In Practice: Sports Venues & Special Events

From 2,500-person concert venues to 70,000-seat stadiums, we’ve studied how special event venues move when the crowds arrive.

Across dense downtowns, suburban sites, campuses, and major redevelopments, our work supports NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB games, along with concerts, music festivals, religious gatherings, business conventions, and more.

Inglewood, CA, USA - November 14, 2024: The Intuit Dome is an indoor arena hosting sports, concerts, and events. The stadium opened in 2024 and home to the Los Angeles Clippers.

From 2,500-person concert halls to 70,000-seat stadiums, we’ve studied how special event venues function when the crowds arrive.

Across dense downtowns, suburban sites, campuses, and major redevelopments, our work supports NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB games, along with concerts, music festivals, religious gatherings, business conventions, and more.

Here are a few examples:

Fehr & Peers Project Map of Sports Venues

Seattle, WA

Climate Pledge Arena (NHL Kraken), NFL stadium (confidential client)

Sacramento, CA

Golden 1 Center (NBA Kings), Channel 24, Sacramento Republic Stadium (USL), Sacramento Convention Center

Bay Area, CA

Chase Center (NBA Warriors), Howard Terminal Site (MLB A’s), Apple Cupertino Campus

Los Angeles, CA

Intuit Dome (NBA Clippers), BMO Stadium (MLS LAFC), LA28 Olympics + FIFA

San Diego, CA

Snapdragon Stadium (MLS SDFC / SDSU NCAAF)

Nationwide

Confidential (NFL Team), Denver, Ball Arena Redevelopment (NBA Nuggets and NHL Avalanche), Boulder, CO Sundance Film Festival, Washington DC (NFL Commanders)

How we keep game day moving.

post event from bridge with traffic control

1. Tailored Traffic Management

Equipment, traffic control officers, temporary signage, lane adjustments, and curbside strategies help manage vehicle flows during arrival and departure.

aerial shot of the Chase Center with ships on the waters of the bay and cars driving on the street, blue sky and clouds in San Francisco California USA

2. An Arrival That Feels Intuitive

Wayfinding, parking reservation systems, traffic management, and context-specific travel modes that help fans get to their seats without stress.

3. Planning for the Post-Event Surge

Strategies like properly sized sidewalks and crosswalks, temporary traffic signal timing, reversible travel lanes, and added transit service help move large crowds safely and efficiently when everyone leaves.

4. Intentional Rideshare Pickup Zones

Thoughtfully designed geofences with strategic vehicle pick-up locations help reduce traffic congestion after the event concludes.

How accurate are our forecasts?

New sports and entertainment venues typically require detailed parking and traffic studies before they’re approved. We take pride in developing accurate travel forecasts, which are critically important to venue operations. Below are findings from two arenas we recently studied, then monitored a year into operations to compare what we predicted to what we observed:

Intuit Dome, home of the NBA’s LA Clippers in Inglewood, CA (2025)

Intuit Dome is a state of the art arena that opened in 2024. It has already hosted major concert and sporting events (e.g., 2026 NBA All Star game) and will be the host site for mens and womens basketball at the 2028 Olympics. Here’s how our forecast held up at a regular season Clippers game:

Percent of all arriving traffic during hour before event starts: predicted: 68%, observed 63%
Percent of all departing traffic during hour after event ends: predicted 83%, observed: 80%

Golden 1 Center, home of the NBA’s Kings in Sacramento, CA (2017)

Golden 1 Center sits in downtown Sacramento, with access by light rail, bus, walking, biking, rideshare, and driving. That mix of choices matters because not every attendee arrives the same way.

Average vehicle occupancy: predicted: 2.27, observed: 3.32
Share of attendees traveling by private vehicle: predicted: 90%, observed: 86%

A venue’s geographic setting really matters.

Before studying a proposed venue, we look at the full event ecosystem, not just the site boundary.

What factors influence how people arrive?

Parking supply and pricing, transit service, walking and biking access, e-bikes, e-scooters, and whether ridehailing is realistic based on distance, surge pricing, vehicle availability, and pickup locations.

Where are the likely pinch points?

Street capacity, transit platform capacity, curb activity, and pedestrian crossings are the places where small delays can quickly compound.

Are surrounding land uses helping or hindering?

Nearby restaurants, bars, hotels, neighborhoods, airports, private parking lots, other venues, and land uses influence how people arrive, linger, and leave.

What keeps it safe?

Public safety needs, visibility, lighting, crowd movement, emergency access, and coordination among the venue, operators, agencies, and event staff.

Small details can prevent big backups.

Event plans succeed or fail in the handoffs: from the street to the garage, from the sidewalk to the entrance, from the final whistle to the first train home.

That is why we account for the details that are easy to overlook but impossible to ignore on game day.

A single parking attendant can slow an entire arrival pattern. Cash payments at a garage entrance can send queues back into traffic. A poorly timed signal can create avoidable delays. Food carts can pinch a sidewalk until people spill into the street. Transit schedules can miss the actual surge. A rideshare zone can look good on paper but fail if it lacks lighting, cell service, or a clear walking path.

We study these friction points before they become operational problems, then translate them into traffic management plans, curb strategies, signal timing, staffing guidance, transit coordination, and pickup zones that work when the crowd shows up.

Let’s Connect

Reach out to the people leading our sports venues and special events practice.