Every professional sports team has its own identity, built over decades of big wins and hard losses, bitter rivalries, legendary players, and traditions handed down – then fiercely protected – from one generation to the next.

Of course, that identity doesn’t take a vacation when a team builds something new or moves from one stadium to the next.

Looking at the NFL alone, nine different teams are in some phase of stadium renovation or build, with all but one of those projects estimated to cost billions. Not millions. Billions. 

Around the rest of the North American professional sports leagues, it’s the same story, with teams from the MLB to the NHL planning either a renovation or a full-scale new build – all those projects also totaling up into the billions. 

With so many high-stakes, billion-dollar projects on the horizon, we’ve seen more teams than ever turning to the sales experience center as a way to sell the next era of their franchise.

Those sales experience centers, like the renovation/build projects they’re selling, have to ultimately feel like their team’s and nobody else’s.

At Advent, we’ve understood this from Day One. 

Though there are plenty of projects we could point to, our most recent proof can be found at the Advent-designed Stadium of the Future Sales Center for the Jacksonville Jaguars – an experiential sales hub that is not only on the cutting edge of immersive technology, but true to the Jaguars’ rich history and identity as well.

On the sales center’s opening day, Jaguars President Mark Lamping specifically called out our dedication to delivering unique, brand-tailored design:

What impressed me the most was the time [Advent] spent trying to understand what’s really unique about Jacksonville and the Jaguars fans. It wasn’t a cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all plan. We really felt it was truly customized, and they took into full consideration what’s unique about our sales opportunity, our sales challenges, and brought solutions to bear that we felt were truly customized, and not just a clip and paste from some other market.

“Cookie-cutter” and “one-size-fits-all” are simply not part of our vocabulary, and each project we work on starts with a dedicated process that’s all about learning who your team truly is.

How do you learn about a team’s brand identity and history before designing a custom sales experience center?

You listen first, and you listen to a lot of different people.

It starts with a process we call StoryMining. Before a single concept has been designed, we sit down with a wide circle of people in and around the organization – from leadership to the sales staff who will use the space every day – and ask the questions that don’t show up in your brand kit.

What do people here take pride in? What do fans say about this team that outsiders don’t understand? In your eyes, what is the biggest moment in your franchise’s history? Why?

It’s a serious investment of time, but it seriously pays off. 

For Jacksonville, StoryMining involved interviewing eight key stakeholders across the Jaguars organization and ended up pulling out details that made it into the finished building. 

That depth is the difference between a space that looks impressive and one that feels like it could only belong to one team, because every touchpoint we design traces back to something we heard in one of those conversations.

Can the same technology really create a one-of-a-kind experience?

Yes, and the four Immersive Cubes® in the field prove it.

Those Cubes, each with a different dimensional footprint, also operates wildly differently for each team – and that’s the entire point.

Vegas Athletics. The original, built to sell a ballpark (and a franchise) that didn’t exist yet. Guests can see what the ballpark looks like from the Strip, from the front entrance, or from the pitcher’s mound, and watch the Cube respond in real time. The A’s Cube is also the deepest ever installed (19.92ft) and was intentionally designed to fit the space the A’s had available, not the other way around. 

Tepper Sports & Entertainment. Built shallower and slightly narrower than the Athletics’ model to fit the MoMINTum floor plan, Tepper’s model is the only Cube to feature live-action, 360 footage of their two teams – the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte FC – in action, at practice and during an actual game. 

Cleveland Browns. At 21 feet across, it is the widest Cube we’ve ever installed. Haslam Sports Group wanted their fans to be able to visualize their route to the new stadium, so it’s also the only Cube to feature a 25-square mile digital twin of the team’s home region. 

Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jaguars Cube is the first to utilize four walls instead of the usual five, but more importantly, those four walls can call up thousands of different scenes and visualizations for whoever steps inside. Yes, you read that right:  thousands of scenes. 

In short, the technology is only half the equation. The other half, from the Cube to the experience center surrounding it, are built custom for the team that owns it, drawn from what we learn in StoryMining. 

Same platform, four different experiences that could never be swapped.

What should you ask an experiential design partner before you build?

Not every design partner works this tirelessly to understand your team, and the difference usually shows long before anything gets built. 

Before you sign on, ask these questions. The answers will tell you whether you’re getting a space built around your team or a template with your logo on it:

1. Who, beyond our leadership team, will you talk to before you design anything?
2. How much of your process happens before the first concept is drawn?
3. Can you show us how each design decision traces back to something you learned about us?
4. What will you uncover about our sales challenges, not just our brand?
5. What have you learned from other teams, and how will you keep it from turning into a copy of their space?
6. What will this space include that no other team could ever use?

The Advent Takeaway

When a team is investing billions in its next era, the sales center is where fans first decide whether that future still feels like theirs. Proven technology will get them through the door, but it’s the team’s own story, its history, its rallying cries, its biggest moments, that gets them to commit. That’s why every Advent project starts with listening, and why no two of our spaces will ever look, feel, or sell the same way. Your team isn’t a template. Your sales center shouldn’t be either.

Ready to build a sales center that could only belong to your team? Let’s talk.

Written by John Roberson, CEO