Dragon Seats’ tie-up with ARZ gives the new combined company a power spot across football

From left, Franklin Floyd III, ARZ’s Brian Cothren and Frank Floyd Jr., are the three principals of the new combined Dragon Seats. Courtesy of Dragon Seats

The benches on TCU’s sideline during the recent College Football Playoff National Championship game at SoFi Stadium were made by Dragon Seats. The benches on the opposite side, Georgia’s sideline, were made by Athletic Recovery Zone. The two companies dominate their realm of the sports industry, creating heated and cooled benches much more sophisticated than the aluminum benches long used at every level of sports.

The two companies’ dominance is now consolidated following Dragon Seats’ acquisition of Jacksonville, Fla.-based ARZ earlier this month for an undisclosed sum. The combined company will be called Dragon Seats.

Based in Cleveland, Dragon Seats cornered the football bench market in the Midwest and northern half of the U.S., counting dozens of Power Five college football teams and nearly two dozen NFL teams as clients. Many of its benches on college sidelines bear DeWalt’s marks, a marketing deal born out of Dragon Seats’ relationship with Learfield. In ARZ, Dragon Seats acquires a much stronger position in the southeastern U.S., where ARZ has significant college and pro football clients, like Alabama and the Bucs.

“We have an opportunity to own this market for a very long time, which is very exciting,” said Franklin Floyd III, Dragon Seats’ chief operating officer.

Bringing the two companies together produces not only a larger combined client list and geographical reach, but marries an inventive pair of business owners and founders, each with their own patents, Dragon Seats’ Frank Floyd Jr. and ARZ’s Brian Cothren.

After seeing news about Dragon Seats’ Learfield tie-up, Cothren approached Floyd in early 2022 about possibly combining the companies. Dragon Seats wasn’t interested initially because it was developing its own air-conditioned bench and, said Floyd Jr., the price didn’t work. But the more Dragon Seats’ leadership learned about Cothren, his decade-old business and his technology, and listened to feedback from his customers, the more interested they became.

“The rationale just improved,” said Floyd Jr.

ARZ’s business wasn’t struggling. Its benches were on the sidelines of eight of the 14 SEC football stadiums, as well as the Buccaneers and Jacksonville Jaguars. It also deploys spectator cooling zones at PGA Tour events and its AC benches are even used in the sweltering and humid conditions of paper mills.

“Rather than focusing on competition,” Cothren said, “we can focus on innovation and growing together to increase what we’ve already built, and that’s just a great sideline experience for our football teams.”

Nearly two dozen NFL teams use Dragon Seats benches on their sidelines.Courtesy of Dragon Seats

Uniformity: The holy grail

Dragon Seats and ARZ completed the deal during their busiest time of the year, a whirlwind football season. Cothren, and all his intellectual property, will join Dragon Seats, but ARZ will maintain its headquarters in Jacksonville, giving Dragon Seats a Southern outpost to help with customer service and reduce shipping costs.

Post-transaction, Dragon Seats’ benches will be in 22 NFL stadiums, plus the handful of teams who take Dragon Seats benches on the road. The company will also be a step closer to providing the NFL with sideline uniformity. Dragon Seats isn’t an official NFL partner; it works for the league’s teams, not the league. But in its conversations with the NFL league office, it’s been made clear to Dragon Seats that the league would like for its sidelines to be more uniform in appearance and function.

“Uniformity is the holy grail, not only as far as location across the United States but also branding,” said Floyd Jr. “Through this collaboration, this partnership, we have gotten much, much closer to a uniform product across the entire spectrum.”   

‘Will build it’

Dragon Seats’ vision extends well beyond football, though. MLB, college baseball, hockey, and even retail — L.L. Bean’s Freeport, Maine, headquarters has heated Dragon Seats benches — are huge opportunities. Maybe the biggest is tennis; Dragon Seats is in conversations with the USTA about its benches being used at the U.S. Open and the organization’s massive Lake Nona, Fla., facility. The combined companies’ expanded reach should increase the benches’ sponsorship potential, too.

The company is beginning to think about ways to incorporate more technology into the benches within the next two to five years, some of which may be as simple as warming or cooling drawers, or as advanced as requiring software and potentially linking to athletes’ wearable devices to measure body temperature or other physical diagnostics. Advanced tech could be used for dynamic sponsor signage.

“I’m a dinosaur, this is the least of my knowledge,” said Floyd Jr., “but my mantra is ‘you tell us what you want, and we will build it.’”

That’s easier to do with the companies combined. “An organic growth concept for this business is very expensive,” largely due to investment in expensive manufacturing equipment and shipping costs that have quadrupled since COVID.

“International reach, the sky is the limit,” said Cothren. “We have big plans to do big things. We’re going to have a think tank with some of the smartest people with sideline experience to take this thing to areas that we haven’t been able to do so far.”