Tonight the ESPN Zone at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor “Power Plant” entertainment complex closes its doors as will all the rest of the other “Zones” not located on Disney property. With much hoopla, ESPN opened its first Zone in Baltimore in 1988. While Baltimore might not have been the ultimate ESPN kind of place, in 1988 the Inner Harbor was rapidly becoming a hip place to be and with the success of Camden Yards and the Ravens’ new stadium just opening, Crab Town provided a fine location for ESPN to introduce its new concept in dining and entertainment.
The basic formula is to make the ESPN experience come alive in a restaurant setting. The food was never anything spectacular nor that bad but surely overpriced compared to similar quality servings like the typical mall restaurants like TGIFridays, Applebee’s, Ruby Tuesday’s, and Chili’s. The menu had lots of items but for most, it was beer, wings, and beer while having all kinds of ESPN artifacts all over the place. The venue also provided all kinds of televisions displaying nonstop sports and a place to broadcast events from in a live studio environment. The real novelty was a games arcade with all kinds of fancy participatory and video games similar to but maybe a little more extravagant than what might be found in some suburban sports bars.
The concept seemed to work reasonably well. Surely, it would command more repeat business than a similar venue like the ill-fated Planet Hollywood. After establishing the concept, soon ESPN Zones were popping up everywhere, New York on Times Square, Washington DC, Chicago, Denver, Atlanta, and Las Vegas. Wow, the world should know and Baltimore should be duly proud that in 2009, the Guinness Book record for couch potatoes was set in Baltimore. Well, the Chicago Zone took that record the following year.
The falling economy and perhaps changing sensibilities for the sports fan and entertainment consumer saw the ESPN Zone concept falling off and not remaining financially successful though Disney is pretty quiet in discussing any numbers. The effort also requires tremendous constant promotion to remain viable and surely ESPN will never be at a loss for other promotions possibilities.
While the departure will create a void in the Inner Harbor entertainment zone, surely even in today’s economy, some enterprise will consider the value of location, location, location. For the rest of us, most of us can at least say, “been there, done that.”
In the big scheme of things, the departure of the ESPN Zone is no big loss though if ESPN were to rid themselves of something unnecessary, we would have jettisoned Chris Berman who broadcast the halftime show for Monday Night Football at the Baltimore Zone in 1999.
The basic formula is to make the ESPN experience come alive in a restaurant setting. The food was never anything spectacular nor that bad but surely overpriced compared to similar quality servings like the typical mall restaurants like TGIFridays, Applebee’s, Ruby Tuesday’s, and Chili’s. The menu had lots of items but for most, it was beer, wings, and beer while having all kinds of ESPN artifacts all over the place. The venue also provided all kinds of televisions displaying nonstop sports and a place to broadcast events from in a live studio environment. The real novelty was a games arcade with all kinds of fancy participatory and video games similar to but maybe a little more extravagant than what might be found in some suburban sports bars.
The concept seemed to work reasonably well. Surely, it would command more repeat business than a similar venue like the ill-fated Planet Hollywood. After establishing the concept, soon ESPN Zones were popping up everywhere, New York on Times Square, Washington DC, Chicago, Denver, Atlanta, and Las Vegas. Wow, the world should know and Baltimore should be duly proud that in 2009, the Guinness Book record for couch potatoes was set in Baltimore. Well, the Chicago Zone took that record the following year.
The falling economy and perhaps changing sensibilities for the sports fan and entertainment consumer saw the ESPN Zone concept falling off and not remaining financially successful though Disney is pretty quiet in discussing any numbers. The effort also requires tremendous constant promotion to remain viable and surely ESPN will never be at a loss for other promotions possibilities.
While the departure will create a void in the Inner Harbor entertainment zone, surely even in today’s economy, some enterprise will consider the value of location, location, location. For the rest of us, most of us can at least say, “been there, done that.”
In the big scheme of things, the departure of the ESPN Zone is no big loss though if ESPN were to rid themselves of something unnecessary, we would have jettisoned Chris Berman who broadcast the halftime show for Monday Night Football at the Baltimore Zone in 1999.
No comments:
Post a Comment