Venue News: World Series Sets WiFi Records for AT&T Park; Sacramento Kings Break Ground on Downtown Arena

This year’s World Series games in San Francisco set new local records for fan WiFi use, arguably cementing AT&T Park’s title as baseball’s best-connected stadium, writes Mobile Sports Report. One of the more stunning numbers provided by Bill Schlough, the senior vice president and CIO for the Giants, was that nearly half the crowd in AT&T Park for Sunday’s Game 5 used the WiFi network. According to Schlough the Giants’ WiFi network had 20,638 unique users during Game 5, a take rate of 49.7%. (According to the official box score, the attendance that night was 43,087.) The game also set an AT&T Park record for WiFi upload traffic with 747 Gigabytes of data being sent by people at the park out to the network…

…Dozens of construction workers stood in the background Wednesday as the Sacramento Kings officially kicked off construction of their $477 million downtown arena, writes the Sacramento Kings. The workers will take back center stage soon enough. With the groundbreaking ceremonies out of the way, and much of Downtown Plaza reduced to bare earth, the Kings and their general contractor will resume their all-out sprint to get the arena ready for the start of the 2016-17 basketball season. The on-site workforce, which totals around 60 employees now, will grow to a peak of 600 before the building opens…

…A shoving match breaks out in a section of the MetLife Stadium stands. While security officers hustle to the scene, a beyond state-of-the-art surveillance system is recording every detail. No more conflicting accusations and complaints. The cameras show all. The cameras installed late last year before the stadium hosted the Super Bowl feature a mega-pixel system that provides comprehensive, undisrupted video coverage throughout every part of the venue, writes the Associated Press. MetLife Stadium previously won a security award and recently was nominated for another one for the system, which cost close to $1 million.

…The groundbreaking for Jackie Robinson’s $1.4 billion arena and hotel project on the Strip on Wednesday fueled talk that the National Basketball Association will have a team in Las Vegas one day, writes the Las Vegas Review-Journal. It’s the second arena on the Strip to stage a groundbreaking in less than six months. The MGM Resorts International/Anschutz Entertainment Group partnership broke ground May 1 for a $375 million, 20,000-seat venue behind New York-New York. Both arenas are being privately financed. MGM-AEG hopes to open its arena in spring 2016, while Robinson projects an early 2017 opening…

…The overall bill for the Olympic Stadium is set to soar well beyond £600m before West Ham United move in after it emerged that installing the complex roof would be far more expensive than originally thought, according to The Guardian. The complications will not cost West Ham – due to move into the 54,000-seat stadium from the start of the 2016-17 season – another penny on top of the £15m they have pledged towards the conversion. Construction Enquirer magazine reported that Balfour Beatty had asked for an extra £50m to cover complications in strengthening the roof and extending it over a new cantilevered structure that will cover retractable seats to be rolled out during the football season.