Business View Magazine - August 2023

183 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 8 LANDERS CENTER “Anything we can do locally, whether it’s an employee event, a purchase, or signing a service contract, means we’re being good stewards by putting money back into the community and maintaining a positive economic cycle,” Crews surmises. Landers Center also hosts the annual Mid- South Fair, which they run in partnership with the Fair’s board of directors. This year marks the 167th edition, which makes it one of the oldest fairs in the country. Though being stewards of the fair and by either partnering or participating in other local events, Landers Center leadership ensures they’re giving back locally to DeSoto County and to the greater Memphis region. Crews talks about the ongoing entertainment strategy. “We do a lot of family entertainment, but we’ve also worked really hard to keep a very diverse event mix since we re-opened after the pandemic,” Crews says. “We have family shows, R&B shows, rap shows and country shows, and we even had an Indian artist in the past year.” Memphis is a very diverse market, so Landers Center strives to match that diversity and create a good mix of entertainment to appeal to their community. Morgan provides insight on sales, marketing, and revenue. “When looking over the figures from pre- COVID years, we continue to see increased revenues in 2023,” he says. “We set a record last year for arena rent, which is a baseline indicator for us to understand how busy we are via the main arena of our complex.” Morgan shared that they are still on track to have their second-best year financially in