The destruction of the roof of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., by Hurricane Milton on October 9 highlighted the vulnerability of sports stadium facilities. The weather-related risk exposures for some stadiums are much more extensive than a single event, though, as a
"As we continue down the path of climate change, we're going to continue to see heightened occurrences of these extreme events, and they will continue to cause severe damage to all types of infrastructure and real estate," said Austin Clack, climate risk solution architect at Climate X.
"Exposure is inherent in some of these regions. We're trying to wake people up to the fact that it's happening today, and adaptive measures need to take place. For these large stadiums that are obviously huge revenue generators, but also extremely important to their communities as economic hubs and cultural hubs, you can't just pick them up and move them," Clack said.
While Tropicana is a domed baseball stadium, Climate X's study covered the 30 NFL pro football stadiums, of which 18 are completely open air. New Orleans, Miami, Atlanta and Houston have covered or partially covered NFL stadiums in hurricane-prone regions. The Atlanta and Houston stadiums have retractable roofs.
In baseball, Houston and Miami are the other two cities in hurricane-prone regions. Their baseball-only facilities, not shared with NFL teams, have retractable roofs. Tropicana Field's roof was fixed in place.
The Climate X study points to cities and facilities other than any of those mentioned so far as being most vulnerable to climate risks. It cites the New Orleans and Houston NFL stadiums as most exposed to climate risk, along with Jacksonville, Florida's NFL stadium, which is open air, but has plans to add a canopy cover.
To measure climate risk vulnerability, Climate X gave letter grades from A to F for ability to resist certain perils, including surface flooding, cyclones, subsidence (sinking surfaces), drought and storm surges. The New Orleans, Jacksonville and Houston stadiums all scored either D, E or F in all of these categories.
"For this study, we assessed 10 different separate hazards," said Clack. "This covered geophysical events like subsidence and landslides. We cover heat events, drought and extreme heat, different types of flooding, river flooding, surface flooding, coastal flooding and storm surge. It's a wide breadth of different climate impacts that we're taking into account when we're assessing the climate resiliency of a given asset."
The study also names three NFL stadiums with the most potential of climate-related degradation as assets: MetLife Stadium, home of the New York Jets and Giants; SoFi Stadium, home to the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers; and State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. Climate X projects that from 2020 through 2050, MetLife Stadium will incur losses of $5.6 billion, SoFi Stadium $4.4 billion and State Farm Stadium $965.5 million.
MetLife is open air, SoFi has a translucent canopy cover that is a separate structure, and State Farm Stadium has a retractable roof. While none of these are in locations commonly vulnerable to hurricanes, other factors make them more vulnerable to climate damage, according to Clack. MetLife is built on the wetlands of the New Jersey Meadowlands.
"Flooding in particular, was most pervasive across all the different hazards, likely because many of these assets, many of the different stadiums, are in coastal areas. Flooding is just more common in those areas in general," he said. MetLife should consider building sea walls surrounding the stadium to prevent the worst losses from storm surges, Clack added.
Hurricanes, of course, are one of the building vulnerabilities that Climate X includes in its data. The metrics used for this include the stadium roof building material and the speed of wind gusts.
"If we're seeing a more resilient building structure for the roof material, we're going to see the damage curve for that particular asset be affected by that resiliency," Clack said. "Tropicana's roof obviously sustained pretty large impacts from the hurricane. We would model that impact given information regarding the actual material type of that building."
