strong from the pandemic, along with Broadway, “fine arts based organizations have indicated to us that they have lost audiences since the pandemic that they will never get back. The revenue piece has been a key component of whats missing for many of these groups.”
Platten told Billboard in a statement, “It’s my honor to give back to the establishments that have been so crucial in hosting the most influential live entertainment in our country.”
In addition to the live performances and a silent auction, attendees at the gala can network with high-level Industry executives, promoters, agents and managers.
Tim Leiweke, chairman and CEO of Oak View Group, said, “The Theater Alliance has enabled Oak View Group to gather the top theaters and performing arts venues in the nation to keep our finger on the pulse of this vibrant and essential corner of our industry. We know that – especially coming out of the pandemic – funding is critical for theaters to thrive and support their communities, and we have droves of talent, promoters, managers and industry leaders who are going to see to it that these venues have access to the resources they need to succeed.”
Three of the largest companies in live entertainment and sports — Oak View Group, Madison Square Garden Entertainment and its sister company Sphere Entertainment Co. — have announced the launch of a new company to manage their top sports and entertainment brand relationships. Crown Properties Collection is tasked with managing many of the companies’ most […]
Oak View Group (OVG) has appointed Ade Patton as CFO, effective immediately, the global venue development, advisory and investment company announced on Tuesday (Aug. 15). In his new role, Patton will direct and oversee the global financial and accounting activities of the firm. He lives in Denver and will report to OVG chairman/CEO Tim Leiweke. […]
It’s been a rough week for venue management firm ASM Global. On Thursday, OVG signed a contract to privately manage one of ASM’s largest clients, Chicago’s McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America, and then on Friday (July 28) OVG won the venue management and food service contract for Tulsa’s BOK Center and the 275,000-square-feet Cox Business Convention Center.
The BOK Center had been managed by ASM and formerly its predecessor SMG since the building opened in 2007 and was a crown jewel for the company, regularly landing a spot on Billboard’s Boxscore Chart for building capacities of 15,0001 seats or more. But during a special meeting Friday, the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority unanimously voted to begin exclusive negotiations with OVG360 and OVG Hospitality to manage venue operations, booking, partnerships and sponsorships, and food and beverage operations at the two venues.
“OVG will focus on creating momentum in three main areas: ensuring Tulsa is the top destination for major concerts in Oklahoma, continuing to grow the city’s national and regional convention business, and assisting the city and its stakeholders in the development of a full-service convention center hotel,” company officials announced in a press release.
“The BOK Center and Convention Center are key economic drivers in our community, and their success is critical to Tulsa’s future vitality,” Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum said. “As a thriving world-class city with world-class entertainment venues, we must always be focused on continuous improvement – not self-satisfied with the success of today but focused on being even better tomorrow. I have complete confidence in OVG and their ability to build upon the success we’ve enjoyed at the BOK Center and Convention Center over the last fifteen years.”
In Chicago, an unanimous vote from the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) Board Thursday awarded the contract for private management and food services on the McCormick Place campus to OVG360 and OVG Hospitality.
The contracts, scheduled to begin on Oct. 1, 2023 and run through September 2028, were unanimously awarded following an extensive public procurement process. The change will affect the McCormick Place Convention Center, the 10,00-seat Wintrust Arena, and Arie Crown Theater.
“We’re incredibly proud that McCormick Place has entrusted OVG360 and OVG Hospitality as the new keepers of this world-renowned complex. While McCormick Place has set the industry standard for decades, we are honored to help shape its future,” said Chris Granger, president of OVG360. “We see an incredible opportunity to elevate the guest experience, support the surrounding community, drive sustainability, and grow and inspire a diverse workforce. We look forward to bringing our depth of experience from around the globe to Chicago and to building upon McCormick Place’s incredible track record.”
SBS Entertainment, the live event arm of Spanish Broadcasting Systems, and global venue development company Oak View Group (OVG) have inked a multi-year strategic agreement, the companies tell Billboard.
The deal, which has been in the works for two years, is described as an effort to “reimagine the live industry landscape” and an opportunity to reach new markets with Latin-focused music events.
Founded in 2015, OVG has grown to work with more than 400 venues worldwide. The deal with SBS marks the first time they’ve teamed up with a Latin company that focuses on producing and promoting large-scale live events. For 16 years now, SBS has produced L.A.’s Calibash, the best-known urban Latin festival in the U.S. that has boasted J Balvin, Daddy Yankee and Karol G as headliners over the past few years. It also produces the New York-based Mega Bash concert (presented by SBS radio station La Mega 97.9), which in December will take place for the first time at UBS Arena — marking the first event announced under the partnership.
Conversations about a possible partnership began when New York’s OVG-developed UBS Arena, which opened in November 2021, was still under construction. It was then that Mark Shulman, the facility’s senior vp of programming, invited the SBS Entertainment team to tour the grounds.
“When you look where [UBS] is located and [the] diversity nearby, Latin music should be a core of what this building is built on,” says Shulman. “I reached out to SBS, being such a leader in live events, and brought out their entire team so they could experience it from its early days. That began the explorations of what the possibilities might be. What started as a New York discussion quickly turned into a national discussion.”
But it wasn’t until last year that the national deal was sealed, and it happened when Francesca Bodie, president of business development at OVG, and Alessandra Alarcón, president of SBS Entertainment, met at Billboard‘s Women In Music 2022 event (both women were honored that year).
“I knew Mark had a relationship with SBS, but Alessandra and I just sat together at the event and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to work together?’ The fact that our venue in Palm Springs will do over 20 Latin shows this year, we thought, ‘This is not just a New York thing, this is going to be a nationwide opportunity,’” says Bodie. “We could’ve easily done a one-year commitment but doing a multi-year deal instead was a no-brainer. They have the team that can execute these marquee events and we have state-of-the-art arenas in the U.S and in the world. It was just a natural fit.”
“In our continuous dialogue with OVG about where to take the shows next, we suspect we’re going to be bringing our marquee shows to other markets,” says Christopher Martinez, director of business affairs at SBS. “We are focusing a lot on growing our heritage brands. There’s also a focus on regional Mexican and we’re planning on bringing one-off shows to Austin and also to Palm Springs. We’re definitely looking at expanding and not just focusing on reggaeton.”
The deal between SBS Entertainment and OVG comes at a time when Latin music continues to see global growth across multiple metrics, particularly in touring. The top 25 Latin tours of 2022 grossed $990.8 million and sold 8 million tickets (based on Billboard‘s Boxscore reporting period of Nov. 1, 2021-Oct. 31, 2022). Moreover, in 2022, Latin music outpaced growth in the overall industry with a 24% increase, totaling $1.1 billion in revenue, according to the newly-released RIAA U.S. Latin revenue report, which also highlights an all-time high in terms of market share for the genre at 6.9%.
“Companies like OVG are prioritizing the Latin space and now see the value of partnering with media companies like us because we are the general market now,” says Martinez. “We’re seeing people responding to what the new normal is [with] respect to Latin music.”
Adds Bodie, “As we look at the way we want to continue to anchor and prioritize [Latin], it is critically important that we have alignment with SBS.”
With OVG venues under development in the United Kingdom and Brazil, Bodie hopes to keep expanding their deal with SBS by developing Latin-focused content and activations in those markets. “We’ll definitely talk about what those opportunities will look like in the future.”
Oak View Group (OVG) has hired ASM Global’s senior vp of finance and global solutions Gary McAneney to serve as senior vp of finance and CFO at OVG’s UBS Arena at Belmont Park in New York.
Based in the Mid-Atlantic region, McAneney starts his new role effective immediately and will report to Francesca Bodie, president of business development for OVG, and Kim Stone, president of UBS Arena and executive vp of OVG East Coast.
“OVG has experienced unmatched industry growth over the last year, and Gary’s bold leadership and dynamic experience will be instrumental as we continue to steam ahead. We look forward to having him aboard,” said Bodie.
With more than 30 years of experience, McAneney will lead financial operations across all OVG-owned and operated venues within its ever-expanding business development division, plus oversee finance functions at UBS Arena.
“I’m pleased to welcome Gary to the team at UBS Arena,” Stone said. “With his diverse background in all financial disciplines, and proven ability to make valuable contributions, Gary will play a critical role at UBS Arena and be an asset across all other OVG divisions given his extensive experience in the industry.”
McAneney joined ASM Global in 2019 out of West Conshohocken, Penn., and has had a long career in the facilities business. At SMG, which merged with AEG Facilities to form ASM Global in Oct. 2019, he oversaw financial and accounting reporting for all of SMG’s operating contracts, including Mercedes Benz Superdome (New Orleans), NRG Stadium (Houston), Soldier Field (Chicago), U.S. Bank Stadium (Minneapolis) and Moscone Center (San Francisco).
“I’m excited to join the world-class team at Oak View Group, and for the opportunity to work with the most progressive and dynamic company in our industry. The quality of leadership and vision within OVG is unparalleled,” said McAneney.
Tim Leiweke’s Oak View Group has created the entertainment industry’s first paid membership-based theater network, signing iconic venues like New York’s Radio City Music Hall, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and Orange County’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts as its first clients. Led by executive director Noël Mirhadi, a longtime music agent in the performing arts and theater space, the new Theater Alliance is modeled after OVG’s Arena Alliance and Stadium Alliance and is being developed to utilize the collective strength of its members to scale up booking, routing and sponsorship sales.
The Theater Alliance will have 18 members in total representing 39 performance spaces including the Madison Square Garden-owned Beacon Theater and Chicago Theater, the ACL Live at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas; the Fox Theatre in Detroit, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, the Portland’5 Centers for the Arts and Stifel Theatre in St. Louis.
Each venue is independently run, Mirhadi explains, and “will work with OVG as an extension of their team with the two main pillars being programming and sponsorship opportunities.” That includes working with OVG’s Joe Giordano, vice president overseeing the Theater Alliance and Arena & Stadium Alliance, to identify and expand booking opportunities to more member venues, as well as offer sales and development resources not always available at arts organizations.
“Theaters serve as the heartbeat of their community. I understand and appreciate this sentiment having started as a musician and having gone on to dedicate my professional life and career to music and the arts,” Mirhadi said. “I’m thrilled to have joined Oak View Group as we create and launch our new Theater Alliance, which will support these critically important institutions and help them continue to thrive. ”
Having a presence in the theater world has long been a priority for Leiweke and Chris Granger, president of OVG 360, the company’s venue services division. Besides viewing theaters as an important development platform for the company’s many arena clients, Grangers says the formation of the Theater Alliance is a major opportunity to bring together the country’s leading art institutions.
“At OVG, we not only want to support venues, artists and our corporate partners, we also want to be good stewards of the communities that we’re in,”Granger tells Billboard. “We want achieve success through the arena and stadium alliances, and now the Theater Alliance, by bringing together like-minded venues to book together, sell together, buy together, think together and brand together.”
Granger says that facilities will pay a “mid-six figures” annual contribution for their membership in the theater alliance and that members must make a multi-year commitment to the invitation-only Theater Alliance when they commit to join.
“Our goal is to not just to help our members work in concert to improve their operations and overall guest experience, but, perhaps more importantly, to creatively elevate the arts and attract a new generation of theatergoers from within their communities, because we are all better when the arts thrive,” Granger added.
OVG will announce the inaugural members of the Theater Alliance, which also include the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, Boston’s Boch Center, the First Interstate Center in Spokane, Loew’s Jersey Theater, the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, the Paramount Theatre in Denver, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, during the Association for Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) conference opening session today.
“The demand for the Theater Alliance was certainly amplified coming out of the pandemic.” Giordano says. “Performing arts venues across the nation, which are traditionally costly to operate, all face similar challenges. The Alliance, under Noël’s outstanding leadership, is eager to continue building the network of top venues in first tier markets to help them meet and exceed their programming and budgetary goals, and bring opportunities to the table that they didn’t even know were possible.”
More information at OakViewGroup.com
This story is part of Billboard‘s The Year in Touring package — read more stories about the top acts, tours and venues of 2022 here.
Since opening in April, the Moody Center in Austin, has reshaped touring in central Texas, welcoming a bevy of star talent, including John Mayer, George Straight, Roger Waters, The Killers, and Boxscore record-breaker Harry Styles, to name a few. Over 36 shows, the building now tops Billboard’s year end Top Venues (10,0001-15,000 capacity) chart, grossing more than $62.7 million in the process according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. Averaging $1.7 million per show, the Oak View Group-owned arena took in more than $5 million more than its closest competitor, OVO Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland, which reported more than 110 concerts.
Moody Center general manager Jeff Nickler says the arena’s success is, first and foremost, due to the city of Austin. Dubbed the live music capitol of the world, Austin was without a proper arena prior to Moody Center and Nickler says the growing population had tons of pent-up demand for big name acts.
“A lot of major tours and artists were skipping the market due to the lack of a premiere venue. So, Oak View Group, Live Nation, [Live Nation-owned] C3 Presents, and [actor] Matthew McConaughey came into the market and we privately financed this building,” says Nickler. “We believed in the music in this market and that investment has paid off in a huge way.”
Moody Center does not have a professional sports team tenant (though the Texas Longhorns basketball programs play there after the arena took over the space from their former home, the 45-year-old Frank Erwin Center on University of Texas’ campus) and has been able to fill its calendar with major artists, many of whom regularly fill larger venues. According to Nickler, the arena’s draw is an amalgam of factors. First, venue partner Live Nation (who has had a record-setting year in revenue and could see its biggest year yet in 2023) has incentive to route their big tours through the new building like Post Malone, Florence + The Machine and Kendrick Lamar. But Moody Center remains an open building, meaning it books tours with any and all promoters including Live Nation competitor AEG.
“Then there is the Irving Azoff effect,” adds Nickler. Azoff is a co-owner of OVG and The Azoff Company manages acts including Styles, Eagles, and Lizzo – all of whom played the arena in 2022.
Styles conducted a six-night run at Moody Center in September and October selling 86,000 tickets and grossing $19.2 million. The multi-night stint was one of many from big artists who could easily fill larger capacity venues in competing markets including Dallas and Houston.
“We see this trend of continuing for artists to do multiple nights in the market,” says Nickler. George Strait and Willie Nelson, the Eagles, Styles and Mayer all did multiple night stints at the arena this year. There is an incentive for artists and promoters to play consecutive nights since it cuts down on bills from labor, marketing and more can cut a budget in half.
Another major advantage to playing Moody Center comes from its floor space. Unlike most arenas designed for sports, Moody Center can hold up to 3,000 fans on its floor compared to an industry average of 2,200, according to Nickler. An artist can significantly boost their grosses with the roughly 800 extra premium seats.
“Even though we have less seats, we can out punch our weight class because of the design of the building, the viability of the market and the ability to charge higher ticket prices,” says Nickler. “That’s a huge factor in why you see that giant number for those tour grosses.”
Global venue development company Oak View Group is expanding its DEI commitments with the new supplier diversity program. The initiative – which has launched a pilot program with Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Moody Center in Austin, UBS Arena in New York and Miami Beach Convention Center – will help facilitate the use of minority-owned suppliers at all 400 OVG affiliated venues in the coming year.
Starting in January, company wide OVG will work to identify and increase sourcing from suppliers that are at least 51% owned, operated and managed at least 51% by a non-white minority, a disabled person and/or a woman. OVG currently recognizes a wide range of diverse certifications that include minority businesses, women, veterans, LGBTQ+, disabled persons, and other local city certifications. The program aims to foster economic inclusivity by making OVG’s supply chain more diverse by encouraging the use of vendors that are historically overlooked.
OVG is seeking suppliers in several fields including food and beverage, security, technology, construction, marketing, public works and various forms of consulting. Suppliers can confirm their minority-owned status through over a dozen certification outlets including Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), Women Business Enterprise (WBE) and Small Business Administration 8(a).
Founded in 2015, OVG has grown to work with more 400 venues worldwide and financed over $5 billion in capital currently deployed for new development projects. The size of the growing company may seem counterintuitive to working with small businesses, but OVG’s vp of diversity, equity, inclusion Dr. Debonair Oates-Primus tells Billboard the company is rolling out toll kits to help facilitate engagement with smaller businesses around the world.
“So much of the training is mindset shift. We have to make this really intentional,” says Oates-Primus of the new requirement for OVG venues. “I have to educate [OVG staff] on the bias that diverse businesses face. We had to make some changes to our valuation process to our criteria to our expectations of diverse businesses due to things like not having as much access to capital and not having access to networking opportunities to grow at a pace that we might think they need to be in order to with a company like ours.”
The initiative will evaluate diverse businesses by their capacity and where they can succeed within the OVG chain, as well as key difference that make businesses standout such as cost savings, reduction in delivery or setup times, value-added services, product/services quality, and sustainability.
Interested suppliers can fill out a questionnaire on each venue’s site that will give the local OVG venue an idea of what each small business can provide, but Oates-Primus explains that entities that are too small to address needs with OVG could also be connected with other large companies. If a business is too small, “let’s pair them with a larger business,” says Oates-Primus. “Let’s do some mentoring and coaching. So much of supplier diversity is just we’re not going to use a one size fits all rule. We can’t. That’s how bias creeps into every structure.”
As the initiative continues to roll out to OVG venues, the company plans to create benchmarks to help it succeed. Oates-Primus is aware that some areas are less diverse and will make the recruitment more difficult for venue operators and plans to tailor the tool kit to specific regions based on data being collected by the pilot venues.
“I don’t want any of the venue operators or leaders to feel like this has been forced upon them,” Oates-Primus tells Billboard, explaining that additional resources will be allocated to train and help venues. “I am doing a tour of all our leadership meetings, vice president meetings to let the leaders know all the ins and outs of the program so they also become champions of this for their teams.”
The OVG supplier diversity form can be found here.