Jaguars: Diving Into Design
Ahead of the 2014 NFL season, swimming pools were installed at EverBank Field. Matt Cutler spoke to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Populous to see whether it’s a stadium initiative worth adopting.
Last NFL season, the Jacksonville Jaguars lost every game on the road for the second time in their relatively short 20 year history. The fans, however, could take small consolation in the work of their commercial team, who had undertaken a series of initiatives ahead of the 2014 campaign to ensure those watching games at their EverBank Field home could do so with maximum pleasure.
A $63m renovation started in June 2013 and was completed in around a year. The most visible element of the improvements was two new end-zone video scoreboards – the largest of their kind in the world – but in partnership with leading sports architects Populous, 9,500 seats in the north-end zone were also removed to make way for a two-level party deck.
Notably, the area includes a pair of 25-foot long, 12-foot wide and 3.5-foot deep swimming pools that allow fans to watch action in one of the most attractive settings possible, live from the water or on one of the mammoth new scoreboards. Construction of the pools took place over a period of six months.
The Jaguars named the new area ‘Clevelander Deck’, after the Clevelander Hotel on Ocean Drive in Miami, famous for its party vibe.
“The north-end deck created new ticket products – featuring cabanas, the spa pools and all-inclusive food and beverages – that we could sell, so there has been a direct commercial impact from the new products,” Jaguars spokesperson Dan Edwards told SportBusiness International. “We also benefitted from media exposure – both mainstream and social – around the new features.”
The deck can also be cleared to install temporary seating and bleachers for games that demand extra capacity, such as the annual college match between Florida and Georgia played at EverBank.
Populous’ Ben Stindt, who was the lead designer on the project, said the idea for the deck area came from a conversation about unused seats and how the Jaguars could be innovative in turning them into a new revenue stream.
“It began from us having a bit of fun around the concept of what we could do to create an experience that you could have in the stadium but not at home watching the game on TV,” he told SportBusiness International.
“We presented ideas and started thinking about the community, the region…we are based in the mid-west, but when we think of Florida, we think of palm trees and ocean breezes. One of the first sketches we did looked like a little oasis on top of the stadium.
“I was the first one to mention swimming pools. All of a sudden the structure people said it was crazy and that we couldn’t do it, but once Mr. Khan [Jaguars owner Shahid] saw the designs, he was on board and there was no other option.”
Stindt says a number of sports teams have seen Populous’ work on the deck area at EverBank and are looking at whether similar spaces could work for them.
“There has been a lot of interest, though obviously not everyone has the same environment,” he adds. “This is just the tip of the iceberg of that extra fan engagement or fan excitement in the stadium.
“We are thinking about cold weather markets and what similar amenities we could do for them: could we have some open firepits in a stadium in the future, for instance?”
This is an edited version of a longer article that appears in the May issue of SportBusiness International magazine
