Jack Vander Aarde: Yeah, great. Good morning, guys. I appreciate the update and good to see the construction and momentum continue. So, Michael, I believe the long-term opportunity should remain the bigger focus. But I did just want to touch on 2022 performance because revenue growth was up nearly 50% year-over-year and your 2023 revenue guidance for at least 75% growth. Can you just touch on what drives your confidence in that clearly accelerating growth outlook in 2023 just based on what you expect to roll out in launch at the Village?
Michael Crawford: Yeah. Look, I think it’s a lot about timing. And if you think back to when the company went public in ’20 July of ’20, the first year of the company was simply existence, right? Survival and making sure that we were making decisions, battening down the hatches and making good business decisions to get us through the majority of COVID and allowing ourselves the opportunity to then continue. And we did construction so that as people started to feel comfortable coming back to social environments, stadiums, out restaurants, etcetera, that we were in a position to start to open these assets. But, you know, as I said, Jack, and I think people cannot underestimate this. You probably feel this in your own personal lives.
Go out and order a refrigeration unit, go out and order something that has steel and a petroleum based product. You’re talking about weeks, if not months to get some of this stuff. I give a lot of credit to our team, our construction management team, Carol Smith, project management team. They are being creative and leveraging the channels that they have out there to get access to necessary equipment sooner. I’ll give you an example. There is a permanent power box in Don Shula’s American Kitchen that was supposed to arrive on property in November of last year. We have yet to receive it. Now we’ve done a very good work around and we have the facility open, but that’s an example of it’s hard to drive revenue when you’re facing these types of supply chain constraints and hesitancy.
Remember, other companies are going through this as well. You have slower. You have slower commitments for tenants because they’re dealing with their own financial situations. You have guests that are dealing with inflationary environments in their personal lives, making decisions on how to spend their discretionary income. And yet we’ve continued to build and we’ve continued to open and we’ve continued to see success. And so for me, why I get so excited is, I think about what this team has accomplished in that kind of environment. And as we emerge from that and yeah I think there’s rough bumpy waters ahead of us, but it gives me a lot of hope seeing what I’m seeing from my chair, how rapidly we’re increasing booking of events, how rapidly the perception of what we’re building and opening is changing and evolving.
Shula’s is doing incredibly well as a restaurant concept. The first week the numbers I’ve been really impressed with, but more importantly, the experience itself is of the highest quality adding new rides, adding our media content is filling up, our gaming environment is really starting to take hold. So I think all of that and remember, I’ll just go back and say and then I’ll pause for a moment the synergy that can be driven out of this USFL hosting two teams permanently in our stadium this year for the season, playoffs and then championship again drives room nights, food revenue, meeting revenue facility revenue, tenant revenue, the opportunity for national television and media drives partnerships and sponsorship growth. So we if you look at the performance, I think, you can say year-over-year we’ve grown and we’ve grown exponentially.
I expect the same thing as Ben said our guidance for this year has not changed and we reforecast every single month and we still have very good line of sight on where that growth is going to come from.
Jack Vander Aarde: Great. Fantastic color there. And then, Michael, maybe I believe you mentioned your growing attendance levels in 2022 about 300,000 or so. Just bigger picture with the Phase 2 roadmap with the new hotels and encouraging to hear you broke ground on the Water Park this past quarter. Can you just touch on your overall long-term outlook with the Water Park and the new hotel and just what that means for your overall attendance levels, how that compares? Thanks.
Michael Crawford: Yeah, I think about it in two ways. Well, actually three. You know, in Phase 1, we created a set of assets, high quality that could host events. Phase 2, we’re creating now a destination where people can come and stay and play and enjoy. They can come for a day visit as well. But our ultimate goal is to take that two plus million annual attendance and increase that to five plus million annual attendance. We’re going to increase attendance this year. You’re going to see exponential growth in attendance this year. Center for Performance is adding to that Fan Engagement Zone, new outdoor rides, the ForeverLawn Sports Complex, more events in our stadium. All of that attributes to higher attendance growth and by the way year round with the ability to flatten that seasonality with indoor environments.
Where I see us going over the next couple of years and as we add an asset like the Water Park and the on-site hotel, you take that length of stay, so you take attendance and it grows. But now you also grow the length of stay from maybe a half a day to a day and a half, maybe two days. So now you have an opportunity to service guests and give them more experiences that they can experience over a multi-day period of time. And then the more we’ve added and the more events that sort of pulse through the destination, the more the intent to return increases. So it’s three magic triggers, right? It’s increased attendance, it’s length of stay and its intent to return. We’re already seeing that grow even with the assets we’ve added and the events that we have on a regular basis.
Now, by the way, we’re getting ready to announce you’re going to see in the very near term more announcements for events. I think that’s what separates us from so many other destinations that are out there and really puts us on a different playing field. There has been a need for this in Northeast Ohio. The demand for it regionally is there. We’re seeing it all around us, a 100 plus mile drive radius. People are coming for the experiences. And remember, they have to be high quality. They have to be worth the drive, worth the money and worth the stay. We’re getting the feedback that they are and that’s our commitment to excellence around the types of experiences that we’re creating. So long-term, the Water Park enhances that length of stay. The Water Park enhances that repeat visitation and the Water Park enhances that synergy.
We can now have the ability to package Water Park rides, Pro Football Hall of Fame, a meal and a hotel stay. That’s a pretty compelling package for at least a couple of day length of stay. And frankly this area has been starved for this type of entertainment and experience for many, many years.
