Bret McCormick
Bret McCormick reports on the business of sports venues, focusing on how facilities, fan experience and ticketing intersect to drive revenue and shape the live event. He serves as the facilities reporter at Sports Business Journal, with a beat defined around sports facilities, fan experience and ticketing. His current role follows more than a decade in the newspaper industry covering sports before moving into sports business reporting at the masthead in 2019.
Facilities, Fan Experience and Ticketing
McCormick’s core beat sits at the point where venue operations, fan experience design and ticketing strategy meet. After joining Sports Business Journal as a general assignment reporter covering tennis, he moved onto the facilities, fan experience and ticketing beat in early 2021, expanding his scope across major leagues and properties.
His work tracks how venue executives’ responsibilities have grown beyond game-day operations to encompass mixed-use districts, real estate development, capital planning and community engagement. In an SBJ Live session he moderates a discussion with sports facilities leaders from Rock Entertainment Group, Tepper Sports & Entertainment and the Titans, framing facilities leadership as a portfolio that includes revenue generation and long-term development strategy.
The beat allows him to cover both the macro structure of stadium projects and the micro details of how tickets are sold, delivered and priced for fans.
Stadium and Mixed-Use Development Projects
McCormick regularly reports on major stadium and surrounding district developments, with an emphasis on leadership, financing and real estate structures.
In a “News and views” package he checks in with the executive overseeing the Commanders’ stadium and mixed-use development project, documenting how that initiative is reshaping a key market. The same package highlights his coverage of USL’s Sporting JAX, where he details the creation of a real estate subsidiary to manage its proposed mixed-use development and shares project renderings.
He uses these kinds of projects to show how venue plans tie into broader urban development and club strategy, rather than treating stadiums as standalone construction stories. His portfolio also includes profiles of sports executives taking dual permanent roles with real estate and parking companies, examining how those partnerships influence venue access and operations.
Food, Beverage and On-Site Innovation
McCormick’s facilities beat brings him into the kitchens and concourses of major venues to cover food and beverage as a strategic part of the live experience.
In one feature he joins concessionaire Levy on a Chicago restaurant scouting trip, following the process of identifying local partners and concepts that can be translated into arena and stadium offerings. A separate Unpacks entry focuses on a new Delaware North Sportservice option at American Family Field, where he explains how a formerly ordinary hot dog stand is converted into a tribute to an Upper Midwest culinary tradition.
These stories show how he treats concessions as both an operational challenge and a branding opportunity, linking menu decisions to fan identity and in-venue revenue. His facilities coverage also extends to global events, including a piece on how World Cup venues manage FIFA‑mandated “de‑branding” requirements and the scale, cost and logistics of stripping existing signage across stadiums in North America.
Ticketing, Access and Audio Coverage
On the ticketing side of his beat, McCormick reports on companies and executives shaping how fans purchase and experience entry to events. He interviews leaders such as Sports Illustrated Tickets CEO David Lane about growth ambitions and the goal of building a billion‑dollar ticketing business, connecting company strategy to broader trends in the secondary and primary markets. His reporting on ticketing often appears alongside facilities and fan experience pieces, underscoring how pricing, distribution and customer service are integrated into the live event product.
McCormick also extends his work into audio formats, helping anchor Sports Business Journal’s Morning Buzzcast. Across recent episodes he joins colleagues to discuss topics such as the Protect College Sports Act, a naming‑rights deal for Cal’s football venue and takeaways from the AXS Drive conference. He appears on episodes that look back at conference programming, including field‑goal kicking activations for attendees, and previews subsequent days with a focus on venue and ownership storylines. Beyond the Buzzcast, he is a guest on industry podcasts like “Adventures In Venueland,” where he talks about covering the live experience, trends he sees across venues and how often he travels on site to report from the stands. This combination of reported features, project coverage and recurring audio work positions him as a consistent voice on how sports venues function as businesses.
Before joining Sports Business Journal, McCormick spent roughly 12 years in the newspaper industry covering sports in a traditional game‑and‑teams format. That background informs his current role, where he now focuses on metrics such as return on investment and key performance indicators while still grounding his stories in the realities of the live event. His beat today is defined by facilities, fan experience and ticketing, but his trajectory from newspaper sports desks into sports business coverage gives him a broad understanding of how venue decisions affect what happens on the field and in the stands.
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