Venue News & Notes: Tennis Comes to Cowboys Stadium

Several top players in professional tennis will converge on Cowboys Stadium on July 10 for the first annual Cowboys Tennis Slam. The event will feature two matches, both of which will be a best-of-three-sets tilt. The first match is set to feature a pair of top-ranked players on the women’s pro circuit, with former No. 1 Maria Sharapova battling the current top player, Serena Williams. The other match will pit Andy Roddick against John Isner. “This will be an exciting event for us to hold at Cowboys Stadium,” said Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. “We have seen the flexibility our new stadium has for holding spectacular events of all kinds. Being able to attract some of the best tennis players in the world under one roof for a night like this will be something special”…

…The San Francisco 49ers may not yet be championship material on the field, but the team appears to be on the verge of taking a title in the political arena: biggest campaign spenders in Silicon Valley history for a local election. With less than two weeks to go before voters in the city of Santa Clara, CA, cast their ballots on a proposed new NFL stadium, the 49ers-backed campaign behind Measure J has already spent $3.6 million to sway the city’s residents, according to campaign-finance reports filed Thursday. 49ers President Jed York has cut the bulk of the checks to fund that campaign, the reports show…

…The Jets and the Giants are talking to “two or three” international companies about acquiring the naming rights to the generic-sounding New Meadowlands stadium, Jets owner Woody Johnson said this week. “They’re taking a hard look at it,” he said, declining to name the companies. In 2008, the German insurance company Allianz nearly put its name on the stadium for at least $25 million a year, but a New York Times revelation of the connections the insurer had had with the Nazi Third Reich killed the deal…

…The NFL couch experience has improved in recent seasons: HD screens, Red Zone Channel, fantasy updates at fingertips. And the stadium experience has become a little tougher: personal-seat licenses at some locations and high prices in hard times. Commissioner Roger Goodell took a step in rebalancing that, announcing that the Red Zone Channel will be available in every stadium this season.