Nov-2017

118 119 our primary tenant, contributed $6 million; and our food company, Levy Restaurants, provided some capital, as well.” “It’s been very successful since it has reopened. It’s had many, many big events, including Bowl games and professional football, WrestleMania, international soccer; it’s been a very versatile facility and since we reopened, we’ve had great success with a number of events, including The Rolling Stones, Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, and the 2017 NFL Pro Bowl, which is coming back here in 2018.” When it comes to booking events at these premier venues, Johnson believes that Orlando has several advantages over the competition. “We have a great location – Central Florida,” he begins. “We have a great population base of 2.4 million. We also have another attribute that not many cities have and that’s about 69 million visitors that come into Orlando on an annual basis. And we’ve learned how to get them to other events by getting the word out. So, peo- ple plan trips to come here around their other activities. If they’re going to Universal, or Disney, ORLANDO VENUES or SeaWorld, we capture them to add something - a game or a show - to their itinerary. If people want to see an artist, and they have a choice between different cities, people will often pick Orlando because there are so many other activi- ties to go along with that concert experience.” Johnson believes that another competitive advantage is Orlando Venues’ history of success. “We have a venue that has a proven track record of hosting major concerts. We’ve been selling tickets extremely well for a variety of shows,” he reports. “We work with all the promoters: Live Nation and AEG for the concert side and Feld Entertainment for the family show side. We developed those relationships through the years and continue to have them. So, we want to be the first place they think of when they’re bring- ing a show into Florida; to be one of the stops that they put on their calendar.” Even though both venues are relatively new, Johnson says that staying abreast of current technological advances is an ongoing concern. “I think that any venue, today, has to keep up with technology because the consumers, the patrons, are demanding that,” he states. “They expect to be able to post socially; they expect to be able to see what else is happening if there are other games they may be following. So, that is our big- gest expense and one of our biggest challenges, whether that’s infrastructure, WiFi capacity, or distributed antenna system (DAS) capacity. Even though we’re only seven years old, we continue