Mercedes-Benz Stadium faces an early test with three events expected to draw about 200,000 fans over the next five days.
It helps that all three events are football games, minimizing the field conversion work, but the challenge is still considerable for a stadium that opened just last weekend.
“We don’t have the luxury of a run-up period,” Scott Jenkins, general manager of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, said Wednesday. “We’re hitting it hard right from the get-go.”
A Falcons-Jacksonville Jaguars exhibition game Thursday night will be followed by two Chick-fil-A Kickoff college-football games – Alabama vs. Florida State on Saturday night and Georgia Tech vs. Tennessee on Monday night.
Converting the field for these events largely will involve changing the logos and team names on the artificial turf and redrawing the hashmarks from NFL to college specifications -- a much simpler turnaround than coming conversions between, say, football and soccer.
The larger challenge is “probably everything else that goes on around these events and the time we have to turn the building and get it ready for the next game,” Jenkins said. “... It’s a first time we’re doing it, which makes it challenging.”
The 2,700 retractable seats at the top of the upper deck, located along the sidelines and behind the west end zone, will be deployed for the first time Saturday. That will push the stadium’s capacity to almost 75,000.
The Alabama-Florida State game also will attract more media members than a typical Falcons game.
Almost immediately after each event, work will begin on cleaning the building for the next one. The building’s digital signage simplifies the changeovers, but some decorations, such as banners, will be added for the college games, Jenkins said.
With one day between each event, the turnarounds aren’t as tight as some the stadium staff will face soon. For example, Atlanta United will play there Sept. 16, followed the next night by the Falcons’ regular-season home opener against the Green Bay Packers.
“This is a good test for us, with these three events in short order,” said Jenkins, who previously ran stadium operations for the Seattle Mariners, Philadelphia Eagles and Milwaukee Brewers. “But we’re going to have to get really good at it and turn the building in less than 24 hours eventually.”
While the Georgia World Congress Center Authority operated the Georgia Dome – site of 11 previous Chick-fil-A Kickoff games – the Falcons organization operates Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Gary Stokan, CEO of Peach Bowl Inc., which includes the Chick-fil-A Kickoff, is excited about moving the event into the $1.5 billion, 2-million-square-foot stadium. But he acknowledged a new building brings new issues, in part because fans will be unfamiliar with it.
“There’s obviously some trepidation when you go into anything new,” Stokan said Wednesday. “It’s a change, and you try and prepare as much as you can. We have had walk-throughs, have scouted it, and we’re depending on our partner in Mercedes-Benz Stadium. They’re experts, they’re pros, and we think it’s going to be an awesome experience for fans.”
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