Officials hope big events return to Williams-brice
During the ’90s, big, non-football events at the University of South Carolina’s Williams-brice Stadium were a fairly common occurrence.
The venue with a max capacity above 80,000 welcomed both U2 and a Guns N’ Roses-metallica double bill in 1992. Paul Mccartney followed in 1993 and The Rolling Stones in 1994. Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, The Beach Boys, Neil Young and Hootie & the Blowfish played together as part of Farm Aid.
The years since have been much more lean. When Beyoncé and Jay-z played Williams-brice in 2018, it was the first concert at the stadium since Kenny Chesney played in 2013.
But hope springs eternal, especially after Columbia (a college town with a metro population of nearly 860,000) managed to land a truly massive soccer match earlier this month. That international friendly between English Premier League powerhouses Manchester United and Liverpool left The New York Times’ sports publication The Athletic marveling, “How did that happen?” as the other two legs in this summer’s Rivals in Red tour took place in NFL stadiums in Los Angeles (metro population 10 million) and Philadelphia (metro population 2.2 million).
Columbia leaders say they’re hungry to be more of a destination for stadium events, whether with concerts, sporting events, festivals and anything else that will bring more people to Columbia and get them to stay overnight.
“There is a thirst, not only in our community but for people to travel here to see those type of events,” Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann said.
Various obstacles stand in the way — impacts on Williams-brice’s natural grass field, Columbia’s supply of hotel rooms, competition for the small amount of events that can fill such a large venue. But the potential value to the area is immense.
THE TAYLOR SWIFT EFFECT
The potentially game-changing success of Taylor Swift’s stadium-crushing Eras tour and an increasing tendency among upper-echelon touring acts to hunker down in one spot for a few nights rather than performing in a few cities is fueling speculation that stadium concerts could see a resurgence in the POST-COVID era. Sid Kenyon is optimistic that returning to hosting at least one big, non-football event each year at Williams-brice might be possible.
Kenyon is the general manager for USC’S Colonial Life Arena, home of the university’s basketball program and the state’s largest concert arena, and his team takes the lead whenever the school’s stadium is used for something besides football.
“We’re open for business. We’ll entertain anything,” Kenyon said. “I certainly would not say that an entertainment event like a concert is any less attractive (than the recent soccer match). In fact, there’s probably a bigger market for that out there, more opportunities for those types of shows. We’re constantly looking.”
He added that the pandemic cut short the stadium’s potential to quickly follow up on the momentum that came with landing Beyoncé and Jay-z. When things opened back up as COVID’S grip on the touring industry waned, events rushed into big cities first, he said. Columbia’s turn could be coming soon.
“So I think it’ll kind of go back to what it once was,” he said. “We might not get something every year, but I think we’ll be in contention every year, every couple of years. I really do believe that.”
WHY COLUMBIA CAN BE A TOUGH SELL
It was a mild day in October 1996, when The Beach Boys and Neil Young shared a stage at Williams-brice Stadium during the annual Farm Aid music festival.
While Columbia can attract big-name acts, the frequency with which they come has dwindled. There are several possible reasons why.
“It is very competitive, because in our country, we have a lot of venues in the United States,” said Tom Regan, a University of South Carolina professor in the Sport and Entertainment Management Department.
Being in the Interstate 85 corridor means competing with Atlanta, Charlotte, Greenville and Charleston for shows. And sometimes small details can make the decision. For example, Williamsbrice has a grass field that can be damaged by putting a stage on it. Venues with turf fields are in a better position to host those shows because promoters won’t incur the cost of replacing the grass, Regan explained.
Tour promoters also want a guarantee that they will be able to sell a high volume of tickets, which can lead them to stick with larger cities with larger venues, Regan added.
Another factor is how many hotel rooms Columbia can offer for a big event. The city hopes to reclaim its title as a host city for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. One of the top things the NCAA wants to know is how many hotel rooms Columbia has and whether there are enough of the right kind of hotels.
There were at least 160 hotels with a total of 13,263 rooms in the Columbia metro area as of December 2023, according to the state Restaurant and Lodging Association. That’s a significant increase from December 2019, when there were 129 hotels and under 12,000 rooms.
DRAWING ACTS LIKE BEYONCÉ, JAY-Z
Trae Judy has been thinking about how concerts draw in Columbia for a long time. He’s previously taken charge of the city’s largest rock club under two different names (first as Music Farm Columbia and later as The Senate) and ran a smaller rock club in Five Points (the short-lived revival of The White Mule). These days, he books acts for the St. Pat’s in Five Points festival, which claims an annual draw of about 45,000).
He said compared to other potential venues, the challenges at Williamsbrice stadium aren’t prohibitive. It’s just a matter of finding an act that can sell enough tickets at the right cost.
“Every event is different. It has its own organic composition,” he said. “It’s got its own genetics. It’s got its own DNA, its reason for existence.”
But while Judy wouldn’t guess how many acts are working at a level where they could fill the stadium, he seemed doubtful that there are very many.
“Taylor Swift is the only person who’s gonna fill up that stadium (that) way, if we’re talking about a Saturday football game against LSU or Alabama, right?” he speculated.
The small number of acts and events that can fill Williams-brice is a limiting factor for how often the stadium can be utilized, Kenyon said.
They have to draw a whole lot of people. Upwards of 40,000 people attended Beyoncé and Jay-z’s concert in 2018, compared to the capacity of 18,000 at Colonial Life Arena. To ensure they can pack in a lot of people and to mitigate the expense of
moving large, light-andspectacle-laden stages, stadium concerts tend to hit one city in each region they visit.
There’s a reason the Eras tour spent multiple nights in various locations rather than dragging its intricate setup from town to town.
“There’s not a lot of acts maybe that can support that,” the general manager explained, adding that this applies to considerations beyond the stage. “You think about a big stadium, the architecture is actually designed to keep people off of the field. What do you do when you do a concert? You put 10-12,000 people into an area that’s not designed to have anyone. So not only do you have problems with ingress and egress, you don’t have any built-in concessions, any built-in restrooms. You’ve got to make accommodations for all of that.”
Also competing with stadiums is the trend shown in venues like the Las Vegas Sphere, where big acts stay for long periods and an increasing tendency toward drawing an audience to one place rather than several. The expenses to do multiple nights in a smaller arena are less, Kenyon said.
The trend shown in venues like the Las Vegas Sphere, where big acts stay for long stretches of time, shows there’s an increasing tendency toward trying to draw an audience to one place rather than several, those residencies are also competition for stadiums.
COLUMBIA’S ADVANTAGES
Columbia also has advantages when it comes to drawing stadium events. When looking to draw regionally, the city’s proximity to larger metropolitan areas like Charlotte and Atlanta becomes more attractive. If an artist, event or band chooses Columbia rather than those two larger
cities, they get to take over the area while they’re here.
Bill Ellen, president and CEO of the local visitors bureau Experience Columbia SC, pointed to the litany of events and restaurant specials that filled the city recently during Rivals in Red and in 2019 when the NCAA men’s basketball tournament came to town as examples of the way the city rallies behind big events. Promoters take note of that, Ellen emphasized.
“When you come to Columbia for an event like that, you’re the big fish,” he said. “Unlike Atlanta, there’s so many things going on, and maybe it doesn’t get the whole community’s attention. In Columbia, the community comes together, like it did for March Madness and like it did for the soccer match. Everybody’s working in the same direction. Everybody’s singing from the same sheet of music. And it just brings it all together and makes it a very positive experience.”
While football season might seem to be a no-go time for other events, Kenyon said that if the booking justifies the effort and the promoters are willing to shoulder the expense of a tight turnaround to get the field game ready afterward, any bye week on the Gamecocks’ schedule is potentially in play.
When Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and The Rolling Stones came through the stadium in the ’90s, those were all fall events, Kenyon noted.
“I think it’s more feasible today than it was.,” he added. “The capabilities today are so much more than we had back then. So yeah, it’s definitely doable. It’s a strain. We would always prefer a different time of year, but to say it’s prohibitive or to say that we wouldn’t consider it, that’s not the case.”
GETTING PEOPLE INTO WILLIAMS-BRICE STADIUM
On Gamecock football days, people trudge through grass and dodge into the road as they walk toward Williams-brice. There aren’t many sidewalks around the state fairgrounds, where many people park, despite being at the crossroads of several busy streets. Train tracks can, and often do, stall traffic.
But Rickenmann believes Columbia has the infrastructure to support big events, and Columbia state Rep. Seth Rose agrees. But Rose also thinks there are a lot of “little things” around downtown that can give tourists a bad impression.
“We have the infrastructure, but there are certain things that I find that need to be drastically improved and are somewhat embarrassing,” Rose said.
He pointed to Bluff Road’s shabby looks, the lack of sidewalks around the fairgrounds and overgrown railroad crossings. Rose said he’s asked the state Department of Transportation to conduct a study assessing how to put more sidewalks in the Williams-brice area.
The trains added to a traffic nightmare before and after the Premier League match earlier this month. Fans reported waiting 90 minutes or more in traffic, with some not being able to enter the stadium until halftime. The backup was caused by a mix of late arrivals and stormy weather. But a big culprit was a railroad crossing arm that malfunctioned right at the conclusion of the game, according to the Columbia Police Department.
But Columbia has strong assets, too, Rose added. George Rogers Boulevard can mostly handle the high game-day traffic, at least when compared to places like Clemson where game-day traffic is a constant gridlock.
IMPACT OF HOSTING STADIUM EVENTS IN COLUMBIA
The impact of hosting more stadium events in Columbia stretches beyond just the simple increase in attendance.
At the recent soccer match at Williams-brice, 65,346 tickets were scanned and more than 50% of tickets sold for that event went to visitors from out of state, Kenyon noted. While the percentage isn’t always so high for non-football stadium events, he said they consistently draw more visitors from outside South Carolina than do events at the arena.
“Because an arena show may go to a lot of different cities,” he said. “Big stadium shows, that’s probably going to be a more regional type of event.”
The benefits of bringing more people from out of state stretch beyond. Ellen, who recalled seeing license plates from farther-away states like Ohio and Maryland when leaving the soccer match, said such an event does more than fill local hotels and restaurants, although that’s important.
“The exposure element to those type events, you can’t buy that type of awareness,” Ellen said, explaining that this helps Experience Columbia greatly in its efforts to continue growing awareness about all there is to see and do here. “A lot of eyes were on Columbia, South Carolina. It was a tremendous opportunity to showcase our region and city.”
But there’s also a risk to put on these big shows.
Weather or an unexpected illness can lead to cancellations or postponements, explained Regan, the USC professor. The city and Experience Columbia spent $100,000 to help market the Premier League event, for example. Venues and event organizers are taking a risk, too.
But the risk can be well worth it to the city if new visitors come for more than just a show.
The Columbia region saw 15.8 million visitors in 2022, according to Experience Columbia. Of those visitors, 5.7 million, or 36%, stayed the night.
Rickenmann has repeatedly said he wants to increase those numbers, specifically for overnight guests, who tend to spend their money on food and shopping in addition to their hotel room. He said getting more events to come to Columbia is a “missing link” to increase tourism, adding that using USC’S athletic facilities as well as minor league baseball venue Segra Park for more than their designated functions is a way to get there.
“Why don’t we use these assets to continue to grow our community? Because the (Premier League) impact was strong,” Rickenmann said. “Our restaurants were full, our hotels were full, our Uber drivers, our convenience stores, our gas stations.”