PHOENIX — The Broncos recently ramped up their survey efforts as they continue through a long process that ultimately will lead to a decision about whether to build a new stadium.
The Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group started touring stadiums during the season and is keeping tabs on building projects around the NFL, as well.
The survey season-ticket holders received recently included questions about the preferred location of a new stadium, what’s important about the game day experience, how far people are willing to travel, if they’d prefer a permanent roof, retractable roof, canopy or no roof and a raft of other queries. That wider survey came after Denver talked with 112 focus group participants and 34 club partners as a starting point. So far, team president Damani Leech said the team has about 7,000 completed surveys and the resulting data is slated to be finalized in about a month.
“It’s early in the process, gathering information, really want to know what fans think across a variety of different topics,” Leech said. “ We’ve got nine years left on the (Empower Field) lease, so we’re not rushing to do anything, but we do know these processes take a long time and we want to try to be as deliberate as we can and gather as much information as we can.”
During the football season, Denver’s ownership group toured SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle as well as the football stadiums in Seattle, Las Vegas, Minnesota, Dallas, Miami and both Tottenham and Wembley in London.
“I think it’s really unique to the market,” Broncos CEO Greg Penner said Tuesday. “We’d want something that’s uniquely Colorado and the Broncos. But we saw a lot of interesting aspects from different types of roof covers, different types of fields, different mixes of seats, so it’s a really interesting process for us.”
“There’s no one stadium that we walked away and said, ‘OK, that’s the one we want,’” Leech added. “There’s different bits of stadiums that are interesting and intriguing and I think one of the things that you realize from a stadium standpoint is you realize that there are tradeoffs to be made — trying to fit it in with the site, the city, the culture. All of those things are factors.”
Asked specifically about the prospect of a retractable roof, Leech said, “Part of the reason why we’re doing the survey is so we can have really informed conversations — we call them visioning sessions about what the future could be, but far from making any decisions or I think even having favorites.
“We joke about today we’re interested in this and tomorrow we’re interested in that. It’s too early.”
Renovation update. Leech said the Broncos’ more than $100 million in improvements at Empower Field are still slated to be completed by the time Denver has a preseason game in August. The single biggest item on the list is replacing the video board with a version that’s 70% bigger.
“We’re on schedule and on budget,” Leech said. “The scoreboard is down. Bucky is down, Bucky is safely being taken care of. It’ll come back up toward the end of the summer.”
Leech said the team is finalizing designs for the team store and is renovating suites in blocks to maximize their availability for Empower Field’s summer concert series.
Uniform update. A potential new Broncos uniform isn’t exactly imminent, but the club is continuing to explore options.
“No update today,” Leech said. “We continue to work internally with our creative team and with Nike to explore possibilities for the future. It’s a long process where we’re being patient with it and making great progress.”
Singleton’s return. One on-field note: coach Sean Payton said the Broncos were excited to get inside linebacker Alex Singleton back on a three-year deal worth up to $18 million ($9 million guaranteed). Singleton finished with 163 tackles — the most by a Denver player since 2007 — and also served as a core special teams player.
“He was productive. I thought there were a lot of things we did well defensively,” Payton said. “And if he wasn’t (back), then where were we going if not Alex? The mistake sometimes… We didn’t take that at all for granted, like ‘Oh, he’s just going to return.’ There was a lot that went into that.
“So those guys, those two inside guys (Singleton and Josey Jewell) played well.”
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