The New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District is about a lot more than entertainment.
The most important element isn’t even the stadium. It’s housing. But you need the stadium to get the housing and you need the housing to get the stadium in this public private partnership plan.
But that entertainment part is important, too — especially revenue-generating entertainment. And, as popular as it is, especially when things are going good, University of Hawaii football — or football, period, alone — isn’t going to pay for the stadium, the housing and a profit for the development team and investors putting up the money that goes way beyond the $400 million the legislature provided.
A few years ago, an idea was floated for Topgolf, the popular franchise that combines virtual golf with dining and entertainment, at the stadium. Then, talks got a little more serious, but with Topgolf as an addition to the Ala Wai Golf Course facility, not to the stadium. Those talks ceased, though, after the pandemic.
Too bad, since Topgolf would have paid $1 million a year in rent. Maybe someone decided that indoor golf in Hawaii doesn’t make sense, since people come here to go outside, not inside.
But maybe it does, in some form.
There are plenty of places where you can swing a club indoors. Most of them are for instructional purposes, so you can improve your swing for a real course. But there is a place where you can “play” more than a hundred different courses, including Bethpage, Greywolf, or even, without going to Maui, Kapalua.
Sports Box has two locations. It’s sort of like karaoke — you and up to five friends rent a room for $75 an hour. In addition to golf, you can play virtual baseball, soccer, bowling, dodgeball and four other sports.
Could simulated golf or other sports — maybe an esports facility — fit in at NASED?
We’ve seen the super deluxe version the past two Tuesdays on ESPN, with the opening of the Tomorrow Golf League.
“I turned on the TV to watch Tiger Woods,” Collin Morikawa said.
Morikawa, one of the golf superstars playing in the TGL, was talking about when he was a kid and watching Woods win majors.
But almost every sports fan did exactly the same thing at some point in the past 30 years. We tuned in for Tiger. And we did again Tuesday to see Woods’ debut in the TGL, which he conceived of and developed, with Rory McIlroy and a lot of other rich and famous investors.
Woods called it an opportunity “to showcase golf in primetime” and grow the game.
Morikawa plays on the Los Angeles team, which crushed Woods’ Florida squad Tuesday, giving LA sports fans another respite from the disastrous wildfires.
For purists, there’s a lot to dislike about indoor, simulated golf — mostly that it’s new and different.
The TGL is a hybrid, with a Screenzone and a Greenzone. The green can be reshaped, and sensors indicate where the ball should be placed in the green area based on where an approach shot on the screen lands.
Whether you view it as cheesy and gimmicky, or innovative and fun, the TGL offers a feature anyone can love: a 40-second shot clock. TGL matches fit a two-hour window.
The TGL is already talking expansion beyond its one facility, the SoFi Center, in Palm Gardens, Fla. Las Vegas, Southern California, and Scottsdale, Ariz., are among possibilities, according to a recent Sports Business Journal article.
Long lines and big galleries at the Sony Open in Hawaii for Sunday’s final round at Waialae told us again what we already know. Golf is hugely popular in Hawaii.
Maybe a Tomorrow Golf League franchise and facility are not viable for NASED’s first phase, where the priorities for 2028 are the stadium and some of the housing. But it is a decades-long project, and that means envisioning and working toward tomorrow today.
