Warriors president talks SuiteXchange, COVID-19 vaccine requirements, and virtual reality

Warriors President & COO Brandon Schneider joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss resale platform SuiteXchange, COVID-19 safety measures and protocols, and the outlook for the future of VR and the metaverse.

Video Transcript

BRIAN CHEUNG: You know, we cover a lot of markets here on Yahoo Finance, but we want to spotlight one specific marketplace. And that's the marketplace for basketball arena suites. The Chase Center home of the Golden State Warriors relaunched its offering, allowing fans to swap and exchange tickets to get the best views of the Splash Brothers, of course. So for more on this, Brandon Schneider, Warriors president and COO joins us now live. Brandon, great to have you on the program. Tell us a little bit more about this sweet exchange product and what you hope to achieve with it.

BRANDON SCHNEIDER: Yeah, thanks for having me on. I think it really seeks to solve a couple of issues. Our suite holders have access to all Warriors games and all concerts at Chase Center, so it's a lot of events. And so quite frankly, they want the ability to be able to resell and make sure they're getting utilization when they're not using the suite for their clients.

And what we found when we were opening Chase Center and talking to all of our suite holders, there's really not a good platform to do that. You know, there's a lot of ticket resale platforms out there. And most of them have the ability to post suites. But they're not really meant for that. So we went to work building our own platform. So it obviously helps suite holders have that avenue to safely authentically sell suites that they're not using.

And then the other side of the token, it's really good for buyers. You know, a building like Chase Center, our suites are basically sold out for the season and for all concerts. So if there are people looking to go to events on a one-off basis to rent a suite for a night, this gives them another avenue to do that, aside from calling us to see if we have a suite left. So it does both those things. And the other thing it does is allows people to go buy a suite online, which, quite frankly, hasn't really been a prevalent thing in sports until now.

AKIKO FUJITA: So talk to me how the platform works. I mean, you know, I hate to make the reference, but my first thought was it's sort of like an Airbnb, right? You've got the property here, and you can rent it out on certain days. How does that work on the platform? And how much of a cut do you, the Warriors, get?

BRANDON SCHNEIDER: So the Airbnb reference is interesting. The reference I usually use is just more to ticket resale, given it's in the industry. But I don't think the analogy you're giving is wrong at all. And basically, there's two sides to it, right? So the suite holder, the person that has the suite for the season, can go in and select the events they want to sell. They can select what price they want to sell the suite for. And then that populates on suitexchange.com. So that's the site, suitexchange.com.

And then buyers can go in and see a listing of what's available. And when they click in, they can see the view from the suite, the location in relation to the court or the stage, all of the amenities, all of those things. One thing that's really unique about it is there's a bid/ask feature. So this is very different from, like, a ticket resale.

So if you post a suite for, let's say, $10,000-- making up a number-- a buyer can go in and buy the suite for $10,000, and it's done. Or the buyer can make a bid for less than $10,000 that then goes to the suite owner because there may be a situation where the suite owner would take $8,000 or something. So there can be a back and forth, where there's that price discussion over the internet, online, which we think is really unique and really makes sense for a premium product like this.

AKIKO FUJITA: And Brandon, like so many arenas around the country, you've kind of had to navigate all the challenges that come with the pandemic. You recently made a booster shot a requirement to get into the Chase Center. And I wonder what drove that decision. And how much pushback have you gotten?

BRANDON SCHNEIDER: So pushback, basically zero. So we've been fortunate-- you know, Joe Lacob, our owner, has a master's degree in epidemiology. So we've been on top of everything COVID-related early on. He was talking about herd immunity before the rest of us knew what that was. So we've said from the start, we want to be the safest arena in the country.

Here, in the San Francisco Bay Area and in California, you know, I think the government's been more careful in terms of COVID restrictions. The booster requirement's actually mandated by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, so we work really closely with San Francisco, with California, and also with the NBA to make sure that we've got protocols to keep our fans as safe as we possibly can.

BRIAN CHEUNG: And then Brandon, talking about kind of the future of the experience in the arena beyond the pandemic, virtual reality has gotten a lot of attention. I'm a Nets fan. They unveiled the Netaverse, where you can kind of watch games in VR using an Oculus. But I understand that the same technology has been deployed at the Chase Center as well. I think it was on the 31st last month with that Rockets game, they had the VR technology available. How important is that going to be? Do you worry that might cannibalize in-person ticket sales or kind of add a new demo of fans to [INAUDIBLE]?

BRANDON SCHNEIDER: Brian, we think it's the latter for sure. You know, I think the rate of change in technology is not slowing down, right? It's continuing to accelerate. And being here, again, in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Silicon Valley, we're amongst very tech savvy fans. And it's part of our DNA. So we're-- part of what we do is we always want to innovate and be looking ahead for what the best fan experience will be.

But the reality is people coming to events want that communal experience. Like, we've heard this talked about through COVID. One of the things that we're all missing is attending live events and having that in-person interaction that I think we all crave. So we don't think that's ever going away. And when we create-- you mentioned VR, but whatever the experience may be. We're doing things with NFTs, and we could go on and on with the innovations related to technology and otherwise. We think that just enhances the experience.

The reality is 99% of our fans will never go to a game at Chase Center because we have fans all around the globe. So when we think about fan experience, which is something that we think about a lot, as you might imagine, certainly want to make the experience incredible at Chase Center, but we also think about that digital experience that all of our fans worldwide will be able to consume and take part of. So we 100%, 1,000% view things like VR as additive to that overall fan experience.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, especially when costs are so high to get into so many games. Brandon, next time, we're going to have to talk basketball when we have you back on. It's been a painful year for me. Maybe Brian, too. And I know the Warriors are having a good season. So have to have you back on the show. Brandon Schneider, Warriors president and COO.