‘Success’ of Happy Valley Jam could mean more events at Beaver Stadium

Beaver Stadium hosted the first concert in the history of the venue Saturday and because of the event’s success there could be more to come in the future

Country music artist Blake Shelton headlined the five-band concert. The stadium was set up to hold 70,000 fans, but Phil Esten, Penn State deputy director of athletics, said while the attendance numbers haven’t been finalized, the university has received positive feedback about the event.

“The definition of success isn’t only attendance, part of it is making sure everyone had an enjoyable experience,” Esten said. “By and large, the fans who attended, the artists, the promoters, the production company and staff had a pretty positive experience.”

Holding a concert at Beaver Stadium for the first time presented unique challenges, Esten said. The infrastructure of the stadium did not allow for a tractor-trailer to pull close to the stage as is the case in most venues, but the load in and out process was executed perfectly, he said.

Alcohol sales presented another challenge, Esten said. Beaver Stadium does not normally sell alcohol, which required staff to be trained in process and protocol to smoothly distribute the beverages, Esten said. The alcohol sales went well, he added, but the success at Happy Valley Jam will not lead to alcohol sales during football games.

Stage and field setup required a floor to be installed on top of the stadium’s turf. Some sections of the field were covered for three days, which likely damaged some of the playing surface, Esten said.

“There’s going to be some of the field that’s going to need to be repaired, but that’s to be expected when you’ve got a floor on it as long as we did,” he said. “We need to give it a little time to breath before we know exactly what we need to do, but our grounds crew is one of the best in the business and if anybody can bring it back to life, they can.”

A review of all aspects of the event will continue in the weeks ahead, but based on what the university knows at this point, the possibility exists for another concert, but there is no timetable for future plans.

“We’re going to make sure we do the post-event assessment as fully as we can and make sure we do that really in-depth before we start thinking about what might be next,” Esten said. “But we were really pleased with the overall flow of the event from start to finish.”

This story was originally published July 12, 2017 at 5:05 PM with the headline "‘Success’ of Happy Valley Jam could mean more events at Beaver Stadium."