The New York Red Bulls found a lead architectural designer for the team’s new training complex in Morris Township: Gensler.
The Harrison-based Major League Soccer franchise announced Feb. 6 that the global architecture, design and planning firm will lead all architectural and design planning for the facility at the 80-acre former Honeywell site off Columbia Road.
Located within 1 mile of the Route 24 interchange with County Road 510, the site will feature eight soccer pitches. In addition to housing the First Team and Red Bulls II, the complex will also serve as the base for the club’s New York Red Bulls Academy and Youth Training programs.
“Gensler will provide world-class architectural planning expertise as we partner to build the premier training complex in all of Major League Soccer,” said Red Bulls General Manager Marc de Grandpré in a statement. “Our shared vision for this facility is something that our entire organization, along with the Morris Township community, will be extremely proud of for many years to come.”
“We are honored to partner with the New York Red Bulls to create their new home, which will bring their professional team, academy and youth development programs together in one location,” Jonathan Emmett, principal and design director, Gensler, said in a prepared statement. “The core design concept for the training complex focuses on the performance, health and wellbeing of the athletes, coaches and staff.”
The New York Red Bulls play home matches at Red Bull Arena in Harrison.
The New York Red Bulls will face FC Barcelona in a friendly match July 30 at Red Bull Arena. – NEW YORK RED BULLS
The New York Red Bulls and one of the most prolific sports teams in the world will go head-to-head in a friendly match July 30 at Red Bull Arena.
Tickets to the Red Bulls’ game against FC Barcelona sold out almost as soon as they were available. However, the secondary ticket market is going gangbusters with available seats selling for between $280 and $4,927.
The exhibition game against the Red Bulls is part of a four-match U.S. tour for FC Barcelona, which has won 75 trophies domestically and five Champions League tournaments overall. The Red Bulls have played several friendlies over the years against other international dynamos, including Chelsea FC of the Premier League, but Chief Marketing & Revenue Officer Joe Stetson said that “to host FC Barcelona, a global powerhouse, is incredible.”
Stetson said friendlies like the upcoming FC Barcelona match help expand awareness of the Red Bulls club, and that the awareness translates to more fans, more national partners, and a bigger national presence.
“[Our partners] were, as you could imagine, pumped [and] excited” to find out about the FC Barcelona match, Stetson said. “Some of our partners, they raised their hands immediately saying ‘can we do more for this match?’ Hackensack Meridian Health is going to activate. Audi is the presenting sponsor of the post game fireworks show. We’ve had other partners that really wanted to know, ‘can we make sure some of the content that we’re sponsors of will be present at that game?’ We’ve been able to accomplish that.”
Tickets were mostly reserved for Red Members. The ardent supporters of the club get tickets to the team’s 17 regular season games as well as bonus matches. Tickets were also available as an add-on for folks purchasing admission to other games. In June, the final few thousand seats were made available to the general public, and they quickly sold out.
“Really, we wanted to make sure that we were taking care of our Red members. They’re the lifeblood of our club and we wanted to make sure they had access to tickets and that they felt this was a special perk,” Stetson said.
The national – and even global – eyes on the Red Bulls due to this game are exciting for a couple of key reasons.
For one thing, Major League Soccer has the youngest, most diverse and fastest growing audience in sports. Additionally, the match is just months ahead of the upcoming FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. And in four years, part of the World Cup, one of the biggest sporting events in the world, will be held just down the road at MetLife Stadium.
The FC Barcelona-Red Bulls match begins at 7 p.m. on July 30. Activities and performances will kick off at 5 p.m. Following the game, Audi is sponsoring a fireworks show. The match will be broadcast on MSG Network and on RedBull TV, a free app, and its associated webpage redbull.tv.
The game and its reach provide “a great opportunity for us, for our building, for our fans, to really showcase what we do here,” Stetson said. “To really get in front of new fans, to get in front of new potential partners.”
Foreign exchange trading platform OANDA Corp. is the New York Red Bulls’ official jersey sleeve patch partner as of May 7, when the Red Bulls host the Portland Timbers at Red Bull Arena in Harrison.
The newly minted multiyear partnership, announced May 6, is the first foray into sports marketing for OANDA, a global leader in online trading services.
The OANDA logo will appear on the right sleeve of the jersey and be included on select club apparel. Authentic club jerseys will be available for purchase and the sleeve patch will also be included in the EA Sports FIFA video game series.
Red Bulls General Manager Marc de Grandpré – NEW YORK RED BULLS
The partnership expands into the broader world of Red Bull, too, including experiential and branding assets at select Red Bull events and media properties.
“We are thrilled to welcome OANDA to the Red Bull family,” said New York Red Bulls General Manager Marc de Grandpré. “We are extremely proud to be the first sports industry partner for OANDA and look forward to driving increased awareness for them in the marketplace with our unique, multifaceted partnership.”
OANDA CEO Gavin Bambury called it “an exciting opportunity to partner with the New York Red Bulls, one of the most inspiring clubs in Major League Soccer.”
“With this sponsorship, we continue to build our reputation as one of the most trusted retail trading firms and an award-winning platform for clients to trade at their best,” Bambury said. “It takes a unique and passionate commitment to succeed in reaching peak performance in trading the markets, and in pushing for innovation to constantly raise your game. This is the mindset OANDA shares with the New York Red Bulls.”
Red Bull Arena, the Harrison home of Major League Soccer club the New York Red Bulls, recently underwent upgrades to its premium spaces, including the Provident Bank Suite Lounge. – NEW YORK RED BULLS
Red Bull Arena, the Harrison home of Major League Soccer club the New York Red Bulls, recently underwent upgrades to its premium spaces, including the Audi Club, Bulls Corner, Provident Bank Suite Lounge and the brand-new Midfield Suite, the club announced May 5.
“In our first five home matches of the 2022 season at Red Bull Arena, we have hosted more guests in the premium spaces than any other similar span of time in the history of the venue,” said Red Bull Arena Vice President of Operations Shaun Oliver. “The creation of the Midfield Suite allows guests on the fourth and fifth levels of the Provident Bank Suite Lounge to have a more direct connection to the action on the field.
“When revisualizing the individual suites, we wanted to leave a canvas for our partners to have the opportunity to customize their branding and preferred environment. We are proud to provide our partners and guests with an even more first-class experience for all events at Red Bull Arena,” he said.
The entire suite level was gutted and renovated. The new Midfield Suite space is capable of hosting events for up to 54 people — and treats them to panoramic views of the field from four floors up. The 27 indoor suites of the Provident Bank Suite Lounge have new flooring, carpeting and brand-new furniture. The fourth floor of the premium area now has a satellite BULLShop retail store; and on the fifth floor, suite guests can play FIFA 22 in a new gaming lounge on matchdays.
Audi Club and Bulls Corner both received a full refresh and resurfacing. Audi Club has new flooring and furniture to allow for a more lounge-style premium experience, while Bulls Corner received a complete renovation with new flooring and carpeting, along with brand new lounge-style furniture to transform the previous pub-like set up into a modern lounge.
“In our first five home matches of the 2022 season at Red Bull Arena, we have hosted more guests in the premium spaces than any other similar span of time in the history of the venue,” said Red Bull Arena Vice President of Operations Shaun Oliver. – NEW YORK RED BULLS
Kean University is teaming up with the New York Red Bulls to create academic and career opportunities for students. – KEAN UNIVERSITY
Harrison-based Major League Soccer club New York Red Bulls announced a multi-year partnership with Kean University in Union that will provide students with experiential learning and career opportunities.
According to the March 23 announcement, Kean University will gain access to internship, full-time job and sales opportunities for students and alumni through a streamlined application process with the MLS club.
The Red Bulls will establish an employee mentorship program with students that will include shadowing and networking events. Kean students can also participate in community service projects with the organization; and the Red Bulls will host some on-campus events at the university.
“We are thrilled to launch this partnership with the New York Red Bulls,” said Kean President Lamont O. Repollet in a prepared statement. “It’s another example of how Kean is working with major organizations and companies to support our work and our students. This initiative will provide students with valuable career connections and experiences that directly support their success.”
“The value of experiential and hands-on education is critical in today’s day and age,” said Joe Stetson, chief marketing and revenue officer for the New York Red Bulls. “Students will have the opportunity to learn, grow and enhance their skills while professionally developing alongside some of the best minds in the sports industry.”
The 2022 Major League Soccer season opened on Feb. 26 with the New Jersey-based entrant, the New York Red Bulls, defeating the San Jose Earthquakes 3-1 on the West Coast. So it’s the perfect time check in the team and find out how the franchise and the league as a whole weathered the last two pandemic years and what the new season could bring.
For this edition of NJBIZ Conversations, Editor Jeff Kanige spoke with Red Bulls General Manager Marc de Grandpré about the state of the league, what the World Cup will mean for the business of soccer in the U.S. and how the local team is likely to fare this year – both on the field and off – after a seventh-place finish last season.
“We’re excited,” de Grandpré said. “We have a good young roster. We just announced a few key acquisitions … last year was our 12th consecutive season in the playoffs. We’ve consistently competed and we know we’re going to keep competing here in 2022 and we can’t wait for the season to start.
To watch the full interview, click on the image below.
Red Bulls General Manager Marc de Grandpré participates in the Bulls’ 11 Days of Service at Branch Brook Park in Newark in 2019. – MIKE LAWRENCE/NEW YORK RED BULLS
The 2022 Major League Soccer season opened on Feb. 26 with the New Jersey-based entrant, the New York Red Bulls playing the San Jose Earthquakes on the West Coast. So it’s the perfect time to check in on the team and find out how the franchise and the league as a whole weathered the last two pandemic years and what the new season could bring.
Toward that end, NJBIZ recently spoke with Red Bulls General Manager Marc de Grandpré about the state of the league, what the World Cup will mean for the business of soccer in the U.S. and how the local team is likely to fare this year – both on the field and off – after a seventh-place finish last season.
“We’re excited,” de Grandpre said. “We have a good young roster. We just announced a few key acquisitions … last year was our 12th consecutive season in the playoffs. We’ve consistently competed and we know we’re going to keep competing here in 2022 and we can’t wait for the season to start.”
What follows is an abridged version of the conversation. The questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity. A video of the full interview is available at njbiz.com/njbizconversations.
NJBIZ: What is it going to be like this year inside Red Bull arena? What are you expecting in terms of attendance and what should fans expect when they when they come to the arena this year?
Marc de Grandpré: So, first and foremost the fans should know that we’re going to keep their health and safety top of mind. Obviously, we know we’re still, let’s say we’re in the endemic phase of this thing hopefully. But it’s going to be back to some normalcy. We want fans to feel comfortable, safe. We’re excited about opening up all the doors.
“We have a good young roster. We just announced a few key acquisitions … last year was our 12th consecutive season in the playoffs,” said Red Bulls General Manager Marc de Grandpré. “We’ve consistently competed and we know we’re going to keep competing here in 2022 and we can’t wait for the season to start.” – NEW YORK RED BULLS
Last year we started with some restrictions, with some limited capacity. This year, none of that. We’re coming right in.
And we’ve seen a great trend. Obviously, the last two seasons have been difficult and now we’re looking at our renewal rate for our season tickets – or Red Memberships – up in the mid 80s, which are pre-pandemic numbers. So we’re really excited. And we’ve sold more new memberships or season tickets than we ever did pre-pandemic, so these are exciting trends, we can feel that sports are coming back to life, and we all know how that plays an important role in the community. We feel that we offer a great opportunity for fans to come and engage and we think they’re all waiting for it.
As usual, we’ll provide them with a great experience right before the game. We provide what we call The Boulevard where kids and families can interact with certain games. Pregame, there’s a beer garden for adults and then in-game, we all know that the atmosphere is unique at Red Bull Arena, the energy is great. We’re excited about where we’re going and the trends in terms of our ticket sales right now. Really positive.
Q: When I’ve spoken to other people who run venues like yours, or who are involved in live entertainment, the feeling is that there is a real hunger to get back inside to experience live events. Are you picking up the same thing from your fanbase?
A: Absolutely. If you look at just the numbers I just laid out for you in terms of renewal rates, it’s exciting. Even the average price of our tickets for Red Memberships has gone up $200, so there’s clearly a good perceived value and fans want to be here.
We look at our partnership sales, they’re continuing to go in the right direction. So not only fans, partners, but the community as a whole is really excited to be back to some normalcy and participate in these moments. We’ve missed them for two years and now hopefully it comes back to what we had previously.
Q: Well you anticipated the next thing I want to talk about, and that is partnerships. I’m curious how you were able to maintain those given the limitations that you’ve had over the over the past two years. What did you need to do to keep those partners close, to keep them coming back?
A: I’m really proud of how our partnership teams really managed to retain our partners. We’ve retained over 85% of our partners through the pandemic, which is tremendous. We did that by offering them more virtual experiences; we had closed-door events. We offered them a lot of virtual space in the building. We created new assets for them. We created new content outside of the matches so we could be partners on some content with our players. …
Now we look this year to come back to some normalcy. We’ve redone all our suites here. We’re renovating the building. And that’s an exciting new asset that our team is selling — we have great partners already there.
Our sleeve patches is an asset that’s very important to us. We’re in deep conversations with a few partners there so that’s another good sign.
And look, our New Jersey base of partners is really strong. We have 18 very strong partners that are based in New Jersey and we’re really proud to have them be part of our club. We know that as the club comes back, as the sport comes back to normal, that’s only going to gain some momentum.
Q: Again talking to other folks who are in your line of business, there are two levels of engagement, one is the fans in the seats, the other is the engagement of the partners. With nobody in the stands or with few people in the stands what was it that kept them coming back? Is it just loyalty to the brand? Is it loyalty to the organization? What were they getting out of it when there were few games or no games or no fans?
Patryk Klimala of New York Red Bulls during an MLS regular season game against NYCFC at Red Bull Arena in Harrison on Wednesday September 22, 2021. – MIKE LAWRENCE/NEW YORK RED BULLS
A: That’s a great question. I think it’s part and parcel — you talked about loyalty and service and the way we’ve managed them and really it’s a relationship business at the end of the day. And our team has done a great job.
But it was really us listening to what they needed during this pandemic and how we could bring their brand to life through other channels, other than a match. So we listened to our partners, they gave us feedback. And we found ways to activate around their needs, and that was really critical in our approach, and I think it paid off. If you look at our renewal rate right now heading into 2022 season.
Q: Now the arena itself is a wonderful place. It’s relatively new. You said you’re renovating the suites – they were nice already. It’s in a good spot, you’re in the middle of Harrison, it’s right off Route 280. It’s accessible by mass transit. I’m curious as to whether you see opportunities for non-soccer events at the arena? Is there anything planned along those lines?
A: It’s a timely question. this year we really put a concerted effort behind expanding our portfolio of events at the arena. We’re really pushing forward to get a concert. We’ll start with one, maybe two, this year. The last concert we had was in 2011 and it was a great success. We need to make sure we replicate that more often.
We’ve expanded our portfolio of sports. We’ve had lacrosse. We’ve had rugby. We’re looking at other American sports down the line.
New York Red Bulls’ Arena – NEW YORK RED BULLS
And we’ve expanded our events that are non-ticketed. So corporate events in the building, car shows. We’re really looking to expand that business. Last year we had the most events ever at the arena, running soccer and non-soccer events. We had over 60 events. Now we need to really engage larger scale events like concerts and we’ve put a full concerted effort behind it. We have someone internally now managing that and hopefully we’ll see some fruits of their labors come to life shortly.
Q: Wow you’re really looking at this as an asset. Because when you look at it from the outside, and when you’re in there, you look around and think “this is really valuable.”
A: It’s absolutely one of our most underutilized assets and we’ve got to make sure that it becomes a lot more efficient and use it to help us drive more revenue for the business, ultimately that we can reinvest in the team and the building.
Q: Now, you also mentioned the community and I’m curious as to how you see your role in the community, and what you do to make yourself a part of that community. Tell us a little bit about where that starts and where it’s going at this point.
A: That’s another great question. We’ve got multiple channels and touch points with the community. Obviously, we feel the community is really important to our organization. We want them to feel as if they’re part of ours.
We have our youth programs, which is a a tremendous asset. We run the largest youth soccer program in the country. We [reach] almost 50,000 kids in 125 communities between New Jersey and New York.
And we really bring it to life, where we started this business 16 years ago with a few employees. We have 30 employees now managing that. We have 150 coaches out in the community teaching the game of soccer. Think about the impact that can have on our fan base in the community
We also serve underserved communities. We make sure that we are providing outreach programs for underserved communities, disabled kids, to make sure everyone has access to the game. That’s a big part of our community outreach.
We’ve rolled out over the last five years over 21 mini-pitches around the New York New Jersey area. These are pitches that we collaborate with local communities, we’ll put one at a high school or an elementary school where the kids can safely play soccer. And we also program it after school. We don’t just put the pitches in and move away. The kids can go and learn the game, it’s programmed by our coaches. So it’s really important for us to be really actively involved.
We do a lot of work with autism. Every year, we have a big match in April and this year it’s going to be our Autism Aceptance match and it’s going to be brought to you by Hackensack Meridian Health. So we’re really excited about that. We want to make sure that the game is accessible for all families, not only folks with typical kids, but we want to make sure that any family can be here on game day and enjoy it.
Q: Those youth programs, are they a charity for you or part of your business? How does that work?
A: No, no. It’s a very important piece of our business. It’s a unique piece of our business for us. Obviously, we run clinics, camps and we partner with certain communities to provide all their coaching. So it’s a big revenue driver for us.
It’s also an engagement driver for those young kids. Anytime a kid is engaged with us, they get a ticket to get to come to the match and it helps us sort of build that future fan base. We started at the age of 3, all the way up through 18.
Q: Are there are other organizations that you work with in Harrison or in Newark? I’m wondering whether there’s any kind of cooperation or relationship between you and some of the other anchor institutions in that region?
A: Yes. We work closely with the Newark public school system. We are very active there. We run a a mentoring program with their kids where some of their students come over here and get mentored by our staff on a monthly basis. We do that, every year. …
In Harrison we’ve done the same thing. It’s all about, as I said earlier, we have to be part of the community. Part of the role of any sporting organization is really to give back and provide opportunities to inspire that local community to fall in love with the game.
Q: Now I know you also are planning a new training facility, actually just a couple of miles from where I’m sitting right now in Morris County. What’s the status of that and what was the thinking behind it. You already have what I’m guessing is a pretty nice one in East Hanover, again just a few miles from here. What’s that going to do for you and where are you in terms of getting it going?
A: We’re excited about this new project. As you know, we announced that late last year. It’s about an 80-acre complex where we’re going to build a state of the art training facility. Where we are in East Hanover it’s been a great partnership. We’ve outgrown it. We just don’t have enough space for all our team, we need more space so we’re going to build out nine pitches there and we’ll also basically consolidate our operations. Right now we have the sporting side in East Hanover and our front office at the stadium here. [At] this new facility, everyone will be under one roof and it will provide us a better opportunity to improve communication, collaboration across the organization. We think we’ll be able to get into the ground, hopefully later this year and complete it by early 2024.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.