Capital One Arena: Building An Experience
Capital One Arena is amid a multi-year transformation process, breaking new ground in the marketing of hospitality and VIP services. stadiaworld went to Washington D.C. to see how the arena team uses showrooms as a sales engine.
You can find the full article in the new stadiaworld INSIDE 2/2025. It contains more information on the scale of the project, the arena team’s expectations as well as exclusive insight into the different hospitality areas and their offerings. Click here to directly access the article in the ebook.
The sign on the door to the left seems contradictory. What should be the “Sales Center” now has a warning sign: “Construction Entrance – Do Not Enter”. And yet, we are supposed to meet Jim Van Stone, President of Business Operations and Chief Commercial Officer at Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), to talk about precisely that: How the Capital One Arena is selling its new-and-improved luxury offerings and suites. For that task, though, Van Stone and his team took a new approach, creating “The Reserve” – an interactive preview experience, pulling out all the stops in showcasing what the new arena will soon offer and how exclusive hospitality can be.
Instead of sitting in an office and browsing through brochures, Van Stone takes us on a 40-minute-tour spanning more than six different rooms, through player holograms, scale models, 3D animations and actual showrooms of the variety of options the renovated arena can offer. [...] Early feedback has been overwhelming, Van Stone explains: “I think we’ve been awesomely surprised by the response. Many visitors did not expect the high level of finishes and the amount of changes happening to the building. You know, the word ‘transformation’ or ‘renovation’ can be misleading, but when people see the space, they realize it feels like a brand-new building.” The scale of the almost 1 billion US-dollar transformation project cannot be overstated. Capital One Arena is going from three suite experiences to eight, from two small premium types to five, doubling the number of entrances from four to eight (four exclusively for VIP guests), doubling ...
You can find the full article in the new stadiaworld INSIDE 2/2025. It contains more information on the scale of the project, the arena team’s expectations as well as exclusive insight into the different hospitality areas and their offerings. Click here to directly access the article in the ebook.
