Sam Zussman, the CEO of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, is the man in charge of the fan experience at Barclays Center whether a Brooklyn Nets or New York Liberty game or a big concert and in an interview with Wealth Magazine out this week, he emphasizes the “entertainment” element of his job title.
No matter what’s on the marquee at Flatbush and Atlantic, it’s got to be about the experience, he says.
“You want the moment in real time,” Zussman says of what fans get at an arena. “You want to high five
the other person. You want to feel the energy. You want to hear the noise. You want to say that you were there when something historic happened.”
Despite the proliferation of at-home technology like the 75-inch TV screen and smart soundbars, Zussman believes there will be always be a premium on simply being there. As Wealth’s writer Josh Kampel writes:
The lesson for Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment is that getting people into the building is only the beginning. If consumers are willing to leave the convenience of their homes for a live experience, the entire experience needs to justify that decision.
“A month from now, whether we won or lost might be less important to your overall feeling when you recount how your evening went than everything else,” Zussman says. “Did you enter easily? Were people welcoming? Was the environment clean and inviting? Was the food good? How was the service, the music and the energy around you?”
As CEO of the parent company, Zussman doesn’t control those wins and losses. That’s up to Sean Marks and Jordi Fernandez at the Nets and Jonathan Kolb and Chris DeMarco at the Liberty. But everything else is his domain and as he told Kampel, that universe is expanding. The bet is that
A big part of his responsibility is creating an arena-centric “ecosystem” that may ultimately include everything from a hotel, conference center and a selection of restaurants, some at the arena, some steps away, even a wine club. BSE already has a stake in the Brooklyn Paramount Theater up Flatbush from Barclays and the lobby of the old Williamsburgh Savings Bank around the corner.
Zussman has spoken about the concept of an “ecosystem” that enhances the arena experience before. He’s mentioned it in interviews with Bloomberg News in 2024 and with CTech, an Israeli business site, in May. In the Wealth interview, he updates things … and offers an insight into how even the Brooklyn Basketball Training Center across the street fits within the experience rubric.
Kampel notes:
There is a broader ambition for the neighborhood surrounding the arena. Barclays Center already brings millions of visitors into Brooklyn, supporting jobs, businesses and economic activity. The opportunity now is to translate that traffic into more year-round activity.
“When you come to run a business, you sort of have to think about, in a bigger sense, what does the business mean?” Zussman says. “What opportunities do I have? And what responsibilities do I have?”
The Brooklyn Basketball Training Center, in the remodeled Modell’s space, offers one such opportunity, one Zussman believes works with another signature initiative, generational fandom. It attempts to create new Nets and Liberty fans at an early age, as young as 8-to-10 years old.
The initiative already reaches 50,000 young people annually through free clinics at more than 250 New York City public schools, each of whom gets a Nets branded t-shirt, a mini-advertisement. At its center, though, is the training center. As Wealth notes, the 18,600-square-foot, multi-court facility serves as a year-round home for those clinics training, camps, advanced development and dedicated all-girls programs, incorporating Shoot 360 technology used by NBA teams — along with dedicated space for students to do homework and parents to gather.
“Imagine that you are 10-years-old and you’re playing there with other kids from Brooklyn and your coach is telling you, ‘if you do everything right and if you work hard enough, one day you can play right over here across the street,’” he says. “Think about what that can do to shape individuals and to shape a community.”
The goal, says Zussman is simple: a child introduced to basketball at eight can become a Nets or Liberty fan at 12, attend games with family at 16 and maintains that relationship decades later when he or she is buying tickets or merchandise for the next generation.
The Knicks title, complete with a parade route filled with two million fans and a speech by the Mayor, may have put a crimp into that strategy, but according to multiple sources in ownership and management, it’s here to stay. The belief is that while the Knicks win brought new attention to the city’s legacy team, it’s made the city even more a hotbed of basketball and the NBA brand. That, they believe, ultimately will transfer to their brand.
BSE is also investing big time in hospitality offerings both inside the arena or steps away. A lot of the five-year, $150 million enhancement of the arena is about dining, whether on site where three new restaurants have opened in the last three years, or at a new planned high-end restaurant in the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. (The conversion is subject to approval by the City Landmarks Preservation Commission.)
According to Zussman, the three on-site offerings represent what fans told BSE they wanted: places where they could gather with other people rather than simply arrive, sit in an assigned seat and leave. And while the Toki Row and Jet Blue at the Key are more attuned to higher end customers, the Modelo Bridge has a broader clientele.
There’s also a less known investment in media and content that aims to keeps audiences connected when they are nowhere near the arena. Zussman said that a lot of that thinking is driven by something that David Stern, the late NBA commissioner told him: the overwhelming majority of a team’s fans may never visit its arena.
So we see a series of highly produced videos on everything from Jordi Fernandez’s personal history to reviews of last season’s highlights and the off-season as well as podcasts, history lessons, and interviews, all of it cataloged on the YouTube sites of the Nets. The Liberty site has similar features and post-game interviews. Zussman also purchased a local magazine, renamed it BKMag which offers a connection between the overall Brooklyn culture and BSE’s offerings. (A more youth-oriented site, Type.Set.Brooklyn, has stopped publication.)
“I think that is what creates emotional connection,” Zussman says of the media.
Bottom line, he says, is taking advantage of Brooklyn’s unique personality, the same theme that has resonated through the organization’s thinking since Bruce Ratner and Brett Yormark engineered the move to the borough.
“Brooklyn is the epicenter of creation, of innovation, of artists, of designers, of musicians,” Zussman says. “That means merchandise should have a Brooklyn edge, hospitality should reflect the borough and seeing an artist at Barclays Center should somehow feel different from seeing that same performer in another arena.”
What’s next? Although Zussman didn’t talk much about the larger brick-and-mortar elements like the hotel, etc., his Chief Financial Officer Peter Stern, in a separate interview with CFO Magazine, hinted that vision is intact, referring to it as “adjacent opportunities” and citing what other teams are doing.
”Teams are thinking about how they can make their customers’ experience better before the game and after the game. Should I have a restaurant down the block? Should I have an entertainment opportunity after the game?“ Stern told CFO’s Adam Zaki. ”You’ve seen that done in Chicago with the Cubs, for instance, where the organization literally bought up the land all around, or what the Buffalo Bills are doing with new mixed-use facilities that they’re building.“
One tangible indication of the seriousness of the larger vision? The old Modell’s site where Brooklyn Basketball Training Center sits is likely to be replaced by a 799-foot skyscraper in a few years. But Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards-Pacific Park Report wrote recently, the building’s developer has said there have been “numerous discussions about maintaining the basketball center“ at the site.
It’s all a big investment and Zussman says he’s confident his bosses, Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, are ready to pay for it, as Kampel writes. It’s a bet “to use sports as the foundation for a year-round relationship with consumers and, in the process, make Barclays Center and the surrounding neighborhood an even more important destination for entertainment, culture and hospitality.”
