Blue Jays president reveals strategy behind $300-million-plus Rogers Centre renovations

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Mark Shapiro, the president of the Toronto Blue Jays, picks up his iPhone to help explain why the club is spending more than $300-million on an interim overhaul of the Rogers Centre that includes a series of slick new concession areas where fans can hang out with friends, listen to live music, and even play lawn games – with the baseball game itself as a mere backdrop.

When the stadium first opened in June, 1989, the competition for fans’ attention was fundamentally different than it is today, he acknowledged during a recent interview in his office.

“If your only choice was to watch a game on standard-definition television, where it’s hard to even see the ball, and it’s a fuzzy picture, it’s a lot easier to make the decision to come down and watch a game, live,” he says.

Thirty-four years later, fans can not only watch HDTV-quality broadcasts on hand-held devices, “they can do other things while they’re watching it,” he says, brandishing the phone. “They can pull up stats, they can watch replays. Or they can watch in their basement with surround sound, in high-def.” Never mind the smorgasbord of other sports-related entertainment instantly accessible on that same device: gaming, esports, streaming services that offer all major-league baseball games piped in from across North America.

Providing live, unadorned baseball is no longer enough for a baseball club to be successful.

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“We need to create a compelling fan experience. It can’t just be, ‘We have a cool stadium and you can just watch a game and eat a hot dog.’”

So, last October, the club began a two-phase renovation planned over the course of two off-seasons that will, says Shapiro, “convert a stadium to a ballpark.” Originally pegged at $300-million, supply chain issues and inflation mean “we’re still finalizing the costing … but it will be over $300-million.”

This season, the changes include half-a-dozen new spaces where fans can gather and revel, the replacement of all 500-level chairs with slightly wider seats, and raised bullpens to bring fans closer to the players. Next off-season, the club will gut the lower bowl of the stadium, replace and widen all 100- and 200-level seats, and introduce a swath of new premium tickets to offer well-heeled fans true VIP experiences that are similar to what they might enjoy at other pro sports events in Toronto.

Still, Shapiro notes that even the current conversion is a stop-gap measure intended to buy the concrete pile only another 10 to 15 years of life. “This is a midterm solution that keeps us both economically relevant,” he says, “competing in the AL East with a building that can generate revenue, and fan-experience relevant.”

The public will get their first look at the new gathering spaces, which were built over the past six months in an area of the stadium the club is calling the Outfield District, during the Jays’ home opener on Tuesday.

They include Park Social, a two-storey family-friendly sprawl done up in primary colours with picnic tables, fake grass, games and swings on the 500-level beyond the left-field wall; The Catch, a 100-level bar overlooking the new location of the visitors’ bullpen in right field; The Stop, a 100-level bar done up in a subway aesthetic, which doesn’t have an open view of the game because it’s tucked away beyond the centre-field wall in the batters’ line of sight; Schneiders Porch (200-level hot dog HQ beyond right field); Rogers Landing, a nod to the team’s corporate owners; and Corona Rooftop Patio, a luxe 500-level hangout beyond the right-field wall that may actually feel like a rooftop patio when the stadium’s roof is open.

The areas – the team is calling them “neighbourhoods” – are accessible to all patrons who have paid for seats, but fans can also buy new general admission tickets for $20, spend some time in the district and wander around from one spot to another over the course of nine innings.

The team may sell up to 2,000 general admission tickets to each game.

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The new spaces are a concrete acknowledgment that fans attending games may differ from each other in what they’re hoping to get out of the experience.

“Best-in-class sports entertainment franchises – organizations, teams – have a ballpark or stadium experience that provides something for everyone, regardless of a team’s performance,” Shapiro says. “We have not had that. We’ve had a uniform identical experience. The only variation has been your vantage point.

“There are people who want to be at the game, but not necessarily watch the game,” he adds. “They want to high-five when a home run happens, to hear the horn go off and then back to talking to their friends over a fire pit, drinking a beer – and it’s a really cool atmosphere.”

Over the past few years, other MLB stadiums have created similar general-admission fan zones, such as the Colorado Rockies’ Rooftop bar, which proved so popular after its introduction in 2014 that it was expanded to multiple levels; a new Centerfield district at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles which debuted this year; and the Family Deck at Progressive Field, where Shapiro oversaw a renovation in 2015 when he was president of the Cleveland ball club.

The first phase of the Rogers Centre renovations has reduced the crowd capacity about 7 per cent, from approximately 44,750 to roughly 41,500. There is plenty of room to reduce capacity: with only 23 sellouts last season out of 81 regular-season home games, there were almost one million tickets left unsold.

“The biggest challenge for our business is the feeling that, whenever someone wants a seat, they can just walk up and get a seat. That is not good for elasticity,” says Shapiro, referring to the economic theory that, when supply outstrips demand, prices for a product or service tend to stay flat. “We need to create demand.”

Still, Shapiro says, generating more revenue was not the focus of the renovation’s first phase. Instead, he’s just hoping to attract more of the young professionals who live within walking distance of the Rogers Centre – and, if all goes well, create a new baseball habit among the demographic.

“This is about creating amenities, this is creating fan experiences, this is drawing our fans closer to our players and providing connectivity – with seats that are on the outfield wall, seats that are overlooking the bullpens,” he says. “This is providing fans that might not have come frequently, if at all, before, the opportunity to come and be in the coolest patio in all of Toronto, with the best vantage that exists in the city and happens to be in Rogers Centre.”

The real revenue generation will come with the next phase, when the renovations create a collection of VIP seating. “We have, I think, the second-least amount of premium seating in all major-league baseball, which for a market of Toronto’s size and wealth is inconceivable,” Shapiro says. “That’s one reason why we’re at a distinct [economic] disadvantage [against other teams]. The exchange rate is probably the biggest reason why, but that’s probably the second-biggest reason.

“So, next year, by redoing the lower bowl, we’ll create meaningful premium that is modern, that is compelling, that is going to cater to the corporate and premium market in Toronto.”

Those customers will have access to their own washroom and premium lounges, and be served food and beverages from new kitchens.

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All told, Shapiro estimates the higher projected revenue will pay back the $300-million-plus renovation cost in “about half the time” of the 10- to 15-year time frame – which implies he expects about $40-million to $60-million in extra revenue per year.

None of the upgrades, though, will necessarily preclude the Jays from pursuing the construction of a new ballpark if they choose that route, as the Globe reported in the fall of 2020 the team had been considering.

“It’ll get paid back long before we have to think about a new ballpark.”