Gallagher Way, the open-air plaza beside Wrigley Field in Chicago, plays host to activities like summer movie nights, farmers markets, concerts and a skating rink in the winter.Courtesy Gallagher Way
Attending a baseball game used to mean buying a ticket for your preferred seat and enjoying the action from there for most of the game. Today, both modern and retrofitted stadiums have designed new social areas where fans can mingle in a more casual setting.
“Over the last few years, the ways that people are watching sports is changing,” explains Michelle Seniuk, senior vice-president of fan experience for the Toronto Blue Jays. “People aren’t just coming into the stadium, going to their seats and watching the game. They want to interact with people, their family and friends in different ways.”
To address these needs and provide new ways of experiencing not just a game, but the space it’s played in, Rogers Centre, the Blue Jays home in Toronto, recently underwent a $300-million, multiyear renovation. It included the opening of five new ‘outfield neighbourhoods’ in 2023 with food and drink options, as well as the launch of a $20 Outfield District ticket that allows people to watch a game from one of the multiple social spaces but does not provide them with a stadium seat.
These social areas not only allow fans to hang out with friends and family who might have purchased seats in other parts of the stadium, they also provide an opportunity for new connections with others. “If you spend time on the Corona rooftop patio any time from the fifth inning onward, everyone up there acts as if they’ve known each other for years,” Seniuk says.
She sees these new social spaces as a way to bring younger fans and a new audience to baseball. “It’s casual,” she says. “There isn’t that stress of needing to know what’s happening in every inning of the game, or how many balls or strikes there are.” She has witnessed a growing interest from South Asian communities and cricket fans embracing baseball. “There are a lot of new fans coming in,” she says. Open social areas could make it less intimidating for newer fans to chat with dedicated supporters and learn more about the game rules and players.
The Rogers Centre isn’t alone in its socially minded redesign. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, England, which opened in 2019, features street food-inspired stalls, the 65-metre-long Goal Line Bar – the longest bar in Europe – and space for live entertainment. Optus Stadium in Perth, Australia, features 2.6 hectares of parkland surrounding it, known as Optus Park, and includes kids’ play areas, walking trails, bike paths and event spaces.
Gallagher Way, a previously underused pie-shaped plot of land next to Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, is another example of rethinking how a stadium can serve as community-minded space. The 30,000-square-foot open-air plaza, which launched in 2017, now plays host to activities like summer movie nights, farmers markets, concerts and a skating rink in the winter. “Gallagher Way helps enhance the overall fan experience, serving as an extension of the ballpark on game days with live entertainment and pre- and postgame activities,” says Eric Nordness, managing principal at Marquee Development, the real estate arm of the Ricketts family, the Cubs’ majority owners.
The Outfield District at Toronto’s Rogers Centre offers a way to watch the game as well as spaces to play and socialize.Toronto Blue Jays
Populous, an international stadium design firm that worked on the recent Rogers Centre redesign, sees the impact that social spaces can have on spectator culture. “Stadiums are evolving beyond traditional seating arrangements and amenities,” Isabelle Rijnties, a principal interior design director at Populous, says. This evolution makes stadiums into third spaces – a term coined by American sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe a place aside from home or work where people can meet others and have social connections. As third spaces, Rijnties says that stadiums can offer more than just a view of the game. Standing room-only platforms are destinations that encourage movement and interaction with people across the venue,” says Rijnties.
Third space-like features of stadiums are also a financial boon for venue operators and teams who can benefit from increased revenue from food, drink and merchandise sales, according to Josh Bland, a PhD student at Cambridge University who is studying British football culture. “At its best, the stadium space creates an almost virtuous cycle, where the fans are getting what they want: a sense of belonging, a good view of the pitch, a place to have a drink and socialize with other people who support the same team as them,” Bland says. “Then the club gets the money from it and can increase their revenue and theoretically be more successful on the pitch.”
Bland, who comes from the deeply traditional football club culture in the U.K., is sensitive to the modernization of sports venues, and what he calls the “American-style presentation” of sports games that prioritizes profits. It’s a fine line to balance, but Bland says that his home football team, West Bromwich Albion, has executed it well by reimagining an old parking lot into a fan zone that offers supporters something new while also creating additional revenue opportunities.
“There’ll be live music, a bit of food, a big screening of the football match and they might get an ex-player or someone to do an interview before the game,” says Bland. “It’s a new space for them to socialize. When it’s done really well, it can be a place where you can reiterate this sociality of football in a new setting.”
Instead of just focusing on game-day activities, Zhixi C. Zhuang, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning encourages venue operators to see the potential of using stadiums as third spaces in the off-season. “How can we actually turn them into multifunctional, multi-use shared spaces?” Zhuang asks. She believes that activating sports venues throughout the year brings more bodies into otherwise underused spaces, which would then benefit sports franchises.
Zhuang sees great potential, especially in bringing more newcomers and immigrants into a space – people who might not otherwise be familiar with the sport or team. “They develop this kind of attachment to the space,” she says. “Otherwise, you’re only attracting sports fans, which could be limiting their business potential. I think owners can be more creative and more successful in the long run if they open their minds up to creating more third spaces.”
