Sports stadiums often double as venues for other types of events, such as concerts, but it’s much less common for them to host full-on trade shows with over 200 exhibitors. However, San Diego’s Petco Park ended up becoming the perfect venue for Warrior West 2021 when it was forced to change locales earlier this year.
Warrior West, which takes place every year at the San Diego Convention Center, was delayed a few months due to Covid, and faced an additional obstacle when the convention center announced that it would not be available to host any events until August as it was being used as an Emergency Intake Site for the federal government.
When it became clear that the event would need to take place somewhere else, Mandi Graziano, VP of Global Accounts at HPN Global, and her client, Andrea Dekker, Event Manager at ADS Inc., began looking at other potential venues in the city. “For this particular trade show, because their customers are in the military or are first responders, there are huge tents and big equipment, and you need a really big space for it,” says Graziano.
When they initially toured Petco Park, Graziano shares, they were just thinking of using it for the keynote and organizing the trade show component somewhere else. However, Dekker saw the potential in the stadium, and, after getting the greenlight from the executive team, moved forward with planning the full event at Petco Park.
“Logistically, it’s a very different experience for the exhibitors,” says Graziano. “Normally, you have a couple days to load in using freight elevators, and you’re just going in and out of one big open space. But with the stadium, you’re doing to a part of the concourse where you may not have as much space as you had before — it’s not a big box, it’s in the shape of an arc.
Some exhibitors were initially concerned about being positioned at the very end, but that spot ended up being an advantage. “When you go up from the registration area, the escalator drops people off right there,” says Graziano. “When exhibitors saw the visibility they had, they felt really good about it.”
In addition, the stadium’s hospitality suites were used in a unique way and set up to look like retail boutiques by some exhibitors who sell clothing and other gear and equipment. The suites also offered more privacy for suppliers to have one-on-one meetings with attendees.
“The attendees had a little bit of everything based on whatever they wanted to do,” shares Graziano. “They could walk into the main concourse and see robots walking around, or they could go to the registration tent, or they could take the elevator up to the suite floor and just go suite to suite to have a little more of an intimate experience.”
In order to manage attendee flow at the venue, all entrances and exits except for one were closed off. The stadium’s main ticket window was used to distribute badges to attendees, which worked particularly well since it was already set up to handles large crowds.
“When you walked through the turnstiles, there was a swag station, and there were human arrows everywhere,” explains Graziano. “So as soon as you went in, you knew exactly where to go, even though it was much bigger than the standard conference center. ADS positioned their human arrows in a really good way to personally greet people and escort them where they needed to go.”
Another benefit of holding the event in a baseball stadium was the visibility for sponsors, since sports stadiums are already set up for that as well. “As an attendee, I don't think I've ever seen so much branding from sponsorships at any event because they used all of the digital signage so well,” says Graziano. “The huge LED wall in the middle constantly rotated different sponsor names. They had sponsors running on the little ticker tape that goes around the whole stadium, and they also utilized the stairs for branding.”
While Petco Park was not the venue that Graziano and Dekker had initially imagined for Warrior West 2021, they pulled off a successful event and demonstrated that innovating can pay off, especially in this era of uncertainty and unknowns. Graziano hopes to inspire other clients that unconventional event venues and ideas can work when managed well and can provide a unique and memorable experience for attendees.
“Get out there and do something different,” she advises. “If a venue cancels or your date has to move, don’t cancel right away. Warrior West attendees were really happy that the event didn’t cancel — it may have been a little clunkier than a normal trade show, but they found a way to make it happen, and everyone was grateful. You can always find a way to produce a high-quality and unique event for your attendees.”