Market Roundup: White collars move into a white elephant

White collars move into a white elephant

Just 45 days after taking charge of Brazil’s second-largest football stadium, the Mané Garrincha in Brasília, Arena BSB, a consortium that won the bid to operate the facility (built for the 2014 World Cup), had to close the stadium’s doors because of the arrival of the Covid pandemic.

“After four years of planning, the pandemic deprived us of the most important thing for our business: the people. In the meantime, we started using the stadium’s boxes as our offices because the place where we would originally be headquartered was being renovated,” Richard Dibois, Arena BSB CEO, tells The Brazilian Report.

• “Sometime later, we invited an events company, R2, which had to reduce its operations due to the pandemic crisis, to occupy another box. Little by little, by word of mouth, more companies became interested in working in a stadium,” Mr. Dibois added.

State of play. Currently, more than 5,000 square meters on the stadium’s third floor are occupied by companies in the events, communication, law, food, and financial technology sectors, says Rafael Roda, founder of real estate agency TRK, who “shaped” the idea, that is, built the office business model in the stadium for Arena BSB. Today, around 700 people work at the stadium.

• TRK and R2 run the office business for Arena BSB under the name Esfera.

Yes, but… Having an office in a stadium is not a perfect fit for just any company. Mr. Dibois explains that although they come from different industries, the...