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Built for Sundays. What about the other 355 days?

How decades of stadium work have shaped one owner’s rep’s approach to the NFL white whale: getting value seven days a week

NFL stadiums come with a built-in problem. It’s an enormous investment that only gets used a handful of days a year. So what do you do with it the rest of the time? We sat down with B&D’s Bill Mykins, vice president in the Venues practice group, to talk about what 20-plus years of NFL stadium work has taught him about creating value beyond Sundays.

B&D: When did NFL owners begin thinking beyond game day, and how has that evolved?

Bill Mykins: Owners have always wanted to use their stadiums for more than football. That part isn’t new. What’s changed is how they think about the building. It used to be “what else can we put in here?” Now it’s “what can we build around it?” The Battery in Atlanta, Wrigleyville, Ballpark Village — those projects showed people what was possible. So now when a stadium gets planned, there’s a hotel in the conversation. Restaurants, retail, housing, entertainment. Things that give people a reason to show up outside of game days.

B&D: You’ve seen a lot of ideas get tried over the years. What has that taught you?

BM: If the demand isn’t there, it doesn’t matter how good the idea sounded in the meeting. Sportsbooks are the example I keep coming back to. Everybody was excited about putting them inside venues, then the technology moved and mobile betting was legalized in a lot of places, so a lot of that square footage lost its purpose almost overnight. We’ve watched the same thing happen with year-round restaurants inside stadiums. Some of them just never found their audience. That’s the whole argument for flexibility. What pencils out today might not pencil out in five years. Build spaces that can turn into something else.

B&D: Is getting more value from a stadium the same as using it more often?

BM: No. It’s quality over quantity, every time. The first question is always what are you actually trying to do here. Are you chasing revenue? Foot traffic? Something for the surrounding community? Those lead you to very different answers. Then you take each event and ask whether it makes money, whether you can actually operate it, and whether it fits what the team or operator cares about. A full calendar isn’t the same thing as a valuable one.

B&D: So what makes a successful strategy beyond game day?

BM: Start with what’s realistic and what people actually want. If mixed-use is on the table, do you have the land for it? Is there real demand for a hotel, for retail, for housing? Does the math work? And then from there, it’s about picking your spots. The goal was never to keep the place busy for the sake of being busy. It’s to build something that lasts and gets the owner where they’re actually trying to go.

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Ask the Expert is written and produced by Allison Bruns. Big thanks to Bill Mykins for his participation. If you have a topic you’d like an expert to cover in a future issue, submit them here.