17 - Behind the Crowd: Building Mega-Events from the Inside Out

So you are from Indiana Sports Corp.

You know the city very well.

And Indianapolis has a reputation of being very walkable and has a reputation of hospitality.

How does that influence your job then? Does it make it easier? Does it make it special?

Yeah, I mean, it makes it a lot easier, I would say.

It gives us kind of a step up for when we just start the planning process.

I'll start with our hospitality.

It's something we've kind of been known for is that Hoosier hospitality is what they call it.

We train all of our volunteers to embody that.

So before the final four, we had three different training orientations with our volunteers.

And as a part of that was a 10 slide PowerPoint deck.

literally telling them exactly who's your hospitality means, quotes, how they can help people.

And it's not just saying hello, it's being knowledgeable on the event, being able to give directions to a restaurant or even just say, hey, I'm from here.

This is a great place to eat.

Because we know volunteers are probably going to be the first person someone sees when they arrive to the city and the last person that they see.

So it's really important that that moment is great.

So that's just something we take a lot of pride in and pressure our volunteers And they've been doing so many events that they're used to it and they really enjoy it.

And then the walkability, everything is really within a mile downtown.

All of our stadiums are super close to each other.

A lot of the event spaces where we have tailgate parties, concerts, those are all still within a mile.

So really when you park your car here, you're not going to really need it ever again.

And that's great because we don't have as much traffic issues during events because everyone is walking around, getting from point A to point B in 10 minutes just walking.

Even our convention center connects our venues indoors.

So in case there's inclement weather, people can walk inside.

So we still have that same walkability.