Venue News: Texas A&M Plans NCAA's Biggest Video Board; Bank of America Stadium Upgrades Underway
According to Texas A&M, Kyle Field will have the largest video screen in college football for the 2014 season. A&M officials say the LED video display will be 47 feet high and 163 feet wide and is the first in college sports to have 1080 resolution. The Daktronics display will be installed in the south end zone. Two smaller displays also will be installed, one in each corner at the north end of the stadium. Those will be 36 feet by 54 feet. The last portion of the video upgrade will be five ribbon displays placed around the seating areas of the stadium, ranging from 160 to 510 feet long……After five weeks of construction on upgrades and renovations, NBC Charlotte got a first look at the progress of the Carolina Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium. The demolition of the old scoreboards is now complete to make way for new HD ones, two-and-half times bigger than the old ones, hoping to keep fans visually engaged. It’s just one of many changes at the venue. The old ribbon boards are torn down. Now crews are putting up brackets for two new ribbon boards that will circle the stadium, featuring things like NFL scores and stats. Perhaps one of the most impactful additions will be escalators, four new bays at three entry gates to take fans to the 300 and 500 levels. The foundation has begun and the escalators are in transit now…
…It’s “all in” for Daytona International Speedway’s $400 million renovation, writes CNBC. More than half a million racing fans were in Florida’s Daytona Beach region to party and attend Budweiser Speedweeks, a series of NASCAR races culminating in a soggy season-opening Daytona 500—billed as the “Great American Race.” Now that NASCAR’s biggest and most prestigious race is over, work can resume on the major renovation underway at the sport’s most recognizable venue — the Daytona International Speedway, which opened in 1959. DAYTONA Rising, as the upgrade project is called, includes the rebuilding of the front stretch of the grandstand, which seats more than 100,000 and runs for nearly a mile along the 2.5-mile tri-oval track…
…Even as some other sports teams across the country are facing lower than expected usage of their in-stadium wireless networks, the San Francisco 49ers are planning for full capacity use of the WiFi in their new Levi’s Stadium, according to Comcast. Over the last year or so, Comcast has built up an impressive resume of stadium-backhaul deals, with contracts that include bringing business-class services to the stadiums of the Denver Broncos, the Boston Red Sox and Boston Celtics, the Washington Nationals and the Oakland Athletics. Comcast, with headquarters in Philadelphia, also supplies bandwidth and WiFi to the Philadelphia 76ers at Wells Fargo Arena and to the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park…
…The Sao Paulo stadium which hosts the opening match of the World Cup will not be finished until less than four weeks before Brazil plays Croatia on June 12, writes AP. FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke says “it will not be ready before the 15th of May.” FIFA had hoped to get the Itaquerao stadium in mid-April, following delays when a crane collapsed in November killing two workers.