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Lucas Oil Stadium offers resources for fans with sensory sensitivity

Lucas Oil Stadium becomes sensory accessible

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Lucas Oil Stadium is home to some of the largest, loudest and wildest crowds around. But not everyone in the crowd is prepared to handle everything going on around them. Lucas Oil is making its crazy events a little more accessible for everyone in your family.

Lucas Oil Stadium now has sensory bags that are filled with all types of things for people with sensory issues. Whether it’s the noise of the event that’s hurting your ears or you’re a nonverbal communicator. There’s a little card in here where kids can express their feelings or exactly what they need to their parents, so anybody can enjoy an event.

Under the bright lights of Lucas Oil Stadium, the crowd goes wild, fans cheer in face paint and those with sensory issues may be feeling a lot of stress and anxiety.

“We want there to be no deterrents for people to be able to enjoy a show,” Stadium Director Eric Neuberger said.

Lucas Oil’s answer comes in three parts: a sensory bag filled with stimulation tools, a quiet area to watch the event televised until you want to rejoin the crowd, and trained staff, ready to identify and help anyone in need.

“All 832 of those individuals who went through that training, now are equipped to be able to shorten that time between getting somebody the resources they need so that they can continue to enjoy the show,” Neuberger said. “Like most things at Lucas Oil Stadium, we’re really proud of our people.”

If you look on the KultureCity app –they’re the ones who provided Lucas Oil with sensory certification — you’ll only find a couple other Indiana venues on the list. Lucas Oil is also one of only eight NFL venues to be certified.

“We thought we would join our partners in the city and try to lead by example and show that in the largest venue, we’re able to put this together and we hope that others will follow as well,” Neuberger said.

Lucas Oil has only had one event where they’ve been able to offer sensory help so far: Monster Jam.

“It was a perfect test where we had over 16 families take advantage of it,” Neuberger said. “Just on those two shows that weekend.”

Unfortunately, Lucas Oil only has 10 sensory bags available at one time.

“Well, the plan would be to do our best with the resources we have that day,” Neuberger said. “But that would be a signal to me and my team that we need to acquire more bags and that’s what we would do. We think that 10 is the right number, but we’re prepared to expand that number if possible.”

If you’re heading to an event and you need to get one of the sensory bags, all you have to do is head over to the guest services kiosk and they can help you out from there. You can find out more information on the KultureCity app.