🔒Amid pandemic, Hartford Athletic’s early reopening a blueprint for other downtown pro sports clubs

Hartford Athletic staff huddle around a conference call every Tuesday morning for what is likely the most important conversation of the week.

The governor’s office patches into the feed, while Athletic staff are armed with ideas on how the second division professional soccer startup can safely host its next limited-capacity crowd at Dillon Stadium on Huyshope Avenue.

“Everyone is very positive, but smart, that the number one priority is safety,” Hartford Athletic co-founder and Chairman Bruce Mandell said of collaborating with state and city officials on reopening Dillon. “We look at each game individually to make sure, most importantly, that people are wearing their masks and staying distanced.”

That’s been the weekly routine for more than two months as the second-year United Soccer League (USL) club was among the first professional sports teams in the U.S. to resume play during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The lack of sports activity nationally even helped the Athletic score a nationally televised appearance on ESPN2 in recent weeks.

Resuming play has been a financial win for the Athletic, but it also serves as a test run for other Hartford pro sports teams and venues that are eager to welcome fans with new social distancing, capacity and cleaning protocols, team and city officials say.

It also gives state and city officials an opportunity to gauge public interest in going to events during the pandemic, said Michael Freimuth, executive director of the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA), which operates, maintains and markets Dillon, the XL Center, Connecticut Convention Center and Rentschler Field in East Hartford.

“It’s teaching us how to go about the business, how to screen, how to train staff, how to operate food and beverages, how to direct traffic flow of people,” Freimuth said. “All those are lessons we are picking up right now.”

While the Athletic is working to blunt the financial impact of COVID-19, in part, with game revenues, its downtown counterparts are faced with similar budget obstacles.

The Hartford Wolf Pack was embarking on the busiest part of its year (in terms of paid attendance) when the pandemic forced the American Hockey League (AHL) to cancel the remainder of the regular season and playoffs.

With eight games remaining at the XL Center, the New York Rangers’ top farm team was on pace to earn a berth in the 2020 Calder Cup Playoffs.

The Yard Goats in downtown’s north end missed out on 70 regular season games at Dunkin’ Donuts Park, which typically draws more than 400,000 fans a year.

Additionally, the AHL has delayed the start of next season to at least Dec. 4, and Minor League Baseball could postpone the start of the 2021 season, according to multiple media reports.

Team officials from the Wolf Pack and Yard Goats say they are working on reopening plans, and are eagerly waiting for league and state guidance on how to safely reopen.

“We haven’t gotten the greenlight on Rentschler, the NCAA or AHL,” Freimuth said. “If they want to do the season, we still need the state to authorize phase three [reopening plans].”

A partial season

While the Athletic is still projected to lose money in 2020, hosting at least nine games at Dillon through October could position team owners, the Hartford Sports Group, to break even next season with the potential for profitability in the years after, Mandell said.

Gameday revenue from ticket, merchandise and concessions sales is also helping to salvage the club’s next major investment: a new state-of-the-art training-office complex that will house both players and staff under the same roof. Mandell said the team’s new headquarters will be unveiled in the next month or so, but declined to offer other details on the ongoing project. The club’s 20 or so employees are currently based on Pratt Street downtown.

Support from fans and corporate sponsors is also closing the gap on projected revenue shortfalls, Mandell said.

Through a new redemption program, most season ticket holders did not request refunds and worked with the team on different ticket options. Mandell said the Athletic’s founding sponsors — including Trinity Health of New England, Travelers, The Hartford, Cigna, Stanley Black & Decker and LAZ Parking, among others — also remained committed to their combined annual pledge of approximately $1 million.

The Athletic is also still shopping the naming rights of Dillon, a 5,500-seat stadium renovated in 2018, to potential local and regional sponsors as it works to achieve profitability by 2022. Mandell said the team will also need to draw roughly 5,000 paid attendees per game if it’s going to break even next year.

“I think really the question would have been if we didn’t have a season,” Mandell said. “That would have been very negatively impactful.”

Philadelphia-based Spectra, which provides venue management services for the XL Center and Dillon, played a major role in presenting new ideas on how to curb the spread of COVID-19 at Dillon, officials said.​​ Many focused on closing sections of the stadium to fans, and teaching event staff to enforce new hand-washing and face mask requirements, among other tips.

With Dillon’s seating capacity limited at 25%, Mandell said the Athletic’s first three home games prove it can safely manage crowds of about 1,375 fans.

“Now we will consider slowly, potentially, trying to increase that,” Mandell said. “But again, with safety being the number one priority.”

Kicking the can

Hartford Yard Goats management was not surprised when league officials canceled the team’s 2020 season in late June, according to General Manager Mike Abramson.

After all, the Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies at the time would have only been able to host about 30 home games at Dunkin’ Donuts Park, which has led the Eastern League in total attendance for two consecutive years. Weeks earlier, the Yard Goats also struck a deal with the city to skip one of its two $250,000 ballpark rent payments because the club was not likely to host games this year.

“It’s different than it was for us in 2016, when the reason we weren’t playing in Hartford was because the new ballpark wasn’t built,” Abramson said of development hiccups that delayed the ballpark’s debut and forced the team to play its inaugural season entirely on the road.

Abramson said his staff has turned its attention to hosting and developing smaller events at the stadium.

The new “Dinner on the Diamond” event, he says, has been especially popular with fans, who can share a socially distanced meal on the field for $20 or more per person.

The team is also opening the stadium for amatuer-level baseball games, and is hoping to host its annual par-3 golf course event later this year. Its annual Brew Fest will likely be canceled this fall, Abramson said.

Pandemic ends playoff bid

The long-established Hartford Wolf Pack was on pace to hit its 2019-2020 attendance goals when the coronavirus pandemic put its season on ice in March, team officials say.

In the first five months of the season, the team won 21 of 30 home games at the XL Center drawing 119,015 fans, or 3,967 per contest. Attendance was also expected to climb this spring as the franchise earned its first playoff appearance since 2015.

“We had the moment, and there was quite a bit of excitement going into the tail end of the year,” said Ben Weiss, the XL Center’s general manager who also oversees business operations for the Wolf Pack. “Those final two-and-a-half months are our biggest months, and it had a big impact on us losing those final eight games.”

An undisclosed number of the XL Center’s 45 full-time employees, and more than 500 part-time event staff, were furloughed due to COVID-19-related shutdowns, Weiss said.

For now, the venue, he says, cannot fully move forward with planning Wolf Pack or UConn basketball and hockey games this fall and winter until the state and leagues offer guidance on how to safely host fans indoors.

But Weiss and Freimuth both agree there’s still time to implement new protocols and train staff for XL Center events this fall.

“We are working on a reopening plan, but that depends on what our new capacity will be,” Weiss said. “We are assuming it will be limited.”