LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) – Diamond Baseball Holdings (DBH), owners of several Minor League Baseball (MiLB) clubs, has selected OVG Hospitality, the food and beverage arm of parent company Oak View Group (OVG), to run food and beverage at five stadiums. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
OVG Hospitality will focus on rebranding and refreshing the food and beverage offerings and optimize operations across the DBH roster, beginning with the Mississippi Braves at Trustmark Park (Pearl, MS); the Midland Rockhounds at Momentum Bank Ballpark (Midland, TX); the Rome Braves at AdventHealth Stadium (Rome, GA); the San Jose Giants at Excite Ballpark (San Jose, CA), and the Wichita Wind Surge at Riverfront Stadium (Wichita, KS).
“It came about through our relationship with Minor League Baseball,” said Ken Gaber, president of OVG Hospitality.
“Kenny Young (retired team owner, food service company owner/operator and VenuesNow Hall of Honor member) knows a lot of people, and DBH was looking at how to grow the business. They’ve been on light-speed growth for the past year or so.”
Gaber said there are additional teams that DBH is looking to add to its roster, and Rick Barakat, senior vice president of business strategy and development at DBH, said in a news release that the five stadiums involved in the initial deal “mark the start of what we expect will be a productive, long-term relationship with Oak View Group.”
“In the last year and a half, DBH has acquired more than a dozen MiLB clubs, and we’re just getting started,” he said. “We brought in OVG Hospitality, with their expertise and best-in-class service, as a partner because they understand the opportunity to highlight and cultivate local traditions in each community while improving the fan experience and investing in growing the league as a whole.”
OVG Hospitality manages food and beverage at more than 350 venues worldwide, including the spring training locations of the Oakland Athletics, Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies. This includes Triple-A ballparks for the Albuquerque Isotopes, Omaha Storm Chasers, Norfolk Tides, and Syracuse Mets.
“I think they have a very strong business focus for MiLB, and it’s exciting to see,” Gaber said of the DBH team, which is led by Executive Chairman Pat Battle and CEO Peter Freund.
DBH originated at Endeavor in 2021 “to support, promote and enhance Minor League Baseball clubs affiliated with Major League Baseball through professional management, best practices, innovation, and investment,” according to the company’s media description.
Freund, who, like Battle, owns minor league teams, is a partner in the New York Yankees and has deep connections to MLB. Battle, who served as chairman of the board of Learfield, was also an advisor to Endeavor.
