Oak View Group Careers: Stadium and Arena Jobs

Oak View Group is the newest of the major U.S. stadium and arena hospitality companies and the one that has grown fastest. Founded in 2015 by entertainment industry veterans Tim Leiweke and Irving Azoff, it has moved in a decade from a startup with no buildings to a company that develops venues, manages them, sells their sponsorship, and feeds the people inside them.

For someone looking for work, that breadth is the key fact — and the main source of confusion. “A job at OVG” can mean three quite different things depending on which part of the company holds the contract at your venue.

Which part of Oak View Group is hiring

Most people arriving at this page want OVG Hospitality — it holds by far the largest share of headcount. But the distinction matters at venues where OVG holds more than one contract, because the same building will list event-day hospitality shifts and salaried operations positions under the same employer name.

Where OVG operates

OVG’s portfolio spans arenas, stadiums, convention centers, music festivals, performing arts centers, and cultural institutions across four continents. Venues covered on StadiumGigs include:

• Allegiant Stadium — Las Vegas Raiders and UNLV; hospitality since April 2025
• David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium — hospitality, venue operations, and event booking
• Allen Fieldhouse — Kansas Jayhawks basketball

Beyond those, the company is closely associated with a generation of new arenas it helped develop and now operates, including Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle and UBS Arena in New York. The practical relevance for job seekers is that OVG accounts tend to be either newly built or newly renovated buildings, which means newer premium programs and a higher proportion of premium hospitality roles than at older venues.

The transition record, and why it matters

The most useful thing to know about OVG as an employer is how it behaves when it wins an account from a competitor. Concessionaire transitions are the moment stadium workers are most exposed — a new operator inherits a building but not necessarily a workforce.

OVG’s public record has been retention rather than replacement:

• At Allegiant Stadium, taking over from Levy in April 2025, it retained roughly 95 percent of existing staff and hired about 200 more people.
• At Kansas Athletics, replacing Sodexo Live! in 2024, the transition ran alongside an expansion of the venues covered rather than a contraction of the workforce.

Two caveats worth holding onto. First, retention means your employment continues, not that your terms are identical — pay scale, scheduling systems, and benefits eligibility can all change with the operator. Second, a good aggregate record is not a guarantee for any individual role. If your venue is changing hands, ask the incoming operator directly about your classification.

Roles OVG recruits for

Event-day hospitality — the largest category, and where most first jobs are:

• Concessions stand attendants and cashiers
• Runners and premium-level attendants
• Suite and club servers
• Bartenders (alcohol-server certification required, arranged locally)
• Warehouse and stocking staff

Culinary — kitchen and commissary production:

• Prep and line cooks
• Sous chefs and executive chef positions
• Culinary leads at venues with substantial in-house production

Premium services — the better-paid front-of-house work:

• Suite attendants and VIP experience staff
• Club and lounge hosts

Event operations and venue management — at buildings where OVG holds the management contract:

• Event setup, conversion, and logistics crews
• Guest services
• Bookings, sales, and administration

Applying to Oak View Group

• Use the OVG careers portal. Applications for hospitality roles do not go through the team or the university. This is the single most common mistake at OVG venues.
• Apply to the venue, not the company. Hiring is managed building by building. An application at one venue does not create a record at another.
• Time it to the venue’s season. Arena accounts hire in early autumn; football stadiums hire in July and August. See the individual venue pages above for local windows.
• Lead with availability. At venues where OVG holds a multi-venue account — Kansas is the clearest example — availability across both the football and basketball calendars makes you substantially more useful than availability for one.
• Prior OVG experience carries. It does not transfer automatically between venues, but it is a real advantage when you reapply in a new market.

What to expect as an employer

OVG positions itself as a premium operator, and the accounts it wins tend to reflect that: new or heavily renovated buildings, substantial premium programs, and food and beverage treated as part of the product rather than as a cost line. In practice that means more emphasis on service standards than at a pure volume-concessions operation, more premium roles as a share of the workforce, and investment in training and development programs.

Most event-day work is part-time and event-based rather than scheduled weekly. Annual earnings depend on how many events you pick up, which is why the density of a venue’s calendar matters more than its hourly rate.

Related pages

• Competing operators: Levy Restaurants, Aramark, Sodexo Live!, Legends Hospitality
• Background: how stadium hospitality contracts work
• Venues: stadium directory