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Q/A: Stateside President Matt Quigley on the Xfinity Live! Naming Rights, an “Emotional Connection” to the Venue, and New Brands Coming in 2026
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After more than a decade of symbiotic adjacency, Wells Fargo Center and Xfinity Live! are both gone. Not the buildings, but the names, as this fall you’ll see Xfinity Mobile Arena next to Stateside Live!, the congregational food and drink hub now bearing the brand of the local vodka company that first hit the scene about 10 years ago in Fishtown.
In the decade since, Stateside has become a widely-known megabrand, riding the success of grassroots Philadelphia tailgate work and the immense popularity of the Surfside hard iced tea brand. Their products are ubiquitous at Philly sporting events, so it only seems natural that the evolution of the brand would lead to naming rights at the venue that became Stateside’s first account of major significance.
It amounts to a “full-circle crowning moment,” says President Matt Quigley, who calls it a “privilege” to be a Philadelphia sports fan. The Penn State alum started the company with his brother despite having “no money and no clue how to make vodka,” which is something we can all relate to. Inspiration, perhaps, that anything can be built from scratch.
We caught up with Quigley to talk about the acquisition of the Stateside Live! naming rights, what fans can expect to see at the venue moving forward, and plans for 2026 and beyond.
Crossing Broad: I have to say before we get into Stateside Live! that I appreciate the website biography. Oftentimes you read these stories about family history and handing the business down over generations, and in this case it’s like, ‘we were bored and started a vodka company out of our parent’s basement.’ A Philly success, nonetheless.
Matt Quigley: I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, and my dad is a real estate developer in the area. I went to Penn State, and before I got out of school, he said, ‘do you know what you’re going to do with yourself?‘ And I said, ‘yeah, I’m going to come work for you.’ Then he said, ‘no you’re not, no fucking way, you’d better get that out of your mind.‘ So that kicked off this entire path of working for myself. I opened a cheesesteak shop in Norman, Oklahoma, of all places. Then I opened up (other spots), but that one comment from him set me on a path of thinking, okay, if people can figure out how to build bridges that stand the test of time, and take people across huge bodies of water, then I can figure out how to distill.
But thanks for saying that, it’s all true, honestly. It’s a basement-born success story.
CB: Well it sets the scene. You’re only 10 years old and now your brand is on the side of this huge building at the sports complex. That has to be cool from a personal perspective.
Quigley: It’s a really cool achievement for us, it’s the perfect convergence of our love for business and our passion for sports. I said to my wife that it feels like a homecoming, and she was like, ‘why do you say that?’ It’s because I travel around the nation and lead all of the corporate sponsorships for our company, I’m on airplanes and in hotels and all I really want to do is hang out and stay in Philly. It’s a cool, fun job, but I have more fun when we’re here. So being able to take that next step with this organization, and walk up to a place that I’ve loved as a fan ever since it came into existence 12 or 13 years ago, that’s surreal for us. It’s been a really cool moment to digest as that deal finally got done.
CB: How did the deal come about anyway? What’s the background there?
Quigley: I was having lunch at Chickie’s and Pete’s with one of the (Comcast-Spectacor) partnership guys. Our current Surfside deal at (Xfinity Live!) was terming out, and so I said ‘let’s go get a bite and a beer and talk about how we want to structure the next scenario, maybe we can look at the Flyers deal as well and put them together on similar timelines.’ We just got to talking and I had heard rumblings that Xfinity might be taking the naming rights of Wells Fargo, and thought, well, what’s going to happen with the Live! property? He had brought a rendering just to show me how it was going to look in the future and I said, ‘is that going to a get a new name?‘ He said, ‘maybe,’ and so I just started asking questions. That’s been my mantra for all things business-related. Let’s find out what the other side of the table wants and needs. When I got connected to (Comcast-Spectacor SVP of Corporate Partnerships) Bryan Furey, he was like, ‘look, it is true, we are going to be renaming this building, and we really want to keep the cultural identity of what fans have built over a decade-plus intact here.‘ So I said, ‘I think I can help you out with that, because I’ve been throwing tailgates in your backyard before I was allowed inside.’ This is a place where the fans pretty much made the Surfside brand. It took off (at Xfinity Live!). I think there’s some cultural relevance to that. That’s what started the conversation and we started mapping it out and it was a six-month process in signing a deal with them.
CB: Did Spectacor tell you why they were selling the naming rights? There’s been some theorizing by sites like ours that it just seemed redundant to have two properties right next to each other carrying the “Xfinity” branding.
Quigley: I think that definitely is a large component of it. But it’s a joint partnership with (The Cordish Companies) and Comcast, and if you look at some of Cordish’s other properties, you go to St. Louis or Kansas City, they do a really good job of tying into what’s happening and the brands that are doing stuff in the cities they have their larger properties. So I think there was a large influence from the Cordish side of, ‘hey, let’s make this feel like the best Philly sports bar it possibly can be.‘ But I think your intuition is accurate, that it would be a little redundant to have ‘X small’ and ‘X large,’ if you will.
CB: That, and the Uber drivers and car share people trying to figure out which Xfinity they’re supposed to go to.
Quigley: (laughing) Yeah and they’re all at the same time. You book a really nice (car) and some shit car shows up. Or you book the shit car and a brand-new Tesla shows up. And you’re like, ‘I can’t game the system, I can’t figure it out.‘
CB: How long do you think people will accidentally call it Xfinity Live! before remembering that its Stateside Live!? Philadelphia is pretty bad at this. I’ve been calling the music venue in Camden the “Tweeter Center” for at least 20 years now.
Quigley: I can’t speak for the hivemind for Philadelphia, if you will, but you’re right. My friends and I still call it the Tweeter Center, which is funny that you mention that. But look, with any name change on anything, humans are a little resistant to change in general. It causes us all a little anxiety because it’s different. When you look at package design, for instance, if you want to go from a white package to a red package, you might have to take a few steps in between. There’s going to be a bit of a resistance in the interim, or the infancy as the name changes over. But I think by the end of the Eagles season people will have adopted the new vernacular and not really stress out about it. Like everything in Philly and the surrounding area, we just need to find a way to give it the easy nickname people can refer to. Once it gets that it’ll be an afterthought. But it’ll take some time. We know that.
CB: You can spend marketing and advertising dollars on anything. What made naming rights attractive?
Quigley: In venues like Citizens Bank Park, I would rather spend money on a sign in the outfield and then let you or another fan decide what Surfside is about completely, instead of making a commercial on TV and telling people what exactly we are. The way of doing it how I described builds some intrigue from the consumer where they say, ‘oh I’ve seen that before, what is that?‘ They may spend a second longer on it. And in Philly we’re blessed to have all of our stadiums next to each other, to a degree. Not blessed from a traffic standpoint, as we talked about before recording. But we really are blessed to be able to congregate in one area and tailgate in one area. There’s this immense tailgating culture and it’s our fourth stadium (in a way). Between all of the people coming in and out of town, and all of the other events there, we just thought it was a perfect spot to spread the name of our parent brand past liquor stores in the tri-state area.
CB: The rendering shows the Stateside sign on the top of the venue, and the expansion that’s going to be completed next year. What’s the extent of the branding on the building and inside of it? And will we see Surfside signage or just Stateside?
Quigley: On the masthead of the building you’ll see Stateside Live! And then inside, if you can envision underneath both glass loft suite areas upstairs, there are a few areas with hard signage, and those will be changed over. Uniforms and web IDs and social media accounts, all of that will be Stateside. But Surfside will continue to have its presence, like it had before, with our bar at 11th and Pattison, and as they do that renovation on the yard, that centralized bar that has been back there, it’s going to be torn down and they’re going to build a center bar 2.0. That will be a Surfside bar out back. We felt like we already had this presence with Surfside and it’s been working and people take pictures with it and all of that, so let’s not fix something that’s not broken. We’re keeping the amount of branding we have for Surfside in place. That’s continuing the messaging with the public, but the masthead and general building attributes will be Stateside.
CB: This is a really stupid question, but during these talks, did the name “Live!” have to remain in place? Like whomever won the rights, it would have been Sheetz Live! or Wawa Live! no matter what?
Quigley: Yeah, so that’s the Cordish brand. Outside of the Cowboys and Rangers stadiums it’s Texas Live!. In Kansas City it’s KC Live!. That Live! is their brand name. They go area by area and tether into what’s relevant to the fan bases in those different areas.
CB: Consistency across the entire portfolio. Speaking of which, I have to imagine that most Philly sports fans are familiar with Stateside and Surfside at this point, but you’ve got the MLB All-Star Game and World Cup coming up in 2026, plus an expansion of the building itself. Tons of national and international customers in town. How much did those two things factor in wanting to do this?
Quigley: I think honestly, even if we weren’t having the World Cup and All-Star Game and the 250th birthday of America, we still would have been super-excited to investigate the deal. This was the first account of substance for our company. When we were throwing parties in K Lot and growing the company we got the attention of The Green Legion, and they said ‘hey, do you want to do tailgates with us? do you want to do samples with us?‘ That’s when they were on the turf field in the backyard. We said sure. We were doing that, out there at 9 a.m. pouring nips of vodka nonstop, for hours on end. We did that until (then-Xfinity Live! Director of Operations) Justin DiSalvo was like, ‘okay, enough’s enough, come in here and let’s talk about me purchasing your product.’ It became the largest account we had in the state. So we have this emotional connection to the building and doing business there. I think the attractions in 2026 are icing on the cake. But we love doing business down there no matter what and would have done it in there even if nothing was happening.
CB: Beyond Stateside Live!, what’s on the radar for 2026 and beyond?
Quigley: We’d been on the warpath with partnerships across the nation and we’re starting to slow down a little bit at this point just because we have a lot to chew on. Myself and a few members of the team, we’ve gotten it to 12 MLB partnerships, 14 NHL partnerships, 5 NBA, and then there are 30 colleges coming online this upcoming season. You’ll be able to find Surfside in sporting venues across the nation. That’s been a big focus of ours because we want to recreate the specialness that we found here with this brand. We want that to happen for people who aren’t in Philly. As far as what our company is doing, we’ve got new brands we’ve been working on that are cool. They’re so different than Surfside and the vodka sodas we’ve had in the past. That’s really exciting and those should debut in January and February if everything goes correctly with graphic design and formulation, and we’re pretty well through a lot of that. We’ll be test running that in a lot of cities in the northeast and some down south to kind of flex the rollout instead of going full bore and pushing it across the nation. And then the press is on for our vodka. That brand kind of had to take a back seat when Surfside stole the show. For three years it’s been Surfside everything, and we’re incredibly fortunate for that. It’s been a great mechanism for growth. But the vodka is really fucking good. There’s a certain contingent of Philadelphians who know that, and people from New Jersey and Delaware, but it’s a 50,000, 9-liter case brand, which is super-cool and I’m humbled that we’ve been able to achieve that. But our mindset is that the nation is waiting for the next best vodka or next cool vodka story and we think we can write that. We’re gonna be putting a hard press on the product that started everything over the next 2, 3, 4, years.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com