Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

From City & State's First Read newsletter ( link ), Feb. 15, a sponsored message from the Brooklyn Nets: Out here, we put the city in authenticity. When Brooklyn builds, we put down roots. Now’s your chance to get in on the ground floor as we build The Brooklyn Way. Lock in your 2025-26 Season Ticket Membership and unlock access to exclusive benefits, rewards, and perks that make every moment mean more. Let’s build the Brooklyn way! What exactly does "authenticity" mean here? The name "Brooklyn"? The use of a hip-hop reference in an ever-flexible slogan? The continuity of a roster that keeps changing? The ability to benefit from a tax-exempt site?  Screenshot from First Read This has been a continuous theme in brand identity since 2012. Remember, you're only rooting for the clothes.  About the Nets Thing is, the Nets, for now, have a lousy, albeit overachieving, team, and are hoping to use draft capital and "cap space" (budget for players) to ...

Following up on my coverage yesterday ( link ) about a consultant's dubious report on the concert market, I took a look at Pollstar's 2023 ranking of ticket sales for the world's busiest arenas. Notably, the Barclays Center showed a significant drop, to 25th worldwide, with 726,548 tickets sold, even trailing the Prudential Center in Newark. Madison Square Garden sold 1,985,832 tickets. Barclays from 2013-18 had maintained a top-ten position in Pollstar's rankings (based on ticket sales) slipped to 11th in 2019, rose to 5th in the truncated 2020 calendar, and fell to 26th in the Covid-shortened 2021 calendar. Note that in 2019, when Pollstar reported on both ticket sales and gross revenue in the same chart, Barclays ranked 11th in volume but, by my count, third in revenue. In 2020, it was fifth in tickets and third in revenue. In 2021, it was 26th in tickets and 24th in revenue. Revenue is different That said, higher ticket prices meant both Prudential and Barclays ra...

The Brooklyn Nets, having traded their best player (Mikal Bridges) to rebuild via the draft (and cap space), look to be terrible in the next season, and possibly much longer. Is that why the season ticket email sent to me featured not a promising young player like Nic Claxton or Cam Thomas but the octogenarian superfan known as Mr. Whammy, whose longtime shtick is to distract the opposing teams's free throw shooters?  Or that the "header" on the webpage for the season schedule features the team's cheerleaders, the Brooklynettes, not the players? Well, even if the Nets don't have a compelling product on the floor, there's still enough perceived demand--remember, the only local competition is the New York Knicks, a team that's surging and based in Manhattan--to charge some pretty steep ticket prices, at least against solid opponents. Selected pricing As shown below, I clicked through (on Aug. 16) to note the lowest ticket prices for various games. For openi...

From Barclays Center Twitter/X The Barclays Center had a very good April, they tell us, tweeting yesterday that the arena was the top grossing venue in the world, according to Billboard, a publication that tracks concerts, family shows, and other events--but not pro sports. I'd be curious to see the actual numbers, because it didn't look like that busy a month--unless, maybe, they added May 1 to April, thus appending one of Nicki Minaj's two huge shows. As Billboard reported. in Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday 2 World Tour Is Already the Highest Grossing Rap Tour for a Woman — and It Isn’t Over Yet , "Two nights at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on April 4 and May 1 proved the biggest [on her tour], with $4.3 million and 28,100 tickets." The April calendar The April 2024 event calendar , as seen below, also featured three Bad Bunny concerts, which reportedly sold out. I think Billboard also counted the comedy show and WWE, since pro wrestling is as much entertainment as ...

After several very lean years, the Barclays Center appears to be on a track for a modestly profitable fiscal year, thanks to a significant increase in ticket sales, surely for concerts and other events. That could obviate the need for billionaire Joe Tsai, who owns the arena operating company, to keep putting money in to backstop the operation. The arena has been struggling. As I reported in October, the arena company in Fiscal Year 2023, which ended June 30, reported $16.1 million in net operating income (NOI), or revenue over expenses. It had to put up $21.1 million to pay off construction debt, leading to a loss of $5.1 million, as I've re-interpreted, and simplified, the calculations. (On paper, thanks to factors including depreciation and amortization, ArenaCo lost far more money.)  Tsai put up $18 million to bolster the arena's finances, less than the $38 million he contributed in FY 2022 and the $52 million he contributed in the COVID-challenged previous fiscal year. ...

A recent report from the Center for an Urban Future,  Paying for the Growing Needs of NYC’s Parks: 20 Fresh Ideas to Fund Parks and Open Spaces , offers some intriguing solutions "to pay for parks' growing maintenance and infrastructure needs, while investing in new parks and open spaces in the places they’re needed the most." The report, by John Surico and Eli Dvorkin, notes that the Department of Parks and Recreation’s headcount has fallen 38 percent since the mid-1970s, while budget cuts enacted in 2020 led parks conditions to deteriorate to the worst levels in 20 years. The cost of major maintenance needs last year exceeded $58.9 million, with just 16 percent of those needs being met. Now there's at least $685 million "in capital needs just to bring existing infrastructure up to a state of good repair, with just 30 percent of those needs either underway or planned over the next three years." Beyond that, "more than 16 percent of New York City reside...

According to the latest financial disclosures to bondholders from the Barclays Center operating company, the arena company still isn't earning enough profit to cover construction bonds--but a significant uptick in ticket sales may point to a better future. The arena company made an $12.5 million profit, according to unaudited (and thus unofficial) statements, in the first six months of calendar year 2023, according to financial documents recently disclosed to bondholders. See screenshot above right. That's well less than the $18 million reported during the first half of calendar year 2022. Then again, the Brooklyn Nets no longer had superstars. The fiscal year ends June 30. That first-half result, coupled with nearly $4 million in profit  (see below left) in the first half of the 2023 fiscal year, won't be enough to cover the arena's construction debt in FY 2023, which ended June 30. (In the similar period a year earlier, the arena barely broke even.)  So the combined ...

A win for ticket buyers to venues like the Barclays Center? Only partially, since Ticketmaster, which is taking over all ticketing, still has near-monopoly power in the marketplace to set very high fees. CNN reported 6/15/23,  Biden announces Live Nation and Ticketmaster will allow consumers to see all fees up front : President Joe Biden announced from a White House roundtable on Thursday that entertainment giant Live Nation (LYV) and ticketing behemoth Ticketmaster have pledged to give US consumers the ability to see the full price of tickets up front, minimizing the frequently frustrating experience of watching additional fees add up late in the checkout process when buying online. The announcement came amid increased pressure on the industry from debacles over exorbitant ticketing fees and as the president has urged Congress to pass legislation targeting other hidden costs paid by consumers throughout the economy. It marked Biden’s latest effort to address kitchen-table issues...

The WNBA's New York Liberty "superteam" makes their home debut tomorrow at the Barclays Center.  Note, as shown below in the screenshots, that the team, not surprisingly, charges higher prices for the first game compared to the second. It's a little hard to compare the platforms, the cheapest tickets all cost more than $32, which, while perhaps a bargain compared to the NBA's Brooklyn Nets, can be challenging for families. Also note that, while in neither game is the team selling tickets in the Upper Bowl, surely based on past demand, for the first game a few more sections in the arena's midsection are open. Despite the website claim that events are presented by (on the way out) ticketing partner SeatGeek, the arena's official link takes you to (incoming) partner Ticketmaster. Which may not be where the best-value seats are located, given that, as far as I can tell, Ticketmaster charges more fees than some rivals. Consider, Tickemaster acknowledges that t...

The Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance (DBNA), one of the only active remaining signatories of the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), is taking applications for its 2022-23 Community Tickets Program, in which Brooklyn-based nonprofits and community-based organizations, especially those in areas near the arena, get free tickets to Barclays Center events, including but not limited to Brooklyn Nets games. Groups can win tickets for seating in 50 upper bowl seats, 4 lower bowl seats, or a suite. The application is here , and below. The deadline is 5 pm on March 31. Program began in 2012 The DBNA, founded by the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, started distributing free tickets when the arena opened in 2012 and, according to its website , has distributed more than 85,000 tickets to more than 600 community organizations.  It regularly held in-person and livestream drawings to distribute the tickets until the pandemic closed Barclays Center in early 2020. The last livestream on...

Now there's some plausible, if not completely convincing pushback, on the suggestion, based on circumstantial evidence and past industry practices, that the Barclays Center short-circuited its ticketing contract with SeatGeek to rejoin Ticketmaster because of the latter's partnership with the concert promoter Live Nation. So, my recent headline --"At Senate hearing, new evidence of Ticketmaster's power: SeatGeek CEO says Barclays Center sought to retain contract for Nets games, not concerts"--might be amended to "new evidence of Ticketmaster's value." At least if we believe the sources, some unnamed in Billboard's 1/26/23 Barclays Center Ditched SeatGeek for Ticketmaster After Recurring Tech Issues , which cites problems in selling tickets for certain concerts. That said, it should be noted that it was problems with Ticketmaster--notably bots invading a Taylor Swift presale--that led to a Congressional hearing. Both systems add significant charg...

On Wednesday, I got an email from the Brooklyn Nets alerting me to the opportunity to buy 2023-24 "season memberships," aka full-season or half-season tickets. It's an interesting time--early?--to solicit ticket buyers. Though I clicked through fairly soon to test out the pricing, none of the purported $35/game full-season tickets or $45/game half-season tickets were available. Instead, for full-season plans at $45, I found just 24 full-season tickets available, just 20 available at $55, and 18 at $60 each.  For the half-season, I could find only a few available at $55/game. (All prices include fees.) Current ticket prices That said, it's unclear how many tickets they're setting aside for individual sales. Remember, the New York Post reported in October that the Nets were "dead last" in season-ticket sales, chasing away some long-time ticketholders with price increases--but others noted that single-game ticket sales were strong. ESPN says the Nets this...