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n Saturday, May 6, the Ohio Machine hosted the Rochester Rattlers in its home opener. What made this game especially special was that it was the debut of Fortress Obetz, the first stadium built specifically for lacrosse.

The Machine lost the game, and the entire stadium isn’t completely finished just yet, but they could be ahead of the curve compared to the rest of the league.

“Midsummer the plan is to have our offices complete,” Machine head coach Bear Davis said. “We’ll move our whole administrative side of things [to the stadium] as well. The whole operation will take place there, which is unbelievable. The way it was, if you were at the stadium and you forgot something at the office, it was 25 miles away. To sell tickets and come to the box office at the stadium and show them their seat, you can do locker room tours, you can do things the other teams in other leagues have the luxury of doing. It’s a leg up.”

Rent vs. Own

MLL teams rent field space and time from the stadiums they play in, and Davis explained a few challenges this presents.

“It’s very difficult when you’re a renter,” Davis said. “Whether it’s a graduation or spring football practice or whatever the case may be, if you’re not the primary tenant, sometimes schedules don’t come out until later and that affects the whole league schedule.”

In addition to the schedule, Davis also said renting creates a problem with the perception of the league.

“Whenever you’re a renter, there’s a tad bit of a semi-pro feel to it and that’s not what we have,” he said. “We have the best athletes in the world. To compare it to leagues that are renters is a problem.”

One team that hasn’t had this issue is the Denver Outlaws.

The Outlaws are owned by the Denver Broncos Football Club and they play their home games at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. Ask a number of players in the league what their favorite visiting stadium is, and many will respond with Denver.

“It’s a professional venue,” said Chesapeake Bayhawks head coach Brian Reese, who coached the Outlaws from 2007 to 2010 and was the team’s general manager from 2006 to 2011. “They have professional-size locker rooms. They have a great surface to play on. They have great amenities for fans. They have huge jumbotrons for replays. It gives it a major league feel. Players can go in and play. You don’t have to have two different locker rooms. It has that major league, professional feel.”

Another positive working in Denver’s favor is the fan support. The Outlaws lead the league in average attendance per game in each of the past four seasons as well as 10 of the past 11 years.

The team’s Fourth of July game is the biggest MLL game of the year, breaking the all-time attendance record multiple times, topping off at 31,644 in 2015.

On the other-hand, Sports Authority Field seats 76,125 people. While the crowd at the Fourth of July game is exciting, it’s only one of seven home games and it doesn’t fill half the stadium. The 2016 Fourth of July game saw a crowd of 28,772 people take in the game. Take that game away from the team’s totals, and the average attendance drops from a league-high 9,390 people per game to 6,160 people per game, good for third in the league.

“It is a great venue,” MLL Commissioner David Gross said about Sports Authority Field. “It feels big time. But we get swallowed up unless it’s the Fourth of July. I loved the (2014) playoff game they played at Peter Barton (Lacrosse Stadium at the University of Denver). The place was packed. It makes for a great fan experience.”

Reese, however, said the empty seats didn’t have the same effect on him or the players on the sidelines.

“You don’t look at the empty seats,” he said. “The ones that are filled matter. As a coach or player, it can be just as loud with six or seven thousand as with 14 thousand.”

The MLS Model

It’s fitting that Columbus is the home of the first stadium designed for a Major League Lacrosse team because it was also home to the first soccer-specific stadium built by a Major League Soccer team, when the Columbus Crew moved into Columbus Crew Stadium (now named MAPFRE Stadium).

Davis said that history was a motivating factor in getting this agreement done.

“Columbus having an MLS-specific stadium has helped turn MLS and grow that brand,” he said. “You see more cities after Columbus having MLS having stadiums. We’re using that template.”

Currently, 14 of Major League Soccer’s 22 teams play in soccer-specific stadiums, with three more coming in the future.

The Ohio Machine are the first MLL team to have a lacrosse-specific stadium, but more teams may follow suit.

In March of 2017, Joshua Gordon of the Baltimore Business Journal reported the Chesapeake Bayhawks ownership proposed a $40-million stadium as part of a “bigger sports complex.”

Reese said he thinks the team has a great situation playing at Navy, but was excited about the prospect of the team owning its own place.

“For the team and players, they have their own locker room that’s theirs year round. You can practice year round,” he said. “[Teams owning stadiums] would attract more owners, more teams, and you can pay the players more. A stadium would go into making this a full-time professional league.”

Gross was excited about Fortress Obetz and the prospect of a new stadium for the Bayhawks, but he did say it is not one of his goals to have every team building new stadiums.

“I think we’re looking for the right balance,” he said. “What’s more important is that it’s the right venue. In Atlanta, we have a great venue (in Fifth Bank Stadium) that we don’t own. That’s a perfect venue for us. There’s no reason for Atlanta to have a venue built. Where we don’t have something like that, then that’s where we need to have one built. Having the first lacrosse-specific stadium built in Columbus is huge. If one could be built in Annapolis, it would be another huge feather in the cap and these things tend to snowball.”

Gross elaborated on what made a stadium the “right venue.”

“It has to be the right size,” he said. “We don’t want to play in something too big. It’s got to have the amenities. You have to serve beer. You need a video board. Ideally, you have clean lines, not a million lines because seven sports are playing. Hopefully, there’s ancillary fields. And you want to be able to dress it up to make it fun for fans and partners.”

The Bigger Picture

Time will tell if Fortress Obetz starts a trend like Columbus Crew Stadium did. More time will also be needed to see if the stadium gives the Machine a big home-field advantage.

After game one, however, Davis was pretty excited about the direction the stadium put the team in.

“The first game, other than the crowd, it’s going to feel like an away game because you’ve never played there,” he said. “I think we did a good job. The staff and stadium crew tried to establish that this is our home field, all the way down to our locker room and those details. We still have a lot of work to be done there. The concessions, the bathrooms, certain areas were not completed, but instead of concessions, we had four or six food trucks. Who doesn’t love food trucks? People were able to see the construction that was finished and paint a picture of how awesome it will be when it’s done.”