Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise the Arizona Diamondbacks has officially launched a new events division that is designed to drive greater usage for its Chase Field ballpark.
Arizona Diamondbacks Events & Entertainment (ADEE) was unveiled yesterday (Tuesday) but has already been employed to host the WWE wrestling organisation’s Royal Rumble in January and a Billy Joel concert in March.
ADEE aims to make Chase Field a one-stop-shop in the heart of downtown Phoenix for all non-baseball events such as large luncheons, conferences, corporate outings, corporate parties, non-profit fundraisers and trade shows.
ADEE worked closely with WWE to bring Royal Rumble to Chase Field hosting more than 48,000 fans for the seven-hour event in January. In March, Live Nation and ADEE welcomed 40,964 Billy Joel fans. ADEE is now ready for all further non-baseball event opportunities in 2019 and is looking to book additional large-scale, ticketed events in 2020 and beyond.
Maricopa County Stadium District, which owns Chase Field, decided to have the Diamondbacks form ADEE after 21 years of outsourcing the non-baseball events business. Diamondbacks executive vice-president of business operations, Cullen Maxey, told the Sports Business Daily website that team execs are “excited about having the new opportunity to really show what I’d say is our wheelhouse, which is that earned publicity and using all the relationships that a baseball team has to generate interest in events.”
This offseason, the D-backs made improvements to Chase Field by installing Shaw’s B1K synthetic grass that will allow for more flexibility in scheduling non-baseball events.
Image: Arizona Diamondbacks
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