Episode 17, Decision-Making with No Playbook

Cody Parsons, Chief of Staff with FC Cincinnati and JP Paul, VP Corporate Development and Guest Relations with the Minnesota Vikings share how a solid team working together with great discipline allows for focused decision making – especially when times and information are so fluid – when there is no playbook available for reference.

‍Chris Wise, GM/Director of Research for Designsensory Intelligence moderates the session. Chris has been digging deeply into the minds of consumers, sports fans and front office pros for over three decades. Unearthing solid behavior triggers and offering well-informed, data-driven recommendations for those involved in the business of sports.

Chris McAdoo:

Welcome to Fired UP! and original podcast from Ignite Fan Insights, powered by NASCAR, the National Sports Forum and the Association of Luxury Suite Directors. This is a podcast for sports business pros like you. We go behind the gates and beyond the numbers that keep sports fans coming back for more. Our host, Chris Wise is the brains behind Ignite Fan Insights with a commitment to research and innovation for over 30 years. He knows the right questions to ask and more importantly, what to do with the answers. Get ready for engaging in depth conversations with sports industry leaders that will inspire you to take action to connect with your fans. I’m Chris McAdoo, and this is Fired UP!

Chris Wise:

So welcome to the Designsensory Intelligence webcast. I’m Chris Wise I’m the managing director of research. Today we have the opportunity to learn from those on the frontline of the in the moment decision making at a time when there is no playbook. We have two front office pros, ready to share management thoughts with you. First, I’m going to introduce JP, and JP introduce yourself to all of us, including your organization, your position and role, and anything else that you want to share with us.

JP Paul:

Well, I’m more probably now than we all have in the past, Chris, but certainly, thanks for having me again, JP Paul. I am the vice president of guest relations for the Minnesota Vikings. I’ve been with the team for 18 years, and really I’ve had a chance to see a lot of different aspects of the organization. I started out overseeing our suite sales and services program. And for any of you that follow Vikings know we built a brand new great US bank Stadium which opened up 2016. And I had the opportunity really from 2012 through the opening of the building to be part of our new stadium design team. Involved in designing our premium spaces, working with our sponsors and our suite owners transitioning them to our new building. And then right before we opened about nine months before we opened, had the opportunity to basically create our guest services and guest relations program. And I’m lucky enough to have a great staff of five that worked for us right now, full time.

JP Paul:

And then our real role and my role is to get pretty deeply involved with setting the philosophy. We call our SKOL Service Philosophy at US Bank Stadium and within the Vikings organization. We work with the training program. We help create the training program for all of our game day staff at US Bank Stadium, I work quite extensively with our food service provider Aramark. Obviously, the food service program is a significant part of our sports environment these days, regardless of the size of your facility, or support you’re in. And then I also work on a day to day operations role with ASM global. They are a global management company convention center, sports venues, all sorts of different venues throughout the world. I’m working with them on our operational aspects of the building as it relates to getting our fans in and out of the building, servicing our fans on game day and just a whole bunch of different fan and guest touch points. So again, in my 18th season, and as I told Chris, just still waiting for that Lombardi Trophy to find its perch in Minnesota.

Chris Wise:

Thanks JP. Cody, how about you?

Cody:

Well, I don’t have quite the extensive experience perhaps as JP, but I serve as the chief of staff at FC Cincinnati. And in that capacity actually get to do a lot of perhaps the things that JP got to do several years ago. So I’m in charge internally, the stadium project as we’re currently under construction. And actually just earlier today, about two hours ago was out sweating as we were having the topping off ceremony or topping out ceremony, I should say. For our new stadium, which opens in spring of next year, the newest addition to the soccer specific stadiums in Major League Soccer, 26,000 seats and something that’s being built in the urban core that we’re really excited about. And as I’m sure JP knows it’s the biggest inflection point and the biggest representation of your brand you could possibly have as a sports organization.

Cody:

So I spend a lot of time on that and also just generally across the executive management of the organization, everything from owner meetings or our department heads and trying to… We’re still building the plane as we fly it, as we like to say. We started just over five years ago or just under five years ago, coming up on our fifth anniversary. I was one of the first employees and I’ve been fortunate enough to kind of see the growth from here. USL, which is basically AAA baseball to use an analogy in the Major League Soccer today and growing into many different other elements as we try to be a civic ambassador. Really take an investment thesis and take something off the ground into something that’s pretty meaningful in the community as a sports organization. So I’ve been learning a lot. And we certainly have a lot going on, but it’s a joy to be a part of. And appreciate the opportunity to be here today.

Chris Wise:

Thanks again. First question and Cody, I’ll just keep rolling with you. Since sports came to that screeching halt, what have you and your executive staff leaned on for making the best in the moment operational and marketing decisions?

Cody:

Sure. Well, we really look at our guiding principles and everything that we do, we talk about building something bigger than ourselves. This is truly a legacy investment from our ownership on down. Our lead owner, ultimately, he did this for his kids. And so this is a generational investment that’ll be passed on from generation to generation. And so taking that longterm view and understanding why we even exist and taking those core values. And also looking at something that’s a little bit more in the moment, which is opening a new stadium next year. Where yes, obviously he wants to mitigate losses and we’re making decisions about are we going to do furloughs? Are we going to do pay reductions, et cetera.

Cody:

Whether we’re going to do hiring freezes and all these different, administrative functions, but also need to be mindful of what next year represents and messing up next year could set us back not just one year but five years. Because you never have the opportunity to win the narrative as strongly as you do in the opening of your new stadium. And so, honestly, even though it’s painful and it’s to the credit to our ownership group who is very visionary and very grounded, and you know why they’re doing this. We’ve really used those guiding principles and the ultimate why have we even started any of this. To continue to execute against moments of uncertainty and moments of doubt.

Cody:

And we haven’t had any furloughs and we’ve really continued to build the plane ahead of next year, and kept a focus on that long-term vision. And it really started with having that upfront and not creating it in the moment, but executing against something that we created years ago. And it’s really grounded in our day to day operation, whether it’s in normal times or this unfortunate pandemic.

Chris Wise:

So, you’re staying true to the vision, true to your core values. And moving ahead, and that’s your touch point in all your decision making.

Cody:

Correct. Correct.

Chris Wise:

JP same question.

JP Paul:

It’s interesting. I think honestly from an operational standpoint, Chris, it’s weird to say this, but we’re leaning on experience a little bit. And the reason I say that is well, you can probably ask me, “Well, when was the last time you went through a global pandemic JP?” But our organization has gone through some tough times just in the last 10 years. A roof collapsed in our Metrodome Stadium back in 2010. And we had very little time, less than a week to recalibrate. Well, actually less than 48 hours, to literally move a game from one city to another. Let alone move some home games later on in the year to other cities and other stadiums within our city. So, I think from our side, we built a new stadium. We’ve been through an emergency situation 10 years ago.

JP Paul:

And now we’re in a situation where we can lean on some experience. And I think that experience that we have, and as I mentioned prior to the call, many of us on our staff have worked together for over 15 years. So, the ability for us as a leadership group to know one another, know how we react, know what we believe is in the best interests of the organization.

Cody, you talk about guiding principles we rely on that a lot, do the right thing. Our values of unity, commitment, and integrity are very important to us that we stay together as a group as we make these decisions, we’re committed to doing the right thing. And when we talk about furloughs and things like that with staff, we haven’t done any furloughs to this point either. A credit to our ownership group that they have stood by us, and have given us the opportunity to continue to operate the organization and plan for what’s coming up here in the next few months. And really, that’s how we’re going through the process right now, our values and our experience.

Chris Wise:

Wow. So in that I heard just a cohesive comradery and professional appreciation that goes a long, long way to moving forward in tough, tough times. So you’re not mercurial in your day to day, it sounds like you’re in pretty lockstep as you move forward.

JP Paul:

Yeah. And I think a lot of that Chris comes from the respect that we have for knowing each other so well. We’ve worked together for a long time. We respect each others’ decisions. You don’t always agree with everything that somebody may want to do, and certainly in tense times like this having that relationship and that long-term working togetherness, it has been a big asset for us.

Chris Wise:

Interesting. Interesting. JP I’m going to stay with you. Unlike other sports, NFL was out of season when the pandemic hit. As part of a league, you may not always have full control over your possible next steps. And that coupled with unknown timing and the influence of unusual circumstances. You may have already touched this, but go a little bit deeper. What is your operational decision making look like? That is not having the experience around the pandemic to lean on, but in this case, are we going to have a season? Are we not going to have a season that hasn’t happened too often. How many scenarios have you considered to be up and running while fulfilling all of your obligations and your organization has lots of obligations. So walk us through that a little bit.

JP Paul:

Yeah. I think that the two words that come to mind, Chris, right off the bat are flexibility and patience. We’ve gone from a situation where we were in mid-March to where I think a lot of us thought this wasn’t going to be a big impact to us. We were hoping this thing was going to be over in a few weeks and we’d all be back to normal, but that hasn’t necessarily happened. So as we have looked literally almost week to week, every two weeks, every two weeks, whatever it might be, the flexibility that we have to have as leaders within our organization has been really important. And the idea of, when I say patience, I said patience earlier, the idea of being patient in our decision making process or decision making evaluation has been really important to us that we just haven’t jumped at a decision because that’s what we believe in the news media or that’s what maybe some of our medical folks are telling us.

JP Paul:

We’ve been methodical, we’ve been patient. I think from a flexibility standpoint, just going forward, who knows what’s going to happen in the next eight weeks. We’re planning on many, many scenarios. Your question about scenarios is a good one because as we look at Major League Baseball, as we look at Major League Soccer, the NBA, those folks trying to come back right now. We’re going to learn a lot from them over the course of the next few weeks, how they can get back into play and get back into their buildings, hopefully. And we need to take that information craft it in our scenario making whether it’s, who knows it might be a full house. It might be partial fans in our building. It might be no fans in our building for a while, simply just be broadcast.

JP Paul:

So, we’re continually working those scenarios, we’re working through… Cody, you made a good point earlier, one thing that we’re really trying to focus on too is the next year in our decision making process. We don’t want to make decisions, and that’s why I go back to patience. We don’t want to make decisions this year that will not only impact our fan base, but also might impact our staff. We make any decisions from a staffing standpoint it could impact us down the road. We want to make sure we’re prepared for that. So I hope that answered the question, Chris, but flexibility and patience are two things that have come to my mind as we’ve gone through the scenario plan.

Chris Wise:

Yeah. And when I thought about that question, it was really prompted by someone I was talking to. Someone that actually at NASCAR that had suggested. A couple of weeks leading up to their decision to go live, to start racing again without fans. The number of different scenarios they considered in depth and did all the… not the war games. But you understand go through all the different scenarios and what are the outcomes. There were more than several dozen different scenarios they looked at their ways. And it was a daily activity until they finally came to the decision they came to. So that intrigued me, that what you have to go through. Usually, you can have lots of different scenarios, but the number of scenarios that was played out was very enlightening to me.

JP Paul:

And I think one thing we’ve found is that the minute we feel we’ve cleared one hurdle, it’s like 10 other hurdles show up in front of you. “Oh yeah, we got that one, but by doing that, we’ve created X, Y, and Z that we now have to figure out how to deal with.” So I will say this, it’s a tremendous challenge. But I think a lot of us in this world of sports marketing and leadership in general, I think we thrive in environments like this. I think it’s these types of challenges that have made us who we are. And maybe even in some cases allowed us to get into leadership positions that we’re in. I think a lot of us, at least in our organization, I think we tend to thrive in these moments of chaos a little bit.

Chris Wise:

It’s the challenge you can’t help yourself right.

JP Paul:

Right.

Chris Wise:

You’re sports different than what those players on the field experience. It’s a challenge and a game, not a game in the game sense, but yeah. Cody, let me turn to you. Your season was just ramping up when the pandemic hit. You two have not always full control because you’re part of the league and that coupled with those unusual circumstances. What did your decision making process look like. Again, you alluded to that a little bit more, but go a little deeper for me. Same sort of thing, as you talked about obligations. And then go ahead and take that on to your unique situation in that you are in the middle of that build. It doesn’t seem like you’re taking the foot off the pedal when it comes to selling season tickets and premium seating and suites for that new great stadium. So talk to me through that.

Cody:

Sure. We’re certainly not taking any easing off the gas, if you will, we’re still going full speed ahead and we fuel it every day. Luckily we are not part of or we are not the league office I imagine who, NASCAR, as the governing body has more difficult decisions to make than we did. As you’ve mentioned, we’re largely reacting to the decisions by the league office, but also staying in contact with local officials, the state, et cetera, as everyone knows this is larger than a state by state led effort. Where the outbreaks good, perhaps more better behaviors if you will, is largely been on a state by state basis, somewhat city by city. So a lot of our discussions not only were at a legal level, but also at a municipality level whether that’s city, county or state.

Cody:

And so, we were two days before our home opener. And so, we’re getting bombarded with questions, “Are you playing this weekend? What are you not doing?” Hearing one direction from league another from the governor. It was that same week where it seemed like everything got canceled within 24, 48 hours. The Ivy League kicked it off by canceling their tournament and then everything else cascaded from there, starting with the NBA at the professional level. And so, honestly we were trying to stay up to date with minute by minute information and react to the guidance we were given from at a state level and also from a league level. And you’re reacting to that and then kind of executing your operators, it’s inherently what you are as a team as you’re an operator.

Cody:

And so that’s how we went through it. I think initially we thought maybe it’s the first three games and then it quickly became apparent it was way more than the first three home games, which would have been it’s taken us through like early or mid-April. And then we restarted, everything we were looking at in terms of new stadium sales, we were actually prepared to launch two weeks at the end of March, like two weeks after the pandemic hit, we were supposed to be launching all of our premium sales for the new stadium. So we obviously scrapped that, we got to a point where we’re like, “All right, we need to start selling, but when’s the right time.” And then, so you start to get into this, subjective feelers about when’s the right time to have sales messaging and what is otherwise, literally a hundred year event.

Cody:

And so, finding the right time there and selling into corporations. It’s like we have this $190,000 suite for you, it’s the best fan experience in Cincinnati, but you’re on an expense freeze yourself. So it’s made quite the challenge, but ultimately we found that and we started doing some data surveying and tried to gather both empirical data points, but also through surveying and our email marketing work. Kind of figuring out when people would… crested the hill, if you will. And they were looking for something to, and how looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. And so, I felt pretty good about the information we’d gathered timed up. It was mid-May that we reset and to be honest, you want to say, it’s a blessing in disguise.

Cody:

You also understand the financial hit that we’re taking at an ownership level. So you don’t want to be too proud of it, but it’s also helped us refocus and be exclusive on 2021. I think to a certain extent, we’ve tried to look at the bright side and see the benefit of that. Where we have the say same sales team is not selling FC Cincinnati versus Houston this Saturday and premium seats for next year. They’re all in on 2021. And that narrowed focus has certainly been a benefit for us. We’ve had a great sales campaign and we’ve already sold out our premium inventory. We’re going through the seat selection process right now. We spent a million dollars on this fantastic experience center in downtown in our offices that is now not very usable because of the new world we live in.

Cody:

But, luckily everyone’s gotten pretty accustomed to Zoom. And so Zoom meetings and virtual screen shares don’t seem so foreign. And the tech difficulties may maybe a little bit less than having to try that four or six months ago. And upfront works out and then we’ll be launching our full sales campaign in a couple months. Which again, will allow us to have pretty deep focus. And we continue on the team site for 2020, we continue to react to the league’s guidance, provide input. As it’s committee led like many of the professional organizations with presidents at an ownership level, and above me. But we try to give good information to our leadership to give guidance to the extent that league asks.

Cody:

Obviously, we are the first… Our big five professional league back starting actually last night with the tournament down in Orlando. And we’re maybe showing the NFL the way, maybe we’re showing them everything not to do. I think time will tell, but I think we mentioned the ML, in eight weeks from now we’ll have a lot more information than we have now, and we have certainly a lot more information now than we did eight weeks ago. And so also trying to, not to, rush to the microphone and spew different levels of speculation. And try to be grounded in reality and take the longterm view because for what it is pro sports teams are going to exist in a year, they’re going to exist in two years. We’re fortunate to have a reality that is not comparable to some other small midsize businesses, which literally is what a sports organization is. And trying to leverage the strengths that we do have and continue to take the long-term view.

Chris Wise:

Long-term view is good. You know that we’ve been doing fan sentiment work through the course of the last several months. And it was evident early on. There’s always been that sense of optimism around sports. There was a bit of high anxiety to begin with just about what was unknown about life in general, but the need for… it’s something we’ve known for a long time. The need for healthy competitive sports, just from a psychological perspective will not leave our human experience. And so the ability to look beyond the present and stay focused on the future, I believe will bode well for all of you, the question that just came to mind, we’ve been talking about decision making at the executive level, will be down a level. And how have you kept your staff engaged, reduced any anxiety? How have you managed them in the process?

Cody:

Sure. Speaking for myself to a certain extent it’s almost been, I don’t want to say easy, but we’re leaning into the core mission that we have and really tucked in around 2021. And everyone that we’ve hired over the last two years, we’ve talked about building towards 2021, 2019 and 2020 are foundation phases for us. It’s about building infrastructure on a personnel level. But also in our systems, and our leadership, and our processes within the front office and on the team side. And so for us the mission is still toward building towards 2021. And to use a data example, we’re still building out our warehouses.

Cody:

We’re still finding ways where we can do iterative pricing once we move into the new building. We’re still looking at how do we do a better job of storytelling in our partnerships using data and all of those things, “Well, are perhaps not as real time, an infrastructure still needs to be built.” So it’s a little bit different than perhaps in your operating year to year. And so, again, we’ve grateful and fortunate to have that building towards that long term. And it’s 2021, it’s not 2020, so it’s not 2022. The immediacy and the fact that we can still stay on track has been to our benefit. And so, in terms of keeping people engaged there’s certainly not… Well, first of all, we haven’t let anyone go so that keeps morale decently high.

Cody:

But also, we still have that near-term goal that we’ve been building, for some people that have just started they’ve only been building towards it for a few months. But for some of us like myself that when we started in 2015, we talked about we’re going to be an MLS organization. We talked about building a new stadium and all these things. So for us, it’s the end is in sight and the realization of multi-year work efforts is really coming to fruition. So the engagement has been fortunately relatively easy because we’ve maintained that focus on what is a huge inflection year for us next year in 2021.

Chris Wise:

JP, how about you?

JP Paul:

Yeah, I think honestly, Chris, I think it’s almost been a little bit of a wave or a cycle for me personally, and my staff. I oversee our premium services staff as well as our guest relations staff. And then obviously, like I said earlier, I work with ASM global on managing and creating that philosophy for our game day staff, which can be over a thousand people related to security and guest experience. So right out of the gate, when the pandemic hit, we were all adapting. We were all trying to figure out how do we have meetings? How do we do webinars, Zoom calls, whatever it might be. But also how are we or keeping each other motivated. There seemed to be a lot more energy. I don’t know about you guys, but I think we’ve all heard the term Zoom fatigue here over the course of the last few weeks or a month or so. So I feel like we were real high energy at first.

JP Paul:

We were real engaged. I feel like we hit a little bit of a wall maybe in that may early June timeframe from our side of things, just because the idea of ongoing uncertainty. Well, now in our situation, I feel like we’re starting to ramp up again toward the point of the wave again, as we prepare for the season. So from my side, my staff, and my peers, we’ve been very aggressive though in staying in touch with our staff, keeping our staff motivated, making sure the managers that work for us are doing the same for the people that they oversee. And we talked a little bit before we get on today, Chris, about culture. We continue to work as a leadership staff and talk through what are the cultural things we need to be doing to keep our staff engaged.

JP Paul:

And what we need as a leadership team twice a week in the morning. And we do talk through some of those things of, “Hey, what do we need to be doing to keep people motivated? What do we need to be doing to get people engaged?” And certainly the upcoming season that we’re planning right now with different scenarios that we’re looking at. It really got people refired I think here as we’ve made it through the July 4th holiday.

Chris Wise:

Interesting. One of the questions I had. And had to think about a bit was thinking from a historical perspective than a learning perspective, are we ready to catalog any of our learning yet? That is something that we can put in the management books, or should we wait a while before we start doing this? Or has this been such a dynamic process, and the information is so fast and ever changing in what we’re learning, should we wait, or should we really try to catalog it as we go? JP.

JP Paul:

I think both, I think there are some things we’ve learned that we can realize as leaders that are things that we can take forward and we’ve gotten out of this. And I would certainly say communication is one of those areas in communicating with your staff and your constituents. But I think there still is a lot of certainty that we’re looking at.

JP Paul:

Just from an operational side of things I’m not going to know probably for months that we made some of the right decisions, on how we’re going to do some things here over the course of the next few weeks to prepare for the season. Hopefully, the decisions that we make and talked about patience and flexibility earlier, but I hope the decisions that we make will in fact have a positive long-term effect on our staff. And will have a positive long-term effect on our fan base. I think we’re still a little early Chris to know to where we’re going to be a year from now, and how this whole thing shakes out. And whether or not people are going to be beating us over the head for smart decisions, dumb decisions, whatever we did.

Chris Wise:

Or both.

JP Paul:

Or both. Yeah.

Chris Wise:

Cody, how about you?

Cody:

Well, to start I think the only thing I definitely know is how much, I don’t know. I definitely don’t have the right answer on this. But I think my thoughts are, as we reflect on it, I think we shall be mindful of the separation between the outcomes of decisions and the processes that led the decisions. Do I think the outcome of delaying the season was the right decision? Yes. So I think the process that led it there were, it was kind of you’re flipping back and forth every 15 minutes. And that was probably not the right grounded process, for that decision. And there’s many different examples across the board that we all probably have, and higher levels from the government agency down to how we manage our staff day to day. I think, especially in a quick decision-making time, it’s separating the outcomes and the process because you’re going to get lucky.

Cody:

There’s going to be good decisions that were not necessarily the result of a great process, but you were fortunate. And there’s also maybe bad decisions that were the result of a good process, but information changed so quickly that it ended in a bad decision, but it doesn’t mean it was a bad process. So I think, it’s going to be easy to play Monday morning quarterback on this kind of stuff because everyone’s working with asymmetric information, new information is being iterated so quickly. So I think, as we try to capture it in a moment in time it’s a question. I think trying to separate that out between outcomes and processes that lead to decisions, it may even be more important than necessarily noting what decisions were made. Because it is certainly a very unique time. And these are inherently the decisions that people struggle with, they’re low frequency and high impact. That’s like the top left of the matrix, which people are very bad at, but I think they’re good at just from looking at psychology.

Cody:

So I think it’s probably too early because we’re not over the hump, there’s flare ups you hear about it every day. Who knows when we’re going to have a vaccine or whatever the future looks like. But I think my thought is largely around making sure we’re not using a small sample size of good outcomes, and not looking at the process that led to them. Because ultimately if you’re a leader, you’re making many decisions, and improving your decision making through processes. It just adds up over time, so you need, even in trying times like these.

Chris Wise:

Good insight, good insight. Thanks. So neither one of you have any magic eight ball that you can tell us what the future of fandom looks like in the stands?

Cody:

Well, again, what I said, the only thing I know is how much I don’t know. No, I don’t think I have a magic eight ball. I think my opinion is I think this will probably further some trends that were already happening. It’s a bit of an accelerator where I think everyone was already going cashless. This probably accelerates, things like ever going cashless, mobile ticketing, et cetera. It probably furthers even small businesses, medium, small businesses at a broader level. Small businesses that were maybe struggling, it’s going to take some people out, but it also started people anew. In terms of fans, I don’t think there’s my personal opinion is once there’s a vaccine assuming there is, I suppose, we can all hope for that.

Cody:

I don’t think there’s going to be this, “No one’s ever going to go to a mass gathering ever again.” I think there’s a bit of this dramatic feel. The only thing that we’ve really compared this situation to is 911 and the financial collapse in 2008, obviously for different reasons, but they both have a similar corollaries here. And both of them is the new reality was it was different, but it was just a variation of what was previous. And I think that is likely assuming we have a vaccine likely to resemble here, where it’s not like no one’s ever going to go to the seating again. We’ve been asked, “Are you redesigning the stadium? Are you taking out 20,000 of your 26,000 seats?” It’s like, “No.” There’s 120 buildings here that we can learn best practices from, that are already built. There’s three in the country that are under construction.

Cody:

We’ll take our chances on the best practices side. So I think accept if there is a vaccine, maybe there are some changes. But it’s just a small deviation of what was the prior existing norm. No different than travel, and financial security has changed some, but is somewhat the same, a variation of what it was before.

Chris Wise:

Yeah. We’ve heard again in the work we’ve been doing that. Once there’s a vaccine and people, they just need to have that assurance that it’s okay to go again, they’ll be in the stands because they need to be in the stands. That’s just more timing. And while many of us look, I talked to some of my kids and talk about what seems like a long time, six months, it’s such a blip in time compared to your life that we’re just in the moment and go, “Aah.” Interesting. JP how about your thoughts?

JP Paul:

Yeah, I think Cody put it really well. I liked his comment on, I think it’s an accelerator. I think the idea of cashless will obviously continue to go. I think it’s also what this has done. Not necessarily fan related in the stadium itself, but I think you’ve forced your teams to uncover more ways to digitally connect with their constituents their fan base.

A great example in our situation was we had about 30 days to shift course on our draft party, which is one of the largest draft parties in the NFL. It’s one of the largest events that we do outside of game day. And we all of a sudden had to go from having people in our building on draft day with probably one of the most exciting days of the year for our franchise to doing it digitally. And that was a great challenge for our guys on the content side. So I think the acceleration of creating content, creating creative content, creating what we like to call behind the curtain stuff that our fans get a chance to see that maybe they wouldn’t have gotten a chance to see in the past.

JP Paul:

I think that’s been one area again outside of the stadium that has really forced teams to get creative in connecting with their fans, but inside the stadium, just me personally, one thing that I hope we can get back to a point, I think you’re going to see a lot more energy in the buildings. Once people start getting back in. The passion and the craving they have for being in that venue, participating in the traditions and the rituals that all teams have. One thing I’ve said about US Bank Stadium, since we’ve moved in at 2016, is that we have created a tremendous sense of community in our building on game days. You feel like you’re part of our family when you’re in there on game days with our Skol chants and some of the things that we’ve done.

JP Paul:

And I think fans are just craving to get back in there and do that. But from a personal standpoint I hope we can ultimately get away from some of the visual reminders that I have a feeling are going to continue to be out there for a few years to come. And what I mean by that are the need for a face mask. Maybe a year from now, we won’t necessarily need to have a face mask. Like Cody had said, hopefully we have a vaccine, but some folks might still choose to use it. Plexiglass at concession stands and other areas in the facility. Those are things that I hope that, ultimately, we cannot want to say get rid of, but take out of our venues, just because they’re visual reminders of what we’re going through right now.

Chris Wise:

But it’ll be interesting to see where we go. Guys, I really appreciate you spending the time with us today. It’s been enlightening. I do appreciate it. And everyone who’s been watching and listening. Thank you. If you do have any questions, contact us, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Again, JP, Cody, thanks. And have a good rest of the day. Take care.

JP Paul:

Bye. Bye.

Cody:

Bye. Bye.

Chris Wise:

Bye.