Heir of $10bn college benefactor explains uniqueness of new $800m arena as completion nears
College football’s most expensive stadium is almost ready to welcome fans.
Footage released by Front Office Sports shows the first of 35,000 seats being installed at New Ryan Field ahead of its debut in fall.
The Northwestern Wildcats’ $862 million stadium will be it the smallest stadium in the Big Ten, developers believe it can still be the best home in college football.
It is dwarfed by the likes of Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor and Ohio Stadium in Ohio – all of which are in college football’s 100,000 club.
The old stadium could fit 47,000 fans, but instead of trying to compete on size, Northwestern have gone another route.
Planners focused on the fan experience and drew lessons from some of the stunning stadiums across the NFL and Premier League.
Part of the agenda includes four “festival” areas around the stadium, along with the standard premium seating options and clubs.
The seating of the stadium uses the same architectural innovation as the $2 billion Intuit Dome, with one seating area starting at just 90 feet away from the field.
For context, the best seats at Michigan’s stadium are 235 feet away.
It’s clear the venue is going for intimacy, with Northwestern’s farthest seat being just 136 feet away.
Billionaire Pat Ryan, worth an estimated $10bn, is a trustee at Northwestern with the old and incoming new stadium named after him.
The Ryan family is also a minority owner of the NFL’s Chicago Bears and owns a stake in the English Premier League club AFC Bournemouth.
His family, which is in the insurance business, donated $480 million to the funding of the new stadium, with the rest coming through other private backers.
“Our worst seat in this stadium is 100 feet closer to the field than the most expensive seat at the Big House [Michigan Stadium],” Ryan said last year.
“You’re building things up and cantilevering them over instead of going out.
“It’s structurally much more challenging from an engineering perspective, but you’ve got to create better-than-TV sightlines.
“A lot of people look at first-of-its-kind and say, ‘Oh, it’s just a mini NFL stadium,’ but it’s really something specific for college.
“Every college we’ve seen has said, ‘We know we need to think about doing something like this, but somebody needed to go first.’
“Everybody else is saying, ‘We’re going to watch closely, and if it works, we’ll come see it.”
There is also an aim for the stadium to host other major NCAA events at the stadium.
“You could see doing the Frozen Four or the Lacrosse National Championships or the Big Ten championships for soccer,” Ryan added.
In their press release, Northwestern claims they expect the new stadium to have a $1.3 billion impact on the Chicago area.
‘Never seen a stadium like this before’ – Pat Ryan Jr
Ryan’s son, Pat Ryan Jr, recently spoken about the new development, admitting he’s never seen anything like it before.
“Never seen a stadium like this before. And when they say that one of two things is true,” Ryan, an alum and President and CEO of Ryan Sports Development, told USA TODAY Sports.
“Either we’ll be right in making these bold bets. And if we’re right, you’ll see echoes of it in lots of buildings going forward. And if we’re wrong, it’ll be one of a kind, the only one of its kind, you know?”
“I’ve been told by more than one person that if we bid it out now, it probably costs $1.2 billion,” Ryan added.
“The reason we didn’t renovate the old stadium is because we would have spent all that money, and frankly, all it would have done is shore up the old building structurally,” Ryan said.
“The building did not have a lot that was preservable at the time. It’s 100 years old next year. … We did not want to spend $300 million on propping up a building that did not improve anything. It didn’t make sense. So, the university had a commitment to how much money it was going to put into renovating the stadium. We said we would finance the balance of that.”
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Northwestern athletic director Mark Jackson told the outlet that fan experience will be paramount to the project.
“So that is unique, a premium experience for everybody involved,” he said.
“Not only is it the most accessible stadium for those dealing with physical disabilities, but we also wanted to make it accessible from a price standpoint, too, and to make it affordable so that our young alums can take part in this or younger people that are just starting their careers, to come in, have a premium experience, have a chair back on every seat, have a covered canopy that protects everybody from the elements.
“Those kinds of opportunities that, comprehensively throughout an entire stadium, we haven’t seen quite like this.”
New stadiums are all the rage across college football and beyond
Away from college football, several teams in the NFL are either weighing up stadium moves, or in the process of renovating their current homes.
The Jacksonville Jaguars recently announced renovations to EverBank Stadium are due to commence following the end of the 2025 season, meaning the franchise will have to play at least one campaign elsewhere.
Elsewhere, a $5.7bn NFL franchise with one of oldest stadiums in the league is to undergo an $800m arena renovation with the timeline for completion now set.
The Washington Commanders are also returning to the District of Columbia after local legislators finally approved funding for a $3.8 billion arena on the site of the iconic abandoned RFK Stadium.
The Chicago Bears are also relocating to a new stadium with sites in Illinois and Indiana being considered.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Chiefs are leaving Missouri for Kansas.
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