It’s ambitious but so far basically amorphous but we’re about to see more from the BSE Global on plans for the area around Barclays Center
For 20 years, “Brooklyn” as a brand has been at the core of the Nets marketing efforts. Leaving suburban soft-scrub New Jersey behind, the team sought to create an image in sync with the borough’s rising profile as cool, urban and gritty.
Each owner since Brooklyn developer Bruce Ratner to Russian oligarch Mikal Prokhorov to Chinese entrepreneur Joe Tsai and his wife, philanthropic entrepreneur Clara Wu Tsai, has pushed and pushed Brooklyn, its unique history and culture. The Tsais may be the last to embrace the borough, but there’s ample reason to suggest that they see its potential and are accelerating the process of fulfilling it.
Call it the zeitgeist of Brooklyn. They do.
As we and others have reported, the Tsais along with their minority investors, an element of the Koch family, have ambitious plans for the area around Barclays Center, making it a “destination.”
“It’s a “vision where you’re coming here; you can stay at our hotel; you can go to our game; you can dine at a restaurant; you can do a conference at our conference center; you can go to the magic show venue; you can go have a drink at our bar,” Sam Zussman, the Tsais’ CEO told Bloomberg last October. “And you’re constantly in our ecosystem.”
The plans are reportedly modeled them on L.A. Live the Lakers’ successful $3 billion entertainment district built around crypto.com (formerly Staples) arena.
There’s been no formal announcement of the scope of the plan since just a smattering of info here and there, a lot of “perhaps,” you might say. In the last month, though there have been more and more intimations of the ambition with more likely coming in the next few weeks.
Beyond the brick-and-mortar of a hotel and conference center, perhaps at the site of the abandoned Modell’s across from Barclays or pieces of iconic Brooklyn venues like the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre or the retail space on the first floor of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, once home to Brooklyn Flea, there are plans for everything from an owned-and-operated media company. perhaps called Boom, to a wine club, a marketplace perhaps in that bank retail space, circuses perhaps on the arena plaza, One niche after the other, as Sports Business Journal reported.
Among the public iterations of the ambition: On Thursday evening, BSE Global will premiere a documentary on Vince Carter, “From Daytona Beach to Brooklyn,” at Brooklyn Paramount of which BSE Global has a “minority interest.”
Then, next Wednesday, BSE will host the debut Brooklyn Wine Club event, part of the company’s Brooklyn Hospitality Group, at Barclays’ newest premium club, The Toki Row High-end customers — annual club memberships go for $1,500 — are invited to sample some of the world’s most expensive wines as well as some “savory bites” from from Fort Greene’s Margot.
It’s the start of something bigger, BSE’s Chief Hospitality Officer Shanon Ferguson told NetsDaily, Business Insider and Sports Illustrated recently. “Just to throw a couple out there,” he told such as magic or comedy or circus and potentially marketplaces that will ultimately allow us to round out a full array of complimentary assets under the BSE umbrella,” said Ferguson. An annual Brooklyn Wine and Food Festival … perhaps.
Also, coming soon, in “early 2025,” according to Business Insider, the next BSE Global group, the Brooklyn Media Group. “an expansive media and entertainment company … a brand that is rooted in Brooklyn culture but can travel nationally and even globally.”
Reports are sketchy but like with other parts of the plan, you can see some basic outlines, starting with the acquisition of Brooklyn Magazine now BKMAG, last May. Now more of a guide to Brooklyn entertainment and fashion choices — including some related to Nets offerings — as well as a smattering of news and culture, both high and pop, it’s likely to be expanded … a lot.
“They’re trying to be like the voice of Brooklyn,” a source with knowledge of BSE’s plans told Business Insider’s Lucia Moses. “There’s a national opportunity that doesn’t exist with Brooklyn Magazine. People name their kids Brooklyn.”
Inside, according to BI, they call the media plan “Brand X.”
Indeed, there is a model for the media: complex.com, Business Insider reports that BSE Global has raided the staff of the youth-oriented website that features a similar men of youth-related articles on music, food, fashion and sneakers and even had its long-form video series on YouTube as well as a festival called ComplexCon in Las Vegas.
According to BI’s Moses, Zussman has “brought on at least five Complex veterans. He also hired former longtime Complex CEO Rich Antoniello as an advisor.”
That, however, may not be the end of the Tsais’ media ambitions. Moses hinted that television — or at least video — could be of interest to BSE Global but she also appeared skeptical of how successful the plans will be even with Zussman, a veteran of sports and culture agency IMG, and group head and the Media Group’s Chief Products & Experiences Officer DeJuan Wilson who’s worked at Endeavor, Coca-Cola, Nike, and SoundCloud.
It should be noted as well that with fewer and fewer legacy media covering the Brooklyn Nets, the team is producing more and more content in-house. The Carter documentary is the third this season, following those on Dennis Schroder and Cam Thomas. They have also created film studies and podcasts, both featuring our Lucas Kaplan.
There are some parts of the overall plan that have been laid out in a more detailed fashion like the ambitious, five-year, $100 million plan to “enhance fan experience” at the 12-year-old Barclays Center.
[F]uture projects include creating a dynamic, communal gathering space and improved food and beverage offerings on the upper concourse, upgrading and adding to existing premium spaces in the arena, upgrading arena entrances, and finishing off with a state of the art new centerhung and sound system.
The first aspects of that plan, the two premium clubs, are already open.
And there are also plans for Brooklyn Basketball. a community basketball center at shuttered Modell’s store. It may be temporary but it will provide six courts until the building is torn down.
The arena initiative is being financed by the sale of a 15% stake in BSE Global by the Kochs who will likely play large role in the larger project. Bottom line: the Tsais — and Kochs — have big plans for the area around the arena.
It seems like it will be a while before we learn what the billionaires plan for their piece of downtown Brooklyn and then years for some of the bigger parts of the plan to get built, but know this, the Tsais’ plan is ambitious and will be like their investments in their teams, the Nets and Liberty, quite expensive.