and we give the restaurants wings. It’s about a We don’t have any debt or bonds on three-hour event on a Saturday where people the building. … It’s nice to say we’re come and drink a lot of beer and eat wings. not a burden to the taxpayer. When That sales manager is in charge of that kind of we opened we started out being the event along with going out to sell your advertis- Alltel Arena and that got us $7 million ing in a full-time kind of way. for construction for a deal that lasted 20 years. (The venue became Verizon Let’s talk about the improvements that Arena in 2009 when Verizon acquired you’re doing. You’ve got the loge boxes Alltel.) When the 20 years was coming and what else? up I went out and got a new nam- In terms of improving the property, we just ing-rights partner and it is Simmons did a $1.2 million reskinning of the building. Bank and we’ve got that money that We’ve got a completely new outside of the we have not had in the past. So naming building in a different color and it looks great. rights poured some extra money into The other piece is, everybody is about premium our operation plus we had a number of service now and in the last three years we’ve suite renewals that came up, and that’s opened a Vibe Room, which is a $25 upsell for how we did our capital improvements. an exclusive area. It’s not early entry, but it is an exclusive entry and you don’t have to stand in Let’s pick apart the naming-rights line to get a drink and you get a couple of food deal a little more. items. We also have built a restaurant that we It’s a 15-year deal. We got $10.5 million call the Legends Lounge that people can get in from Simmons Bank, which is a region- before the show and eat an upscale dinner and al bank based out of Pine Bluff, Ark. I’d drinks. Then you throw in the loge boxes. … watched Verizon since they’d acquired We had some areas in our concourse that were Alltel and they’d quit doing naming originally designed for suites but the trend is rights. Every building that they had more toward smaller, so we built 11 loge boxes that they’d gotten from Alltel, once the and we’ve sold 10 of them already before they naming-rights deal was done, they were were even finished. Again, there’s all this need done. We dropped them a note and said, for premium services since everybody wants to hey, you know, just want to check, do feel special and we’re trying to take advantage you want to do this again? They said of that. no. So we put out a press release that we were going to be looking for a name- How did you handle the financing of that your-price partner and ended up getting construction? 10 phone calls and emails from that. TOPSTOPS DEEP SOUTH Ranked by tickets sold. Based on data from concerts and events in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi March 1, 2019-Feb. 29, 2020, as reported to Pollstar. Data updated as of April 3.

RANK VENUE TICKETS SOLD CAPACITY GROSS SHOWS 1 Simmons Bank Arena, North Little Rock, Ark. 235,124 18,000 $11,792,112 40 2 Legacy Arena at the BJCC, Birmingham, Ala. 199,264 18,000 $12,838,959 19 3 Smoothie King Center, New Orleans 185,420 18,000 $20,290,139 16 4 The Wharf Amphitheater, Orange Beach, Ala. 140,057 10,250 $9,416,042 18 5 Walmart AMP, Rogers, Ark. 105,945 10,000 $4,917,058 13 6 Oak Mountain Amphitheatre, Pelham, Ala. 81,689 10,289 $4,623,444 12 7 CenturyLink Center, Bossier City, La. 79,839 14,000 $6,387,380 11 8 Tuscaloosa (Ala.) Amphitheater 64,587 7,294 $3,247,890 13 9 Landers Center, Southaven, Miss. 63,068 10,000 $2,786,069 18 10 BancorpSouth Arena, Tupelo, Miss. 37,557 10,000 $1,630,804 8 11 Cajundome, Lafayette, La. 35,610 13,000 $2,462,547 4 12 Iron City, Birmingham, Ala. 35,180 1,300 $951,952 40 13 Mercedes-Benz Superdome, New Orleans 35,023 73,000 $7,163,691 1 14 Bluesville at Horseshoe Tunica, Robinsonville, Miss. 34,314 1,326 $1,786,105 32 15 Thalia Mara Hall, Jackson, Miss. 32,396 2,040 $1,996,495 23

32 MAY 2020