The Game Starts in the Parking Lot

By the time a fan walks through your entrance gate, they have already formed an opinion about the day.

Maybe they circled the parking structure for twenty-five minutes. Maybe they stood in a ticket scan line that wasn't moving while their six-year-old asked for the fourth time when they were going inside. Maybe they had nowhere to toss the half-eaten snack their kids brought from the car because there wasn't a single trash can visible on their walk to the entrance.

Those fans are now inside your venue. And they are already annoyed. The greatest in-game entertainment production in the world is not going to fully recover that mood. You are playing catch-up from the first whistle.

This is one of the most consistent gaps I find when assessing fan experiences for teams, leagues, and events through CUENTO Marketing: organizations invest heavily in what happens inside the venue and almost nothing in what happens before the fan gets there. That pre-gate experience, everything from the moment a fan arrives in the parking lot to the moment they walk through the gate is where the emotional temperature of the entire game day gets set. And most sports organizations are leaving it completely unmanaged.

Walt Disney understood that every detail of a guest's arrival experience shapes everything that follows. It is long past time for sports to learn the same lesson.

Audio Is Your Invisible Host

Before we talk about live bands, guest DJs, or promotional staff, let’s talk about the most foundational exterior audio element that most venues still get wrong: the perimeter audio loop.

A well-designed exterior audio system does something deceptively simple: it tells the fan that something is happening, that they are arriving somewhere that has been prepared for them, and that the energy inside is worth the journey to get there and the cost too. Done well, it is the first emotional handshake between your organization and your fan on game day. Done poorly and in a lot of cases when not done at all, it communicates indifference.

The two most common exterior audio failures I encounter are volume and speaker location. Volume that is either so low it blends into traffic noise and serves no purpose, or so high that families are covering their ears before they've even reached the gate. And speaker location or direction aiming can cause a perimeter loop to be non-existent in many important areas of the ingress so PA announcements about entry procedures, bag policy, and welcoming music and greetings don’t reach most of the fan base.

These are solvable problems. They require intentional audio zoning with different content and different volume levels mapped to different areas of the exterior, managed by someone who understands both the sound system architecture and the fan flow of that specific venue. The entrance plaza near the main gates is a different audio environment than the outer perimeter near the parking structures. Treating them the same is the mistake.

And when you do have announcements to make about where to find accessible entrances, what the bag policy is, what gates are open for which ticket sections,  those announcements should come from a voice your fans recognize. Not a generic recorded voice. Ideally the same play-by-play announcer whose voice they associate with great moments inside that building. That familiar voice on the exterior loop is a form of brand continuity. It says: you are in our world now, and we've been expecting you.

Live Music and Guest DJs: Setting the Right Vibe

More organizations are investing in live entertainment in their exterior plazas and parking areas, and when it's executed thoughtfully, it is one of the most effective tools for transforming the pre-gate experience from a logistical obstacle into an event in itself.

But there are questions that need answers before a single speaker gets turned on.

If you're bringing in a guest DJ, what is their vibe level? Are they creating a fun, welcoming party atmosphere that energizes families, draws people in, and makes them feel like the celebration started the moment they got out of their car? Or are they performing a club set at club volume, with content and intensity that immediately communicates to the family with three kids in tow that this particular area isn't for them? Those are completely different experiences, and the distinction matters enormously.

The same question applies to live bands. What are they playing? Music that connects to your team's identity, your market, your fanbase demographic? Or a generic set that could be heard anywhere in your city? What is the sound level? What is the performance schedule, when do they play, how long do they play, and critically, what plays in between their sets? A live band that performs for thirty minutes and then leaves thirty minutes of dead air is worse than no live band at all. The in-between content is part of the production.

These are decisions that need to be made by someone with a production sensibility and a clear understanding of the fan experience objective and not by whoever happened to book the entertainment or manage the vendor relationship. The exterior pre-game show deserves a producer. It deserves a rundown. It deserves the same focus applied to what happens inside the building.

The Human Element: Greeters, Promotions Staff, and the Welcome

Technology and production value matter. But nothing replaces a human being whose job is to make you feel welcomed before you've set foot inside the venue.

Welcoming greeters stationed at key touch points around your venue, at the edge of the parking lot, along the main pedestrian paths, at the entrance plaza are one of the highest-return, lowest-cost investments an organization can make in the pre-gate experience. Their job is simple and profound: make eye contact, smile, and communicate that we are glad you are here. Not to answer questions about bag policy or direct traffic. To make people feel expected and valued.

Promotions staff working the exterior should be operating with the same energy and intentionality. A roving promotions team on branded golf carts has worked great in my past that was decorated in team colors, with music playing, circulating through the parking lots and plazas tossing branded merchandise or small giveaways to fans. They create spontaneous moments of delight that cost almost nothing to produce and generate enormous goodwill. A family who catches a branded item from a smiling staff member on a golf cart before they've even reached the gate arrives at that gate in a better mood than they left their car in.

I saw this executed at a level that has stayed with me ever since at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Producing Men’s Ice Hockey at those Games, we deployed roving promotional teams in full character costumes throughout the exterior areas around the venue that were energetic, engaging, and completely in the spirit of the event. But the element that truly captured fans was a fleet of miniature Zambonis. If you don’t know what a Zamboni is, its a car size machine that drives around cleaning the ice in hockey between periods. Now these were not full-size, they were scaled-down, branded, visually absurd in the best possible way, driven by promotions staff through the crowds outside the hockey venue before games. They were loud in personality, not volume. They were unexpected. They were completely on-brand for a hockey event. And they stopped fans in their tracks.

Every person who saw a mini Zamboni rolling through the plaza wanted to take a photo with it. And that instinct, that irresistible pull toward something visually unexpected and shareable is more valuable today than it was then. In a world where every fan at every sporting event has a high-quality camera in their pocket and a platform to post it to, the question of what makes them stop, point, and shoot is not a trivial one. It is a marketing question. It is a brand question. It is a fan experience question.

The organizations winning at exterior experience right now are thinking about this deliberately. They are asking: what is the thing in our parking lot or entrance plaza that a fan will photograph and post before they even walk through the gate? What is the unexpected, joyful, on-brand moment that becomes the first piece of organic content generated from game day and shared by fans to their own networks, before your social team has posted a single thing? A mini Zamboni. A costumed character doing something surprising. A promotional team on a decorated golf cart at exactly the right moment. These are not accidents. They are designed.

The same principle applies to celebrity fan messages on the exterior audio loop. Imagine arriving at a stadium and hearing a voice you recognize, maybe a legendary former player, a famous local fan, or an A-list celebrity welcoming you to game day and sharing a memory of what it felt like to attend games at this venue as a kid. That is a thirty-second audio moment that costs almost nothing to produce, gets recorded once, and rotates in the pre-game exterior loop for an entire season. And every fan who hears it arrives at the gate with a slightly warmer feeling toward your organization than they had thirty seconds ago.

These are not expensive ideas. They are thoughtful ones. And that distinction matters.

The Frictions That Undo Everything Else

All of the investment in exterior audio, live entertainment, greeters, and promotions staff can be undermined in seconds by unmanaged logistical friction.

A parking experience that is confusing, slow, or hostile can set a tone that great production cannot fully recover from. A ticket scan line that is backed up at gates opening because the scanners aren't working or there aren't enough staff positions can turn excitement into frustration in real time. A family with nowhere to dispose of food or trash before they enter, because no one thought to place trash bins along the primary pedestrian pathways outside the gates, arrives inside already carrying a small irritation that compounds every subsequent friction they encounter.

These are the details that Walt Disney famously obsessed over. He placed trash cans no more than thirty feet apart throughout his parks because he studied how long a guest would walk before giving up and dropping their garbage on the ground. He designed every aspect of the arrival experience at Disneyland around what a guest would actually feel and need, not around what was operationally convenient for the park to manage.

Sports organizations need to apply that same lens to the exterior experience. Walk the fan path yourself and even with your family if you can, from the furthest parking lot to the entrance gate, and ask honestly: what does this feel like? Where does the anxiety spike? Where is the audio helping and where is it adding to the noise? Where would a trash can be useful right now? Where is there nobody to ask for help?

The answers will tell you exactly where to invest.

The Bigger Picture: Experience Doesn't Start at the Gate

The most progressive large events and sports organizations in the world have already figured this out. They are building exterior experiences that are productions in their own right, with producers, rundowns, staffing plans, and audio designs as intentional as anything that happens inside. They understand that the fan experience is not a 3 hour window inside a building. It is a several-hour journey that starts when the fan leaves their home and ends when they return to it.

Every touchpoint along that journey is an opportunity. The parking attendant who waves them in with a smile. The music they hear as they walk toward the gates. The voice that welcomes them over the exterior speakers. The promotions team member who appears out of nowhere to hand their kid something with the team logo on it. The trash can that was exactly where they needed it. The greeter who made eye contact and said welcome before they'd asked a single question.

None of these are complicated. None require a major capital investment. All of them require deliberate thought, intentional design, and someone whose job is to own the pre-gate experience with the same seriousness that the game presentation team owns the in-game show.

The fan who walks through your gate already feeling welcomed, energized, and cared for is the fan who gives your team the benefit of the doubt when the first quarter goes badly. They are the fan who brings the family back to one more game that season. They are the fan who tells someone else the experience was worth it.

That fan experience began in the parking lot. It is time to start treating it that way.

Matt Coy is VP of Experiences at CUENTO Marketing. He consults with sports teams, leagues, federations, and major events on fan experience strategy, assessment, and implementation. He also serves as a fractional VP of Game Presentation for select clients.