Developers Want To Copy The Battery Atlanta Success Story. Experts Say It's Not As Easy As It Looks

The Atlanta Braves' real estate success story has other teams scouting out how they can replicate it. 

Last year, the Braves’ 2.2M SF Battery Atlanta mixed-use project generated $97M in revenue, the highest amount in the complex’s eight-year history, according to Atlanta Braves Holdings’ annual report. Revenues jumped $30M in 2025 from the prior year, in part due to $27M of new rental revenues flowing into the team’s coffers. 

The results have been impressive enough that other teams have contacted the Braves to consult about plans for future mixed-use stadium projects, according to Braves officials.

But at least one expert warned that the Braves’ home run with The Battery is not so easily replicated.

“This model, there's an attempt to propagate it at a level that is unrealistic,” said Peter Sorckoff, the founder of Seer World, a consumer behavior consulting firm. “The only other model like this that I’ve ever seen properly programmed on mass for at least 10 years, like The Battery, is Avalon. That’s it.”

Avalon is a luxury mixed-use destination 20 miles northeast of The Battery in the affluent Alpharetta area. The project has spurred 4,000 new jobs and tallied more than $3B in retail sales and 700,000 hotel nights during its 10-year existence, Urbanize Atlanta reported. It does not have a stadium component.

Sorckoff and other panelists at Bisnow’s Atlanta Stadium Development and Placemaking Conference last week said numerous ingredients must mix together to make a successful project, not least of which is a local government willing to shell out incentives and tax dollars to fund big-ticket developments. 

“Like, everybody and their dog wants to do this,” Sorckoff said during the event held at One Ballpark Center in The Battery Atlanta. “I really don’t think it’s real unless you, first and foremost … have the governmental support.”

Success at The Battery also came, in part, from knowing what the market wanted in terms of retailers and restaurants, especially given the debt and capital requirements to undergo the construction of a stadium.

“We tell these other teams and owners the whole build-it-and-they-will-come concept is ... not a real thing,” said Jeremy Strife, executive vice president of development for the Atlanta Braves. “What uses are needed in the market to kind of guarantee when you build it, it will generate that sustainable revenue?”

A number of sports teams are spearheading new stadium developments in the U.S., including a riverfront development stadium in Detroit for its new WNBA team, the $3B redevelopment of Hallmark Card Inc.’s headquarters for a Kansas City Royals mixed-use stadium and a $3.8B stadium for the Washington Commanders.

A lot of colleges and universities are looking to turn their unused parcels into stadium developments with mixed-use aspects, Atlanta-based Carter Senior Vice President Adam Parker said. 

This is, in part, because collegiate sports coffers are being drained by the rules enacted in 2021 that require players to be paid for their name, image and likeness, he said. Colleges and universities are turning to real estate revenues to help plug the hole created by 22% of athletics revenues going toward player compensation, according to a 2026 paper published in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.

Parker is assisting Wake Forest University in its quest to develop a $150M mixed-use project on 100 acres it owns. It can be easy to get hung up on the dollar signs, he said, but smart schools are approaching stadium development as a value-add to the campus.

“A lot of these schools have really approached this with more of a Battery model of thinking of fan experience, of thinking of how the university can benefit from this and not just make it about revenue,” Parker said.

Strife said mixed-use developments around stadiums could also make the locations sticker, incentivizing teams to stay put. In what was considered a highly controversial move at the time, the Atlanta Braves relocated from Turner Field — which was barely 20 years old — to Truist Park in Cobb County. 

“The reason you leave is to do something better. Where could you go that’s better now?” he said.