Business View Magazine | September 2019

133 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2019 project ever undertaken in the North Star State - $348 million for its construction came from the state of Minnesota, $150 million from the city of Minneapolis, and $551 million from the Minnesota Vikings, the stadium’s main tenant, and other private contributions. In addition to hosting the Vikings’ home games, the stadium presents in excess of 400 events every year. “The state built a very multi-purpose building,” says General Manager, Patrick Talty. “It allows us to do a lot of different things. The Summer X Games were here; we built skate parks for skating, BMX biking, Motocross. We’ve done several concerts; we had two sold-out Garth Brooks shows in May; we’ve done Luke Bryan, Metallica, Taylor Swift, Kenny Chesney, Coldplay, JZ and Beyonce, Guns N’ Roses - they’ve all come to the stadium and been very successful. We hosted Super Bowl LII back in February 2018, and we were the home of the 2019 Men’s Final Four Basketball Championships, recently. We’re also hosting the Men’s NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships, next March.” “A lot of people think that stadiums do 10 to 20 events a year and that’s it. We’ve demonstrated that we’re an extremely busy building – more like a convention center. That is an area that we’ve worked hard at,” Talty continues. “We do a ton of rental events - business meetings, bar mitzvahs, weddings, galas, and all kinds of dinners. We have six beautiful clubs in the building – all separated – so we can host individual events in each of those during the week and in the evenings on weekends. We’ve had a Home Show, a Holiday Boutique Buying Show, a Custom Car Show; we do an RV Sale on the floor. We just had the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod gathering here, this summer; we booked the ELCA, the Lutheran Church, again, for their youth gathering in 2023. We’ve hosted a Ramadan event for the Muslims; a youth gathering for a non-denominational Christian event. The stadium is busy constantly; that’s one of the things we’re real proud of.” “The other unique thing about this stadium is, it actually hosts baseball,” he adds. “Part of the bleachers push back and you can create an Credit: Joe Lemke/U.S. Bank Stadium U . S . BANK STADIUM