Suite surrender.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS biz

The seats are great, the drinks flow freely, and somewhere down below there's a good game going on. For mixing business and pleasure, sports-arena luxury suites have been a go-to play for years--and a source of riches for team owners who routinely fetch $150,000 or more per season for leasing their upscale digs to corporations and business owners.

But somewhere between the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the economic downturn of 2008, luxury boxes went into a slump. At some ballparks, like Seattle's SafeCo Field and Milwaukee's Miller Park, teams have actually torn down luxury boxes to make room for cheaper seating.

Closer scrutiny of marketing costs is one culprit. With per-event ticket prices that can exceed $500, companies have figured out it's often cheaper to wine-and-dine clients in other ways. Plus, the boom in luxury-box construction has taken some of the luster out of the category: Today, nearly everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who has a luxury box. Finally, changes in federal law have made some big corporations edgy about accepting freebies from vendors--including entertainment at sports events.

But the biggest challenge to the enduring value of the sports-arena luxury boxes is keeping up with the sheer tonnage of events they entail. At Pepsi Center, for instance, a luxury suite that accommodates 12 seats puts its tenant in the position of managing ticket distribution for 492 seating opportunities during regular-season Nuggets games alone. Add in 35 Avalanche home games, and that's another 420 tickets to unload. Factoring in concerts, Colorado Mammoth and Colorado Crush games adds to the demand on companies that attempt to maximize the value of their suites by keeping them full of clients and employees.

"You do the math: It can be brain damaging," says Mark Beese, chief marketing officer for Denver's Holland & Hart LLP law firm.

To find a comfortable middle ground, Holland & Hart, CH2M Hill and other Colorado companies are turning to a new approach to entertaining clients at sports events. Rather than leasing entire luxury suites themselves, they're sharing access with other companies through a "fractional" leasing arrangement managed by an outside firm. The model gives participants dibs on a smaller number of tickets at a reduced number of games within a managed luxury-suite environment, where they can hobnob with invitees from fellow suite-sharers. That way, participants get the benefit of schmoozing...