I. The Stadium District Problem
Across North America, teams and developers keep announcing the same thing in different cities:
• “Sports-anchored district.”
• “Year-round activation.”
• “Community hub.”
On paper, it makes sense: bundle a stadium with mixed-use real estate, drive more game-day spend, and fill the calendar with events.
In reality, too many districts feel like high-end lobbies:
• Packed for a few hours on game days
• Thinly attended the rest of the week
• Light on authentic connection to the people who live nearby
My conclusion after watching this play out repeatedly:
Most stadium districts don’t have a real estate problem.
They have a culture problem.
They start with buildings, then try to layer “community” on top.
My approach to placemaking flips that sequence:
1. Start with a real cultural anchor that already brings people together.
2. Build a sports layer that deepens access and participation.
3. Use a media layer to keep the story and the connection alive 365 days a year.
I’ve been testing this in a very specific setting:
a 500,000-person African diaspora festival in South Philadelphia, a 50% stake in Odunde Sports, and a media ecosystem under White Sports Ventures (WSV) that now reaches ~30 million views per month, built from zero in under 2.5 years.
This is what that looks like in practice—and why I think it’s a better model for stadium districts than what most of the market is building.
II. Why Placemaking Is Broken Around Stadiums
When stadium districts underperform at a human level, it’s usually because of three structural mistakes.
1. They’re Designed Top-Down
Most districts are:
• Master-planned by developers
• Approved by teams and ownership
• “Socialized” to communities after the major decisions are made
Culture shows up at the end as branding, art, and a few curated concepts. The place might be attractive, but it doesn’t feel like something people in the neighborhood helped build or feel responsible for.
2. They Suffer From Event Poverty
Even successful teams only have 10–40 high-intensity days a year:
• Home games
• A handful of concerts or special events
The rest of the calendar relies on light programming: small markets, one-off activations, sponsor events. That rarely justifies a trip across town.
You end up with:
• A high-capex environment
• Low-frequency, high-energy usage
• A lot of empty “public space” between tentpole events
3. They Don’t Have a Cultural Anchor
Most districts are built around:
• A team brand
• A stadium building
• A lifestyle concept
What’s missing is a shared cultural anchor—something that existed before the district, will outlast any tenant, and feels like part of people’s identity, not just their entertainment spend.
Without that, a district is always asking the same question:
“What can we put on the calendar to get people here?”
My approach starts with a different question:
“Who already shows up in large numbers, and why?
How do we serve them better with sport and infrastructure?”
III. A Case Study: A 500,000-Person African Diaspora Festival
In South Philadelphia, that answer is clear.
Every year, a major African diaspora street festival transforms 15–16 blocks into a dense corridor of:
• Food
• Music
• Vendors
• Processions
• Families who have been attending for decades
Rough numbers:
• Around 500,000 people attend annually.
• The economic impact runs into the tens of millions over a single weekend.
• The festival has been a fixture of the city’s cultural calendar for nearly half a century.
Viewed through a stadium-district lens, this festival already does what everyone is trying to engineer:
• Concentrates people in a defined geography
• Drives spending for local businesses and vendors
• Builds attachment to place that passes from one generation to the next
The difference is that this energy lives in the streets, not in a controlled real estate environment.
My investment thesis was not “how do I brand this?”
It was: how do I deepen access to the game and strengthen cultural connection to football, using the existing gravity of this festival?
That’s where Odunde Sports comes in.
IV. White Sports Ventures and Odunde Sports: Why I Invested
White Sports Ventures (WSV) is built around:
• The next-gen player pathway
• The ecosystems that shape how young players and families experience the game
• The broader African diaspora connection to football, both in the U.S. and globally
It is not a brand built “about Black soccer culture” as a slogan.
It’s a platform focused on:
• Access
• Pathways
• Storytelling
• Investment where culture and football already intersect
My 50% ownership stake in Odunde Sports is a targeted move inside that broader thesis.
The Goal With Odunde Sports
Use the existing festival—its trust, its scale, its history—to:
1. Increase access to football for kids and families who are already present but may not see a clear pathway into the game.
2. Create deeper cultural connections between the African diaspora and football, in a setting that already celebrates African and diasporic identity.
3. Build recurring football activity around a festival that currently peaks once a year but has the potential to support a year-round sports ecosystem.
Odunde Sports is not “a soccer activation at a festival.”
It is a sports layer inside a long-standing African diaspora cultural institution—with the specific job of connecting people to football in a way that feels natural, not imposed.
V. My Approach to Placemaking: Community Anchor → Sport → Media
This is where I move from “what we’re doing” to how I think placemaking should work, especially around stadiums.
Step 1: Start With a Community Anchor
Instead of starting with a building, I start with:
• A community anchor that already brings people together at scale
• A tradition that has its own calendar and emotional weight
• A setting where people feel, “This is ours”
In this case, the anchor is:
• A major African diaspora festival
• Hundreds of thousands of attendees
• A decades-long track record of turnout and spending
The key point: you don’t create this in a boardroom.
You identify it, respect it, and then ask:
“Where does sport naturally fit inside what’s already happening?”
Step 2: Build a Sport Layer That Serves the Community
For me, the sport layer is football.
Why?
• It’s the global game of the African diaspora.
• It’s accessible: you don’t need expensive equipment.
• It naturally scales from street-level play to professional pathways.
At the festival and beyond, the sport layer includes:
• Small-sided pitches and courts
• Tournaments and open play for youth and adults
• Viewing areas for important matches and football storytelling tied to the African diaspora
All of this is designed to:
• Lower barriers to participation
• Make the game visible, playable, and aspirational
• Extend the festival experience into football experiences before and after that weekend
Step 3: Use Media as the Digital District
The third layer is media.
Over the last 2.5 years, WSV media brands have grown from zero to ~30 million monthly views.
That audience is built around:
• Youth football storytelling
• The next-gen pathway
• African diaspora connections to the game
When you connect that media layer to the community anchor and the sport layer, you get:
1. Time extension
• The festival becomes more than a date.
• Stories, highlights, interviews, and features keep it alive all year.
2. Identity and data
• Players, families, coaches, and local businesses move from anonymous heads in a crowd to identifiable members of a football ecosystem.
• You can see who is engaging, how often, and around which programs.
3. A digital counterpart to the physical place
• The streets and festival footprint are the physical gathering.
• WSV’s channels and content are the ongoing conversation.
This is my approach to placemaking in one sentence:
Start with a community anchor, build a sport layer that deepens participation, and use media to keep the connection and the data alive 365 days a year.
VI. How Stadium Districts and Developers Plug Into This Model
If you run or plan a stadium district, the practical question is:
“What do I do with this?”
Here are three specific entry points.
1. Integrate a Community Anchor Into the District
Instead of inventing “community events” from scratch:
• Identify the strongest cultural anchors in your city (they may be festivals, parades, long-standing community days, or diaspora gatherings).
• Invite them into your geography as partners with real agency—not just as tenants or renters.
• Design spaces (plazas, streets, courts, stages) that can comfortably host their peak moments.
In my case, that means:
• Bringing the African diaspora festival energy closer to or into stadium-adjacent spaces
• Making sure football is visible and playable in those environments
• Letting the community lead on how their culture is represented and programmed
2. Treat Sport as a Year-Round Operating System, Not a One-Off Theme
Stadium districts often treat sport as:
• The game inside the building
• Occasional watch parties outside
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