Marketing Seminar, August 2010

PART V: PR Strategies for Business Development

The Public Perception of Reality is Key
Assumptions
The Public Relations Challenges<

The Public Perception of Reality is Key

The Key Question on which all else hinges is that of the public perception of the reality of the contemplated project. Public relations strategies are needed to enable the public and officials, business persons and planners, to facilitate getting to the same place on the same page. Public Relations Strategies are to be used in support of the blending of real estate and overall geographic growth into a community dialogue, using Internet Strategies, and showing how city/regional growth success is greatly helped by larger development entities like a newly renovated stadium or arena built as an anchor of a larger mixed use development.

Assumptions

1. Both/and thinking, planning, and doing, is better than either/or thinking and planning.
   
2. Any professional team is or has the potential to be a hot property.
   
3. Everyone want to control their fate and destiny, but no one acts in a vacuum.
   
4. There is the potential of $200- $300 million yearly revenue from a mixed-use facility for all to share in a properly sited and developed stadium or arenea that is the anchor for a mixed-use development complex, as:
   1. making the stadium complex a real estate development mixed use project frees up taxes and other inducements already on the books, and
   2. removes the delays and red tape of having to get jurisdictional legislation for new tax monies
      
5. This is an economic issue (investment), not just an emotional issue (higher taxes/free ride).
   
6. The economically competitive issue is a UNIVERSAL: it makes no difference which team, which city: in the 21st century: without a new stadium, a team cannot remain competitive or appropriately profitable.
   
7. The issue is NOT a new stadium per se, but who will builds it: team, community, or joint venture.
   
8. The key to profitability in the 21st century, is local revenues. To facilitate higher local revenues requires new stadiums and arenas or updating through renovations. Those which do not get new stadiums or renovations will move to where they can get them.
   
9. Professional teams, as any well managed organization that wants to survive, must necessarily do what is good for team and its league, and revenues are what are good for the team and its league (as with any other business, be it profit or not for profit, government or non government). Teams will go where they'll be able to generate revenues.
   
10. "Troubled economy" is a code word for politicians to hide behind voters who don't want to pay more taxes for new stadiums and arenas. That is an either/or approach. The approach to employ to facilitate a new stadium or arena, create jobs and generate higher local revenues, with no or minimal increases in local taxes, is the most efficient and quickest way to achieve success.
    
11. Where there is a partnership with a city in which there are multiple uses for a stadium or arena anchoring a larger development complex, its construction costs can be taken from shared investvents and revenues, including investments from investment houses deploying the capital needed to be invested by pension funds, 401K funds, mutuall funds, etc..
    
12. The issue is NOT the team. The issue is whether a city wants to facilitate the community being able to leverage an a professional team for the economic well being of the city and its greater city area.
    
13. NO city determines whether a team goes or stays. Only a team's owner and its contract with the city or old stadium/arena does. It is their property. The conflict comes from falsely making either the team or the city or both as the culprits, like two bad guys on Main Street shooting it out at high noon. In these cases, the only ones who benefit are the consultants giving bad advice leading to the shootouts as well as the planners doing the same. Both the shooters (team and city) lose, but the consultants and planners still get paid. Any consultant or planner using this adversarial model will lead to trouble.
    
Needed is the consideration of Conflict Resolution Models to establish common ground and common cause enjoining all of the stakeholders. This is why it is key to resolve these unnecessary and usually falsely based conflicts about a goal all share.

14. The geographic market is not the issue either, not in a day of TV when teams in smaller markets can still be competitive because of shared revenue. The issue is how much revenue a stadium or arena, and the development of which it is a part, can generate. Stadium-only revenues will no longer suffice. Mixed-use real estate stadium/arena complexes with stadiums/arenas as anchors are the best bet for all.
15. The only consultants that should be used are those using models that solve the problem for both sides, recognizing that the issue is coordinating independent actors (team and city) in the teeth of their own autonomy. Neither controls the other. Therefore, all either/or scenarios are disasters. ONLY both/and will win the day. As noted, there are Conflict Resolution Models that be used to resolve these unnecessary and usually falsely based conflicts.