The University of Kansas announced a partnership with Oak View Group to manage stadium operations and food services across multiple campus venues, replacing previous concessionaire Sodexo Live!.
At first reading this looks like a routine college concessions change. It is not. The scope of what OVG took on at Kansas is unusually broad, and that is the part worth understanding — both for what it says about where college athletics hospitality is heading, and for what it means for people who work at these venues.
Scope of the partnership
OVG took on food and beverage services and suite catering for all Kansas Athletics venues, including:
- David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, including the reimagined Gateway District
- Allen Fieldhouse, as part of the arena’s ongoing upgrades
- A new membership-only dining club in the stadium’s club levels
But the agreement went further than catering. OVG also took on day-to-day operations of the football stadium and conference center, lead responsibility for booking special events and concerts, and hospitality management at Allen Fieldhouse. The company won the business after responding to a university proposal.
Why the breadth of the deal matters
Most concessionaire contracts are narrow: an operator sells food and beverage inside a building someone else runs. What Kansas signed is closer to an outsourced venue business — operations, bookings, and hospitality under one roof.
For the university, the logic is straightforward. A football stadium with six or seven home dates a year is an expensive asset to leave idle, and the Gateway District was designed to make it usable the rest of the time. Booking that calendar is a specialist commercial skill that most athletic departments do not have in house.
For people looking for work, the consequence is more interesting than it sounds. A pure concessions account generates seasonal, event-day jobs and nothing else. An operations-and-booking account generates year-round positions: event management, conference center operations, sales, building services. Kansas Athletics went from being a seasonal employer to being a partly year-round one, and that shift is what the contract actually delivered locally.
The Gateway District
Phase I of the Gateway District was set to open in August 2025, transforming the stadium experience in Lawrence. The project added new premium club levels, a membership-only dining club, and bars, restaurants, and shops integrated into the stadium footprint.
Premium spaces are where the better-paid front-of-house work sits at any venue, so a redevelopment weighted toward club levels and a dining club changes the job mix rather than simply increasing the headcount. The dining club in particular operates on a membership rhythm rather than a game-day one.
What the transition meant for workers
The honest answer is that it depended on a factor outside anyone’s contract: Kansas is a right-to-work state, and the Kansas Athletics workforce is not organized.
At an organized venue — Oracle Park in San Francisco is the clearest example on this site — a successorship agreement obliges an incoming operator to honour the existing collective bargaining agreement. Workers there had a contractual floor under them when the operator changed. In Lawrence there is no such mechanism.
What Kansas workers had instead was the operator’s practice, and on that measure OVG’s record has been good. When it took over Allegiant Stadium from Levy in April 2025 it retained roughly 95 percent of the existing workforce and hired about 200 more people. That is a pattern, not a promise — but it is the relevant evidence.
The practical advice for anyone in a venue changing operators, in any market: retention of employment is not retention of terms. Pay scale, scheduling systems, benefits eligibility, and management all change with the employer. Ask the incoming operator about your specific classification rather than assuming continuity.
Update — August 2026
Two football seasons on from the announcement, the position is this:
- Phase I of the Gateway District opened in August 2025, on the schedule announced.
- OVG holds the whole Kansas Athletics account, which is why applicants who offer availability across both the autumn football calendar and the winter basketball calendar at Allen Fieldhouse are considerably more useful to the operator than those available for football Saturdays alone.
- Later phases of the Gateway District remain in progress. We have not independently verified completion dates beyond Phase I, and we will update this article when we do.
For current venue-level detail — who hires for what, the local pay context, and the seasonal hiring windows — see the David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium guide and the Allen Fieldhouse guide.
About Oak View Group
Founded by Tim Leiweke and Irving Azoff in 2015, OVG has become a major force in live experience venue development, management, and premium hospitality. It operates across arenas, convention centers, music festivals, performing arts centers, and cultural institutions on four continents. Its accounts skew toward new or heavily renovated buildings, which is why premium roles make up a larger share of its workforce than at operators with older portfolios.
How to apply at Kansas Athletics venues
- Food, beverage, premium, suites, venue operations, events — Oak View Group careers portal.
- Guest services, ushers, ticket takers — Kansas Athletics.
- Grounds, turf, facilities — University of Kansas careers site.
- Timing — football hiring runs July to August; basketball hiring runs September to October. Applying in either window puts you in front of the same operator.
Applying to the university for a concessions role is the most common mistake at this venue, and it is a slow one to recover from.
Sources
Reporting on this transition draws on the University of Kansas and Kansas Athletics announcements, Oak View Group’s own statements about the agreement, and subsequent trade coverage of the Gateway District timeline. Corrections and updates are welcome via the contact page.