News & Insights

SERIES: Building the right Team

PART 1: Who to hire for a new sports venue build

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is the first in a three-part series, “Building the Right Team,” which explores the essential roles for delivering successful sports venue projects. Part 1 focuses on new ground-up construction. Part 2 (September 2025) will address how to assemble the right team for maximizing and modernizing existing stadiums, and Part 3 (October 2025) will examine the team dynamics required for ancillary development projects, such as practice facilities and adjacent real estate.

Developing a new sports venue from the ground up is a complex, high-stakes undertaking, whether you’re a professional sports team, municipality, or university. These facilities aren’t simply large commercial projects. They bring together a mix of location analysis, market and financial feasibility, funding strategies, operational integration, and high-performance building design, all while often facing compressed timelines and intense public scrutiny.

Your success largely hinges on assembling the right team at the right time. Get it wrong, and you could face cost overruns, schedule delays, and operational challenges that plague a facility for decades.

The key is recognizing that team building for sports venues follows a strategic sequence rather than a shotgun approach of hiring everyone at once.

Step 1: Your strategic foundation

Before you hire anyone else, consider investing in a development advisor. While you may have significant development experience, sports venues present unique challenges that benefit from specialized guidance. A good development advisor offers a holistic understanding of project development, from the initial concept to the successful opening and operations. This advisor helps you build the rest of your team strategically, avoiding costly missteps down the road.

Step 2: Project definition support

The project definition phase is the first stage of your development timeline, where you and your development advisor establish the project’s vision, define success criteria, and set parameters for program requirements, financial and operational performance, and community impact. This phase is where you answer key questions before moving to implementation. The decisions made here will guide the team selection process and all future project decisions.

This is also the right time to bring in other essential team members, including:

• Legal counsel: Whether in-house or external, legal experts help navigate necessary approvals, regulatory compliance, contract structuring, and risk management. Given the complexity of public-private partnerships and regulatory hurdles in sports venues, general commercial lawyers may not be enough.

• Financial advisors: These professionals are critical for tax structuring, funding strategies, evaluating financing options, and managing investor relations. Sports venues often involve creative financing structures like public bonds, private investments, and naming rights.

• Public relations experts: Depending on the project, their expertise in stakeholder communications, community engagement, and managing public approval processes can be invaluable, particularly when public funding is involved.

Step 3: Your delivery team

At this stage, owners often face crucial decisions about project delivery methods, and this choice significantly impacts when and how to assemble the project team. Your development advisor can transition into a development manager or owner’s representative overseeing an architect, cost estimator, and contractor. Alternatively, if you choose not to continue with your advisor, you’ll need to bring in an owner’s representative or internal project manager to fulfill this oversight role.

Your delivery method options include:

• Design-bid-build: Architect and cost estimator first, then contractor after design completion.

• Construction management: Architect and cost estimator first, with contractor involvement early in design for preconstruction support.

• Design-build or integrated project delivery: Both architect and contractor from project start (cost estimator optional).

Regardless of your delivery method, you’ll need three key capabilities: design expertise from sports-specialized architects and engineers, cost estimating for accurate budgeting, and preconstruction services, including value engineering, scheduling, and constructability review.

Specialists are often engaged alongside the architect as subconsultants or directly contracted by the owner:

• Site engineering: environmental, geotechnical, surveying, civil

• Building engineering: code, structural, MEP/HVAC, technology, fire protection, acoustics, lighting, vertical transportation

Critical issues to address upfront

Before fully assembling your project team, it’s essential to establish a strategic foundation that aligns your vision with the project’s scope and objectives. Key issues to address include:

• Operational planning: Include future operators early in the process. Their understanding of revenue streams—such as concessions, premium seating, and event programming—will directly impact design decisions and long-term maintenance planning. Operations should never be an afterthought.

• Public approvals: Entitlements and regulatory approvals can significantly affect project timelines. Ensure your team includes specialists in local zoning and permitting processes, ADA compliance, and life safety requirements for public assembly buildings.

• Cost and schedule management: It’s crucial to involve professionals experienced with sports venue timelines and budgeting challenges. Look for architects with proven experience designing to budget, cost estimators familiar with sports venue systems, and contractors skilled in delivering complex projects on time and on budget.

This foundational work will guide your team selection and future project decisions. With these elements in place, the next step is engaging the right team members to ensure a successful project delivery.

The bottom line

I’ve witnessed too many stadium builds falter due to the wrong people being in the wrong roles at the wrong time. But I’ve also seen how the right team can turn a complex, high-pressure project into a generational success story. From my experience in new builds across professional and college sports, I can tell you: there’s no shortcut to assembling that team. Start with a trusted development advisor who’s been in the trenches, define your project with precision before anyone breaks ground, choose your delivery method deliberately, and ensure proven venue experience at every role.

These projects are much more than concrete and steel. They’re civic landmarks and revenue engines that need to perform from opening day through decades of evolving fan expectations. The right team will determine that outcome. Get it right, and you won’t just build a stadium—you’ll create a legacy.

Bill Mykins, Vice President at Brailsford & Dunlavey, brings 25 years of experience in the design, construction and delivery of sports venues. Throughout his career, he has played a pivotal role in the planning and execution of new sports stadiums, ensuring projects are delivered on time, within budget, and to the highest standards. With a background as a design architect, he has helped shape iconic stadiums, including Nationals Park and PNC Park.  He can be reached at wmykins@bdconnect.com.