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When Post Malone’s 40 tour trucks roll by Providence Park for the Portland stop of his BIG ASS Stadium Tour, they’ll not only need somewhere to park, but the singer and his touring crew will need places to eat, drink and sleep while they’re here. Just that one show, argues members of the informal new sports-arts coalition We Play for Portland, will significantly boost the city’s economy, which city leaders should support as the Rose City’s leading cultural institutions stare down significant construction projects.
Joth Ricci, executive chairman of Burgerville’s board of directors, led a panel of sports and performing arts leaders at the Portland Metro Chamber’s regular breakfast forum series on Wednesday, June 11, to introduce We Play for Portland, a new informal coalition of sports and arts leaders who pledge to advocate for live entertainment in Portland.
The heads of the Portland Trail Blazers and the Portland Timbers joined the CEO of Sport Oregon—a nonprofit organization advocating for the sports industry’s economic interests—as well as Oregon Ballet Theatre and the Oregon Symphony to champion spectator events, the common tie between athletic events and artistic performances like plays, concerts and dances.
But instead of spelling out an agenda of action items, the WPFP panel largely spent an hour advocating for the arts through an unsurprisingly business-oriented focus. Panelists framed their development interests—the forthcoming redevelopment of Keller Auditorium and Portland State University’s new performance arts venue and 100,000-square-foot art school building among them—as vital to reframing the narrative on post-pandemic Portland. (Though Live Nation and AEG’s concert halls were mentioned in the panel, a WPFP spokesperson confirmed to WW that the live entertainment companies are not coalition members at this time.)
The idea for WPFP came partially from Jim Etzel, Sport Oregon’s CEO. He recalled a meeting with Oregon and Washington State senators he took in D.C. alongside Oregon Symphony CEO Isaac Thompson and Oregon Ballet Theatre executive director Shane Jewell. During a recess, they compared notes and realized how far “sports” and “arts” were organized from one another in the meeting’s presentation, let alone how far each word was being considered from “economic development.”
“It’s always separated where it’s arts or it’s sports, and it needs to be ‘sports and arts’ or ‘arts and sports,’” he said on the panel. “Most of us are in city-owned venues, and we talk about this need to reboot or reimagine economic development; we’re not going to get successful economic development unless [the arts and sports] sector is thriving and attractive.”
We Play for Portland’s goals remain unclear; WPFP members did not respond to WW‘s requests for comment by press deadline. The Portland Metro Chamber panel was scant on details for actionable next steps like appealing to City Council members, or how the city’s largest cultural institutions would (if at all) support smaller ones grappling with revenue loss from realigned Portland Arts Tax priorities or federal grant award repeals. Jewell and Etzel mentioned how Portland Police Chief Bob Day personally suggested collaborating with large cultural events to make both patrons and touring entertainers and their teams feel safer with visible, engaged police officers.
Still, We Play for Portland has a vision beyond immediately promoting each company’s upcoming events and construction sites.
“I want to get rid of the fear-meter on the Blazers leaving on the front page of Willamette Week,” Etzel said. “Let’s act like a top 25 market—we’re the No. 23 media market, dang it. Let’s step into this moment and make the turnstiles turn…we’ve just got to get back to being ourselves. We’ve been here 55 years, anything can happen, but the ones in control of this narrative are us.”